João Teixeira de Medeiros

He lived in the United States until the age of nine, where he completed the third grade. In 1910, he moved with his family to Pedreira do Nordeste (S. Miguel, Azores), where there was no school, which is why he only resumed his studies at 14, when an educational institution opened in his locality. He remained in the Azores for 20 years, and, after a brief and unpleasant experience as a servant for a family in Ponta Delgada, he returned to Pedreira do Nordeste, where he worked as an assistant in the town's Notary Office until 1930, when he decided to return to Fall River. With the city immersed in economic depression, he initially worked in a textile factory; then, between 1939 and 1948, he worked in a torpedo shipyard. He married a Portuguese-American in 1942, and until 1963, when he retired, he was a bookkeeper at a Portuguese bakery in the city. He revealed his personality as a poet, with a popular and telluric style, after retirement. He contributed to the newspaper Açores, from Ponta Delgada, where his first poem appeared in 1966. He published his first book at 81 and his second at 91, both prefaced by Onésimo Teotónio de Almeida.