Thursday, December 24, 2015

Abdolali Ansari 1931-2015


My father passed away yesterday 22 Dec 2015 after a rather short period of age-related illness. He was 84. My father, Abdolali, was a college president and teacher in Kermanshah. He spent most of his efforts to boost up the education quality of the college Daneshsaraa-ye Aali of Kermanshah (college for teacher training). Sometimes, only for joy of it, he contributed to teach geometry, mathematics, and literature. He loved to share his knowledge with his pupils.

Before joining the college he has experienced many other activities such as the business of Giveh, a traditional type of footwear woven by silk and cotton for daily use in western Iran. Nowadays this business is in the hand of my uncles. At age 20, not satisfying from business, he passed an exam and was accepted to enter medical school in Tehran. After a short time he decided to change the field into science educational school for which he and his family of wife and two daughters moved to Tehran.  Four years later he received the degree from one of the best universities in tehran and moved back to Kermanshah to help establishing a modern college named Daneshsaraa-ye Aali of Kermanshah, he was president of the college for more than 20 years.

On weekends of my intermediate school days, one of my best hobbies was to go beyond the geometry of school books. I had a wonderful teacher at home playing with the roses and other flowers of our house yard. I was going to him asking whether he likes to teach me and his response was always with a flame of joy in his eyes. Sometimes we were working more than 5 hours together on different aspects of mathematics, I was sitting next to him working on paper with compass, set square, protractor, drawing lines and curves for proving theorems he was assigning to me. On top of methods, such as how to partition an angle into three with compass, the joy of discovery was what I learned the most  from him.

After retiring from the college, he started a new career at  Razi University in Kermanshah shortly before our entire family move to Tehran. In Tehran, he started another careers in finance, working everyday until the age of 75, not that he needed, only because he loved to work. At this age he started to reduce his activities and stayed mostly at home, yet he was still the source of hope for us. In all ups and downs when I was sharing what is in my chest to him, he could sparkle my mind with the burst of a wise word. This was what I needed to be cheered up.

Abdolali Ansari left behind thousands of students some of whom are nowadays the most influential people in their profession.

God bless you daddy. I am happy that you are eternally home. God bless you...

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