Brazilian engineer who graduated with his degree in civil engineering in 1938. He was the first engineer hired to protect and supervise the main road (at that time) in Sao Paulo, a state highway that connected the capital to Santos, a main seaport. Borges was General Director of the State Road Department from 1958-1960, having at one time 8,000 people under his orders.
Married, he has one son. In 1961, he had cataract surgery in both eyes. Borges retired in 1970.
Widowed in early 2000 after 53 years of marriage, he seemed to lose his will and within a year, needed nursing care. In February 2001, a skin lesion on his bald head refused to respond to various treatments and was diagnosed as skin cancer. Dr. Cestari began using a new method of his own device, a Photodynamic laser treatment. The lesion continued to grow, painfully. To his regret, the cancer did not reach any vital organ to hasten the process so he slowly lost his strength and will.
December 2001, his son writes, “His cancer has stopped spreading, but he is a wreck–depressed, doing almost nothing except eat (too little), sleep (badly) and sit on his couch, looking at the ceiling. We’re trying Rudolf Steiner anthroposophical remedies with a second doctor to strengthen his immunological system.”
In March 2002, his son writes, “Dad’s burden now includes Parkinson’s. The right half of his face is almost paralyzed due to a tumor beneath the ear, and he cannot walk. I discovered a psychologist who specializes in terminal patients; she’s Brazilian but follows Tibetan Buddhism.”
Borges died on 11 March 2002, 11:40 PM BZT in Sao Paulo. As Benjamin Franklin stated in his own epitaph, written when he was only 20 . . . he will return “in a New and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.” He was 88.