I was deeply saddened to hear the news from Northern Greece earlier this week that good friend and former colleague Yiannis Papanikolaou had passed away, at the young age of 61, from complications caused by coronavirus.
I first met Yiannis when he came to Australia with his young family in the 90s to teach Greek Language at Alphington Grammar, where I was working as a music teacher. I have a clear picture of him in my mind standing in the door of the band room with a big grin on his face as I was trying to teach a bunch of students how to play Greek music together. We became friends and he used to regularly give me cassettes and CDs of tunes that might be useful to use with the students. I was really new to Greek music at the time and he helped me discover a lot of classic pieces that broadened my horizons away from the Greek pop music that was popular with the teenage students. The other insights that I gained from getting to know Yiannis and his family were about family life and work in a contemporary Greek context. It was a big commitment for teachers like him to come out from Greece for five or six years and immerse themselves in a completely different lifestyle and employment setting far from their homeland and usual social connections. I believe that our students really benefited from teachers like Yiannis though, both through their teaching and their experience of contemporary life and culture in Greece.
When Yiannis eventually returned home with his family I was able to stay with them in Katerini a few times when I visited Greece. Yiannis was really proud of his Greek heritage and the area where generations of his family had lived. He took me and my family to his parents’ house in the the village of Foteina, to many archaeological sites, to the snow fields of Elatochori and on a picnic in the forest near the area where his ancestors had once lived, to name a few occasions. Yiannis was always a generous and kind host and I have great memories of time spent with him and his family in his Patrida.
Yiannis was a respected and loved teacher both in his homeland and in Melbourne during the six years he was here. He was popular amongst the students at Alphington and was affectionately known to them simply as ‘Kyrie’. I have received several messages in the past few days from Yiannis’s former students who remember him as a good teacher and a good man. When I was out and about with him in Katerini, he was frequently greeted by students and colleagues, past and present, that he shared an obvious warm relationship with. Yiannis was very knowledgeable and had written textbooks on Ancient Greek Grammar and Syntax.
Yiannis is survived by his beloved wife Fotini and their children Yiorgos and Irini. I will always remember his cheeky sense of humour and his embracing of life. Yiannis was a real character who taught me a lot about Greek music, history and culture.
Καλό παράδεισο φίλε Γιάννη
Wayne Simmons
