Classmates in Memory

Thomas Pekkarinen



 
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03/06/11 07:54 PM #1    

Pamela Newnam (Williams)

Tom was so kind, clever, and smart - a real addition to our senior year.  He and his host, Donald Mims, Lupe Gavilanes (who lived with us), and I attended many functions together for American Field Services foreign exchange students.  It was such an enriching experience knowing him and I'm sorry we lost him so young.  A real tragedy for his country also.


06/08/20 11:38 AM #2    

Tom (Tommy) Belden

I should have noticed this entry about Tom Pekkarinen years ago but I guess it's never too late. I was probably one of the last classmates to speak to him, in September 1981, when he called me in Philadelphia, where I lived then, to send regrets that he was going to miss my wedding (first one as it turned out but that's another story). I had seen him a few months before in New York, where he was working for the Finnish delegation to the UN. He was a promising young diplomat. Very sadly he was one of the first victims of the AIDs epidemic of the mid-80s. He died n Finland in about '84 or '85

Like Pam Newnam, I have fond memories of Tom at Sunset . Since he lived with Don Mims' family, we often rode to school together in Don's '53 Chevy and went to many of the same parties. In the summer of '69, I spent a few days in Helsinki, where I got an immersion in Finnish culture from Tom. Later that fall, he wrote an article about the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks takling place in Helsinki at the time,i for the Baylor Lariat student newspaper, where I was the editor at the time. Why a Texas college paper needed a Finn to explain nuclear disarmament to us was not clear, but it was fun to see his name and a Helsinki dateline in our little semi-pro publication.

As with so many others, Tom was gone too soon. RIP Tom.


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