After I received Sam Pezzillo's "regrets" with regards to our planned class reunion, I emailed him to ask what was going on in his life. He sent an interesting email back:
"I am now retired from teaching and travel a lot, an extension of some of what I did while still teaching where the college had a January term/Interim term and I took students to Italy most years. Now I travel with an adult group and we are off to Turkey next month, did China last Spring, and will be going to Peru next year. All in all we have done about 12 group tours together. I'm still involved in philately, mostly airmail history and Germany. I travel a bit for that, attending a show in San Francisco last April, one coming up in May in Portland, and then a seminar presentation in the Fall at the APS Postal History Seminar.
Also deeply involved in local political issues as part of an activist group for the Birmingham area and in my little home town as a member of the Planning and Zoning Commission, the Redevelopment Authority, and the Historical Commission, all of which involve 4 or 5 meetings a month. And just this last year I took up duplicate bridge. My wife and I play once or twice a week at the Birmingham club. Just trying to keep busy as long as I can.
Give my regards to everyone."
When I read that he was "still involved in philately," I was dumbfounded. Philately??? I wondered what kind of misspelling this word could be. I reread the sentence and the context several more times and I still could not make sense out of "philately." So, I finally looked for a possible definition of this word. Well, I discovered this is a real word. Do you know that philately is a noun which means "the collection and study of postage stamps"? I do now! I wonder whether Fr. Durst, our stamp guru at the Josephinum, had some influence on Sam's interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment