Goodbye Dimitris

Yesterday, 25 October, our friend Dimitris Kassandrinos, head teacher of the secondary school in Tilos, left the island for the last time. It was a sad day.
Probably sometime in the afternoon of 24 October, he was in his car coming down from the monastery of Ayios Panteleimonas with a German woman called Ute, who had recently become his girlfriend, when the car went over the side of a steep cliff, and both were killed. The authorities are investigating how it happened. He was noticed missing yesterday morning, and a local who keeps goats up that road saw something. A rescue team came in by helicopter and during the afternoon the two bodies were recovered from the deep ravine. In the evening a boat came to take them away. 
Dimitris had lived in Tilos 11 years; he was a chemistry and biology teacher and in recent years was head teacher of the secondary school. Around 50 years old, he was divorced, with two late-teenage daughters in Athens, whom he saw during school holidays, as well as his mother in his home town of Volos. Apparently Ute was about the same age, with a son aged around twenty, and they were happy together.
When in Tilos, throughout the year, Dimitris spent most afternoons in the sea, fishing for octopus. When I first came to Tilos, he took me out snorkelling and introduced me to the hidden beaches and underwater life of the island, and drove me up to the monastery to see the sunset over the sea, a view he loved. Who knows, perhaps it was his last.

Today, 26 October, he would have been celebrating his name-day. It being a Saturday, he would undoubtedly have been out in the sea somewhere.
Kalo taxidi…