‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ Matthew 5:8
Ten years have passed since that strange autumn day when news of your sudden, untimely death travelled on the Aegean winds all the way to your mountain birthplace, Kastri in Kynouria, Arcadia.
There, on the slopes of Mount Parnon, you were born one August day in 1954, the third child of Giannis and Anna. You grew up with the sweet sound of chanting and the Greek language close to your heart, helping on the land alongside your large, much-loved family. Your reading ranged from classical and modern literature and political philosophy to mathematics, science, Byzantine music and theology. You excelled at the teacher training academy in Tripoli, ready to pass on what you knew.
Yet life had other plans. Your restless spirit took you to Canada for some fifteen years. You worked at various jobs while giving your time to the Greek community, its schools and the Greek Orthodox Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Regina, Saskatchewan.
When the day of your homecoming came, you worked first as a supply teacher in primary schools in Arcadia and Argolis. In 1995 you received a permanent teaching appointment in the Dodecanese. You put down roots on windswept Leros, started a family and welcomed your only daughter, our cousin Anna. Generations of pupils knew your generosity, sensitivity and solidarity. Ten years on, your colleagues still bear witness, as does your work at the primary schools of Agia Marina and Alinda and, especially, on Arki. You gladly went there in the middle of winter, in difficult conditions, so that the children would not miss a single day of school.
Your love for the Orthodox Church and its services began in childhood. Your devoted study of Byzantine chant showed another side of you: a teacher’s readiness to become a pupil again. Few possess that humility.
Your fellow parishioners, cantors and priests at the Church of the Forty Martyrs in Alinda and across the Metropolis of Leros, Kalymnos and Astypalaia knew your integrity, intelligence, modesty and kindness. So did your friends, fellow teachers and the generations you taught. Since September 2016 you have rested on the island to which you gave so much.
For your brothers and sisters, your nieces and nephews and your daughter Anna, you are still here: in our long summer conversations, in the pizzas you made us in the village from your Canadian recipe, in the faint blue horizon above the twin peaks of Malevos, in your olive trees at Orthos Lachnos and the rustle of chestnut leaves on Zygos. You are there in our prayers to the Virgin Mary and in the stories of your childhood, of our mule Koulis and the owl whose nest you once climbed a tree to see.
‘The righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the most High.’ Wisdom of Solomon 5:15
Your nephew,
Giannis D. Salapatas
