Rubem Siqueira Maia

After living in São João del-Rei during his childhood and graduating from the School of Medicine of Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), he moved to Vale do Rio Doce to work on the construction of the Vitória-Minas Railway (EFVM) in the 1930s.

[4][3] Rubem left his job at the Hospital Siderúrgica in 1945, after being forbidden by the Belgo-Mineira's superintendent Joaquim Gomes da Silveira Neto to move to Santa Terezinha Farm, recently built by the family in the region of the current Aldeia do Lago neighborhood.

Joaquim Gomes considered the new residence too far from Rubem's workplace, who, for this reason, preferred to give up his position at the company, move to the farm and open his own office near the Calado Station.

[1] In 1947, he was responsible for organizing a commission that aimed to emancipate the former district of Melo Viana - now called Coronel Fabriciano -, formed by businessmen and other local political and religious leaders.

[3] At Tancredo Neves' suggestion, baptism records were provided by the local vicar, Father Deolindo Coelho, to be added to the number of inhabitants obtained by the census precariously carried out by the government of Antônio Dias, exceeding the minimum required.

[3] That same year, Rubem Siqueira Maia created the first newspaper of the district, O Progresso, which brought regional news and collaborated with the promotion of political force for the emancipation of Coronel Fabriciano, declared on December 27, 1948.

[2] After the emancipation of Coronel Fabriciano, Rubem Siqueira Maia gave the House Saint Gerald, his property, to serve as the first headquarters of the city hall.

[10][2] Although the original area of the old farm has been plotted, the headquarters was kept and preserved by the heirs in an isolated location in the Aldeia do Lago neighborhood, where they built the first high-standard private condominium in the region in the 1990s.

[12] On June 25, 2020, the Doutor Walter Luiz Winter Maia Emergency Care Unit (UPA) was inaugurated, named after one of Rubem's sons, also a physician and former director of the former Hospital Siderúrgica, who died in 2014.