Michael Adamakis' Obituary
I didn’t really have a close relationship with Mike. He was a private person who lived 3000 miles away, but as we helped Diane clean up Mike’s stuff I discovered a lot about him and wish we lived closer and spent more time together.
I found out we had a number of common interests, some I knew about, others were a surprise. Like me, he was a software programmer, I knew this, but I didn’t know he was trying to write his own gaming app until I discovered dozens of books in his library about how to write software gaming applications and artificial intelligence.
Michael loved role playing and war strategy games, jigsaw puzzles, and all things related to Star Wars. He was interested in ancient history and archeology. At one point, he wanted to learn to speak Greek and learn to fly an airplane. He had a pilot’s logbook with a few hours of instruction recorded. Apparently he took flying lessons back in 1990. He wanted to be an author. In his library were numerous books about writing. Titles like “Writing your first novel in 30 minutes.” and “How to write a science fiction novel”. There were even a few hand written pages that looked like the start of a book.
He wanted to do some home renovation, but never finished it. If we were closer, we would have been there in a flash to give him a hand because it’s tough to do projects like that by yourself.
In our modern society, it’s easy to live far away, to think that Skyping is hanging out. But it’s not the same as laughing together while drinking a beer. Online, it’s easy to put on a happy face. Missed opportunities to be close to Mike should motivate us to do better, to reach out to people around us, to show them how much we care.
Michael had many hopes and dreams. It’s a tragedy that Mike’s life was cut short and I’m sorry we weren’t around to help him, we’ll all miss you Mike.
Jim Philippou
What’s your fondest memory of Michael?
What’s a lesson you learned from Michael?
Share a story where Michael's kindness touched your heart.
Describe a day with Michael you’ll never forget.
How did Michael make you smile?