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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Thursday, April 6, 2017
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The Philippine flag in front of the Bacolod City Government Center is flown at half-mast as a show of respect to the late former mayor Jose “Digoy” Montalvo Jr., the “founding father of MassKara Festival.” BACOLOD CITY PIO
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BACOLOD City – The cremated remains of former mayor and assemblyman Jose “Digoy” Montalvo Jr. will be transferred this afternoon to the Bacolod City Government Center lobby from the Acropolis Gardens in Barangay Bata.
Montalvo, the “founding father of MassKara Festival,” died of pneumonia around 9:02 a.m. on April 2 in their residence on Roxas Avenue. He was 92.
“Montalvo is gone, but he will never be forgotten,” said Mayor Evelio Leonardia. “He will be smiling and dancing and drinking and eating and, all told, having fun with us each time MassKara Festival rolls into the city.”
Mass and necrological rites will be held at city hall at 4 p.m. today where Councilor Caesar Distrito will read a Sangguniang Panlungsod resolution on Montalvo, said Executive Assistant Benjie Torre. A vigil will follow.
Tomorrow, Friday, the urn will be transferred at 1 p.m. to St. Jude Thaddeus Parish, where a mass will be held at 3 p.m. before the inurnment at the Bacolod Memorial Park in Barangay Alijis at 4 p.m.
Leonardia ordered that flags at city hall be flown at half-mast starting Monday as a show of respect to the late former mayor.
“We mourn the passing away of the man who started a festival for us,” Leonardia said of Montalvo in a statement. The former mayor was credited for founding the MassKara Festival held every October.
“We will remember him (Montalvo) every time we dance with our masks, grateful that what he and his administration had started to defy the gloom and doom the city went through 37 years ago has become the world-famous tourism event that it is today,” he added.
Montalvo was survived by children Joey, Jimmy, Michael, Johnny and Cashmere Montalvo, Marissa Corral, Arsee Juguilon, and Karina Jugo.
Montalvo was mayor from 1980 to 1986. It was during his term when Pope John Paul II, later canonized as saint, went to the city during a visit in the Philippines.
His daughter, Karina Jugo, said their father had undergone heart bypass when he was 55 years old. He also had pneumonia in February, and his family continued to monitor his condition when he was released and brought home.
Montalvo lost his wife, Nora; his two daughters, Mylene and Yvette; and mother-in-law Anicia Kilayko when the ill-fated Don Juan vessel sank near Romblon on the way back to Negros in 1980./PN
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