{"id":7843,"date":"2022-09-27T08:30:09","date_gmt":"2022-09-27T12:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/?p=7843"},"modified":"2022-09-27T09:42:39","modified_gmt":"2022-09-27T13:42:39","slug":"a-gift-to-honor-her-father-was-the-obvious-thing-to-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/2022\/09\/27\/a-gift-to-honor-her-father-was-the-obvious-thing-to-do\/","title":{"rendered":"A gift to honor her father was ‘the obvious thing to do’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is Day of Giving<\/a>, it\u2019s a day to celebrate our donors and to educate students about how alumni contributions of time, talent and treasure help current student and enrich the University. This is the second of three stories we are running this week to mark Day of Giving.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"OrlandoOrlando F.X. deSouza<\/strong> was born in 1928 in Goa, India, and spent his early life in Uganda, where his father was a general medical practitioner. Logical and analytical, deSouza pursued an engineering degree at a prestigious college in Poona, India, and worked at Caltex during the boom time for the oil industry at Caltex.<\/p>\n

In 1970, he took a sabbatical from Caltex to earn a master\u2019s degree in engineering halfway across the world at University of Detroit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 13 at the time, so I don\u2019t fully know why he chose University of Detroit,\u201d said his daughter Nandita M. deSouza from her home in England. \u201cBut his brother was a Jesuit who was very prominent in education in India and that may have been one reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

deSouza said her father often talked about the importance of education and about his time at University of Detroit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of his favorite sayings was \u2018if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cHe believed it was important to teach people to do things for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

She remembers him telling her and her three siblings that if he didn\u2019t have any money to give them, his great desire would be that all his children be well educated and able to live lives with all the opportunities a good education makes possible.<\/p>\n

Nandita deSouza received that education and is retired now after \u201ca very full and satisfying career\u201d in the United Kingdom, most recently serving as a professor and co-director of the Cancer Research UK Imaging Center at the Institute of Cancer Research.<\/p>\n

As deSouza neared the end of his life, his daughter decided to set up a scholarship with the money she knew he would leave to her in his will. She chose his alma matewr Detroit Mercy as the recipient.<\/p>\n

The Orlando F.X. deSouza Endowment Fund will provide scholarships for graduate students \u2014 like her father \u2014 studying mechanical, electrical or civil engineering in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seemed the obvious thing to do,\u201d she said. \u201cA few weeks before he died I mentioned to him what I wanted to do. He nodded and smiled. I think he would have approved.\u201d<\/p>\n

To contribute to The Orlando F.X. deSouza Endowment Fund or create a scholarship in honor of someone, call 313-993-1250.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is Day of Giving, it\u2019s a day to celebrate our donors and to educate students about how alumni contributions of time, talent and treasure help current student and enrich the University. This is the second of three stories we are running this week to mark Day of Giving. Orlando …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":7845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[9,10,33],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/88\/2022\/09\/day-of-giving-logo.png?fit=770%2C754&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8Kcng-22v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7843"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7843"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7855,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7843\/revisions\/7855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/alumni\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}