Lt Colonel Ivo Pinto Lobo (1929-2021). Farewell beloved Uncle
Colonel Ivo Pinto Lobo (1929-2021), retired of the Bombay Sappers breathed his last this morning May 29, 2021. My mother's younger brother, Col Ivo P Lobo, who was in the Bombay Sappers, passed away this morning. He was 92. He was commissioned in the very first batch of the Indian Military Academy in independent India - my parents put the officer's pips on his shoulders in Chetwode hall after his POP, in 1949. My father was then serving as a teacher in the Rashtriya Indian Military College (RIMC) Dehra Dun.
Col Ivo Lobo saw action in the Western Sector of the Indo-Pak war in 1971. He was also prominent in the construction of the Srinagar-Leh road. His brother officers and jawans had nothing but love for him. Here is the tribute posted today by his old regiment
Uncle Ivo was much loved by his three children, Charmain, Jonathan and Michelle; his grandchildren and all his nephews and nieces. Tragically, his dear wife, my aunt Patti Lobo, passed away in 2014, a bereavement that affected him deeply. Besides being a stalwart Army Engineer, as my cousin Roy says, uncle played the piano by ear, and partied like a king. My earliest memory of him was being taught by him to swim at Juhu beach, when I was perhaps five or six years old.
My family's life was tied in with the Indian Army. In 2009, when my novel was in its last stages, I told uncle Ivo about it on a visit to Pune. He then told me an astonishing story from the 1971 war, a story of pure human interest, of no military or strategic significance whatever, but he said he had never told it to anyone. It was about a son looking for his father. I put it into my book, in semi-fictional form, but feel free to say that it was my uncle who told me of it, and it made all the difference to my novel.
