He was remembered as a boy who would always choose the less athletic kids when the time came for him to select players for a basketball team.
LUDLOW - Augustus “Gus” Adamopoulos was remembered Monday as a little boy with an “old soul.”
Adamopoulos, 10, was fatally injured Aug. 17 in a boating collision on Norwich Lake in Huntington.
Hundreds of mourners, many of them Gus’ classmates at Veterans Park Elementary School, packed the 400-seat St. Elizabeth’s Roman Catholic Parish on Monday for a Mass of Christian burial.
“This was as senseless as any death can be. As we all know, 10 years is a tragically short time to frame life,” his father, James Adamopoulos said in a eulogy read aloud by a family friend. “But Gus packed a lot of life in those 10 years.”
James Adamopoulos and Gus were kayaking on the lake when a motorboat towing a water skier struck them. The operator has been identified as 37-year-old Steven Morse, of 65 Deborah Lane, Westfield.
James Adamopoulos was also injured in the crash and walked with the aid of a cane at Monday’s Mass.
Police investigators are still doing interviews associated with the case and no charges have been filed, Renee L. Steese, first assistant district attorney for the Northwestern District Attorney’s Office in Northampton, said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. State Environmental Police have taken the lead role in that investigation.
During the Mass, the Rev. Gerry Blaszczak, chaplain at Fairfield University in Connecticut, said there is an old Christian tradition of saints called “young-old men, “boys who attain wisdom and maturity at a young age.
“Gus seemed to have an old soul,” said Blaszczak, who is a family friend.
Blaszczak addressed the question that inevitably follows the death of a child: “Why now? Why not later? I cannot answer.”
He said when it was Gus’ turn to choose teammates in basketball, he would often choose the less athletic kids first because they often didn’t get chosen by other captains.
“For Gus, winning didn’t come first, people came first,” Blaszczak said. “My understanding is that Gus always played for the love of the game.”
James Adamopoulos, in his eulogy for his son, spoke of how Gus would concentrate while fishing, almost willing a fish to take the bait. The boy vacillated, his father remembered, between wanting to become a professional fisherman in televised tournaments, playing professional golf or joining the NBA to play professional basketball.
“And some days, he wanted to do all three,” his father wrote.