Ronnie Polaneczky: We bid farewell to 3 great people

YESTERDAY, Drexel University suspended classes for two hours so that students and others could either attend the church funeral of school president Constantine "Taki" Papadakis or watch a live video of the service, broadcast at four Drexel sites and on the university's Web site.

Taki would've hated that.

"He would rather us be in class than anything else," said Drexel health-science sophomore Julie Muckleston, whom I found in the lounge outside Geary Hall at Drexel's Hahnemann campus, a site of the funeral telecast.

"We never even get snow days. It's like, 'It's not that bad; go to class.' It was the Papadakis way."

So, I'm pretty sure that Papadakis would've loved that, rather than watch his funeral telecast, Julie and fellow students Sarah MacDougall and Elizabeth Martin spent their down time studying for an anatomy exam.

Papadakis, as we all know, died last week from complications related to the pneumonia he'd battled while in remission from lung cancer. The shock of his passing is exacerbated by the man himself. How could such a carbonated, visionary and unique leader - who managed, in 13 years, to catapult a struggling, middling university into the academic ether - be vanquished by something as mundane as pneumonia?

And yet, listening to the eulogies at his funeral yesterday and to countless Papadakis accolades in the media since his death, it feels wrong to regard his life as cut short instead of beautifully well-lived.

Papadakis touched more lives in his 63 years than most of us could ever hope to, and he did so with verve, integrity and passion.

Manny Stamatakis, chairman of the trustees of Drexel's medical college, noted in his emotional farewell to Papadakis yesterday at St. Luke's Greek Orthodox Church, in Broomall, that "great men have strong enemies and great friends."

"Taki," he said, "had only great friends."

The same can be said for two other Philadelphians - Harry Kalas and Sister Alan Barszczewski - whose deaths this past week have rocked the communities that cherished them.

Kalas, of course, needs no introduction. The voice of the Phillies for three-plus decades, he deepened our love for him with every season. Sadness at his abrupt passing Monday is softened by the fact that Kalas died while preparing to call a game - a task that brought him and us such steady joy.

A life well-lived?

He exemplified it.

Sister Alan's name is known to far fewer people, but the Fishtown native made a profound impact on thousands of teens who fell under her tough, protective wing at St. Anthony. The small, struggling Catholic high school in rough Jersey City has a wondrous claim to fame: Its boys basketball team has won more championships than any other high school in the country.

They've done so without the supports you'd expect to find beneath the winningest team in America. St. Anthony hasn't a proper gym. Its finances teeter. Its students come from desperately poor or broken families.

But, for 30 years, it had Sister Alan - its one-time athletic director, principal and, finally, president. I met her last year when I heard that Hollywood was making a film about the school, based on "The Miracle of St. Anthony," a book about a single basketball season at the school under Coach Bob Hurley.

At the time, Sister Alan was in treatment for liver cancer, which she was supposed to have succumbed to seven years prior.

"I get tired from the chemo," she told me as she sat in her narrow office, a converted coat room. "But once I get here, I catch the energy of the students."

She was St. Anthony's mother hen, chief cheerleader, spiritual light and fiercest advocate for kids who, she knew, could soar if given the chance.

She will now guide them from above. She died last week of the cancer she held at bay for seven years. She was just 62, but she, like Kalas and Papadakis, changed lives for the better in ways that should fill us with hope that we, too, might live our lives as well as they lived theirs.

Godspeed Taki, Harry and Sister Alan.

And thank you. *

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly.com/ ronnieblog.