Wanderlino
Arruda
Normally,
I
would
arrive
at
the
house
of
professor
Jose
Oliveira
Fonseca,
on
Carlos
Perreira
street,
at
five
in
the
morning.
Every
morning,
from
Monday
to
Saturday,
there
we
would
be
for
our
class
of
syntax
analysis
and
other
more
objective
topics
of
the
Portuguese
language.
We
weren’t
many
students,
all
together,
but
we
were
extremely
curious
and
interested,
principally
Mauro
Lafeta,
Corby
Aquino,
Afranio
Nogueira,
Odil
Oliveira
and
I.
They,
candidates
for
the
public
concourse
of
Law
school
in
Pouso
Alegre
or
Niteroi;
myself,
a
student
of
Linguistics,
taking
advantage
of
the
magnificence
of
professor
Fonseca,
unequalled
and
unsurpassed
in
the
subject
of
all
Montes
Claros.
It
was
a
wonderful
time,
cheerful,
brimming
with
mature
enthusiasm,
dreams
of
persons
that,
at
a
certain
time
of
calling
in
life,
know
what
to
do
in
life
and
how
to
do
it.
Afranio
has
just
left
his
special
classes
for
the
conclusion
of
grade
school
students
and
already
studied
at
night
he
last
phases
to
pass
high
school.
A
great
effort
of
a
year
and
a
half
between
primary
school
and
the
university.
Mauro
with
all
his
God-given
pose,
serious,
compenetrated,
a
dreamer,
almost
demanded
to
be
referred
to
as
“doctor”.
It
was
all
a
dream,
even
though
the
professor
had
never
once
given
us
a
cup
of
coffee
to
help
us
wake
us
completely
up
at
such
a
wee
hour…
It
was
around
there,
at
the
time
of
change
from
late
night
to
early
dawn,
mornings
of
a
delicious
coolness
that
required
no
or
little
protection,
that
the
professor
and
we
made
the
first
proposals
for
the
foundation
of
the
Law
school.
Between
one
syntax
analysis
and
another,
between
one
verse
and
a
noun,
a
new
observation
about
the
future
of
the
second
school
for
the
creation
of
the
University
of
Montes
Claros.
Who
would
be
willing
to
collaborate?
With
what
lawyers
and
professors
would
we
be
able
to
count
on
to
form
the
school
staff?
Who
would
be
capable
of
the
seat
of
the
first
director?
Where
would
it
be
located?
In
what
building?
Where
would
financial
support
be
found?
They
were
questions
and
more
questions,
so
present
as
their
originators.
It
didn’t
take
long,
the
phase
of
dreams
and
coagitations,
and
in
less
than
one
month,
We
were
already
in
the
street
alisting
help,
and
finding
first,
in
the
person
of
the
state
deputy,
Euler
Lafetá,
uncle
of
Mauro
and
a
man
close
to
the
government,
and
federal
inspector
of
schools,
Jose
Monteiro
Fonseca,
who
was
more
enthusiastic
than
we,
ourselves.
The
battle
began
to
thicken,
the
spirit
of
determination
was
born.
Mauro,
each
day
becoming
more
and
more
enthralled
with
the
project,
and
anticipatedly
victorious.
We
began
our
first
interviews
of
the
principal
lawyers,
through
a
special
commission-Mauro,
Afranio
and
I-
in
a
unfolding
of
work
done
before
by
the
professor
Francolino
Santos
and
the
industrialist
Corby.
No
one
could
imagine
or
preview
the
human
and
professional
reactions
before
a
challenge
such
as
this.
Who
could
judge
where
the
personal
interest
would
be,
the
unselfishness
the
enthusiasm
or,
the
opposite,
the
fear
of
future
competition.
Who
would
believe
in
we,
dreamers,
striving
to
build
from
the
bottom
up,
inverting
the
whole
logical
sequence
of
the
foundation
of
a
university?
Students,
anticipating
and
doing
the
structuring
work
of
the
professors.
Really,
before
our
proposal,
future
professors
showed
themselves
to
be
happy
or
sad
with
it,
in
the
majority
of
times,
exceedingly
ironic.
Who
were
really
those
students,
who
ousadamente
wanted
to
found
a
law
school
in
Montes
Claros?
Who
knows,
one
of
those
three
young
and
dreamers
inbued
with
the
university
spirit?
Crazy
is
what
they
called
us…why
didn’t
we
simply
go
to
another
city
to
study,
as
so
many
other
Montes
Claros
natives
had
done
before
instead
of
trying
to
found
our
own
university?
Traveling
around
touring
the
country
would
be
a
lot
easier
than
founding
a
university…
Two
factors
became
decisive
in
our
battle:
The
JMC,
principal
newspaper
of
Montes
Claros
was
against
it,
affirming
the
desnecessity
of
new
bacharrels,
this,
because
they
felt
that
our
Brazil
and
the
world
was
already
full
of
lawyers.
Happily
professor
João
Luiz
de
Almeida
the
deputies
Francelino
Perreira
and
Cicero
Dumont
showed
themselved
to
be
very
interested
in
our
project.
Doctor
João
Luiz
ceded
various
classrooms
of
his
school
to
us
and
put
himself
at
our
disposition
as
the
first
dean;
Francelino
