Johnny Ventura created a monumental artistic work and also left an example of personal improvement, which is why his family considered it positive to make his story known to the little ones. For this reason, he collaborated in the creation of a children’s book that tells the life of the legendary Dominican artist, “The King of Merengue,” who died three years ago.
The book is titled “The Legacies of Grandpa Johnny” and was written by psychologist Ileana Montero and illustrated by visual artist Taína Almodóvar; both Dominican. The publication is already on sale in the Dominican Republic and later this month it will also be available in the United States through Amazon.
As the landing of “The Legacies of Grandfather Johnny” in these lands is imminent, a good part of the Ventura family, with the widow Josefina “Fifi” Flores de Ventura at the helm, made a special presentation in Miami, a city expensive to affections of the great musician and his loved ones.
The event was at the Doral Campus of Miami Dade Community College, near the famous shopping centers of Doral. It was a sober act, but loaded with emotion. Johnny, who from poverty became an eminence in Latin music, as well as a parliamentarian and vice mayor of Santo Domingo, died of a heart attack as a result of Covid-19, on July 28, 2021.
The lovely “Fifa” was there, four of Johnny’s seven children, plus several of the singer’s 15 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The master of ceremonies was another prominent Dominican, Mariela Encarnación, former figure of “Sábado Gigante” and CNN en Español. Also present on the artistic side, among others, were the singers Lena Burke, Marger, and Erika Ender, author of the hit “Slowly”.
In addition, Omer Pardillo, former manager of Celia Cruz, who maintained a close friendship with Johnny, participated in the presentation of “The Legacies of Grandpa Johnny.” And there were political authorities such as Esteban Bovo, mayor of Hialeah, and Christian Ceballos, councilor of Miami Dade County.
“We are here to honor the memory of Johnny, who was always so loved by the people of Miami,” said Bovo, who presented a plaque to “Fifa” proclaiming May 13 – the date on which the event took place. – like “Johnny Ventura Day” in Hialeah. Ceballos, for his part, gave another official diploma to the Venturas and expressed: “Many of us in Miami grew up with Johnny’s music.”
“We don’t know how to thank so much affection,” declared the widow, who spent more than half a century with Ventura. Surrounded by her family, she added: “My husband also loved this city very much.” A clear example that the singer had a reciprocated love for Miami is that in 1987 he was chosen as King of the Calle Ocho Carnival. After his departure, in March 2022, a section of a street in Little Havana was named in his honor.
Johnny was born in 1940 and from the 1960s he made the Continent dance with songs like “El patacón tumbao”, “Pitaste?”, “Merenguero hasta la tumbara”, and “Capullo y Sorullo”. “Legacies are the learning that is transmitted from parents to children, and from grandparents to grandchildren,” reads the beginning of “The Legacies of Grandpa Johnny,” based on stories from two of the artist’s granddaughters, Amelia and Nelly Marie.
“In the book,” explained the author Montero, at the Doral Campus event, “we try to synthetically tell an intimate part of Johnny’s story, whose life was full of challenges.” In a pedagogical tone, the psychologist and writer added that “stories help express emotions.”
Feelings ran high at the event and one of Johnny’s sons, Jandy, even cried for a while leaning against a wall, heartbroken by the memory of the absent patriarch. “The book allows people to have a little piece of my father’s real story,” he commented later, more recovered. Jandy has a successful career as a singer. The other children of Ventura who were there were Marisol, Juan José and Eurídice.
At the end of the night, Pardillo, who is executor of Celia Cruz’s legacy, stated that initiatives like Johnny’s book “allow the legacy of the artists most loved by the public to continue forever.”
