In memoriam.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

I started my chemical career as a chemist. After moving to Toronto, I became an active member of the CIC Local Section executive. After adding that P.Eng. after my name, I decided to get involved with the CSChE executive. What hit me was that whenever there was a problem, someone would say, "Call Tony Papadopoulos. He can sort this out." I have lost track of the number of people I worked with in various industries who knew Tony and had worked with him. I quickly came to the conclusion that anyone of my generation who worked in industry knew Tony.

Tony had absolutely no patience for incompetence. There were very few people who didn't get along with Tony and they didn't have to look very far to see why. The rest of us looked at Tony as an advisor and a bit of a father figure. To call him, I entered "papa" into my auto dialer. Tony would always make time to help anyone in need. Choose your topic-chemical engineering, politics, finance, the arts and literature, or his favourite, finding the restaurants with the best food in town.

As our group started retiring, we began our regular pub lunches (I recently learned that our's wasn't Tony's only pub group). When Tony developed problems walking, we met at his house before going to the pub. This gave us an opportunity to sample the world's finest ouzo. During those lunches we managed to reorganize the CIC several times and solve countless industrial problems. At our last session, we were simplifying thermodynamic calculations. Tony loaned me one of his old texts. I didn't get to return it, but then he is not going anywhere where he needs to consider boilers and steam production.

Our lunches won't be the same, but we will still consider that Tony is with us. "Opa" Tony!

Marvin Silbert, FCIC