Family, friends, and colleagues will gather at the Church of Panagia Eleftherotria in Kifisia on Sunday at 1.30 pm to bid their last farewell to Themos Ansatsaisdis, who passed away on Tuesday after a battle with cancer for a year and a half.
Themos Anastasiadis was one of the most important and brightest Greek journalists of recent decades.
He grew up in a family with his sister Diana who he adored.
He was a very fastidious student at in Primary school and during his first year in high school.
He could have attended a posh private school in the day, but his father believed those schools were full of “pampered kids”, Themos said in an interview in 2005, so he sent him to a public school.
“I met some of the older kids, who had skipped years three or four times, they were 18-19 years old and they filled me in on all the tricks, they showed me the ropes, and I moved to the back of the class. And is when the party started…” he said in the same interview for the Nitro magazine.
After his education, the bespectacled kid embarks on a journey with no limits, storming onto the stage of journalism like w whirlwind, with his unique and creative style of writing full of sarcasm and a critical mood against everything and everyone.
But that witty guys who had a love of fast cars could not be contained in just one place. He was a restless spirit; he had to express himself and move on for new challenges.
He will go through newspapers like “Kathimerini”, “Eleftherotypia” and “To Vima”, try out radio (who can forget his program on Flash radio station) and of course television, before publishing in 2005 with Tassos Karamitsos “Proto Thema “. The newspaper he called home, the one that dominated print media circulation since the first Sunday it was printed.
His journey always hit the limits, a rollercoaster ride full of passion, but with his family and “Billy” -that;’s how he called his wife Vassiliki Panayotopoulos- and his three children.
A long journey full of successes, acknowledgments by his peers, both foes and allies, which ended on Tuesday evening when it was cut short.
His legacy in the field of journalism will not be forgotten.
