The world is made up of many types of people, and most often people of like minds or interests somehow migrate toward each other. Many of your personal and business friendships were probably bonded in that fashion.

Dr. Henry Sinopoli was a man with no such borders for structuring his life. First and foremost, you could strike sports and sports talk from any plans to communicate with Henry. That just wasn’t his thing. Not because he didn’t enjoy working out at the YMCA, walking his dog and other physical activities, but he just didn’t see the need for the personal attachment that people made with sports teams or even sport hobbies like golf or tennis.

Henry found great challenge in learning, which he fed through his voracious appetite for reading. Voracious? That is a word that may have been used in a conversation with Henry as one tried to step up to his intelligence level. In conversation with any other friend, we likely would have skipped that word and said love, fondness or desire for reading. But Henry’s mere presence in the conversation raised everyone’s performance with the English language to a more intellectual level.

Not that Henry wanted or expected that, but rather just as someone might say Tom Brady or Michael Jordan make other athletes around them better, so Henry did for regular discussion with people. He made us feel more intelligent, better educated and learned. Chivalrous, polite, professional and respectful are all words that we can associate with Henry more than most other men.

Charming and polite wouldn’t reach the level of being a gentleman that Henry routinely displayed for women in his presence, especially his wife, Jocelyn. He was the epitome of a classic gentleman in his actions and words. Gifted with a massive vocabulary, Henry — always with book in hand — could have spoken in a style that folks would have found difficult to comprehend, and maybe even could have been construed as talking over our heads. But Henry was too kind and aware of his audience to do that.

He was so passionate about education that we believe he could have turned it into a sport. He loved submitting letters to the editor for the Eagle and even an occasional guest opinion column. We don’t accept or encourage many people to write those, but Henry always wrote with a direct purpose, meaningful directive words that left no middle ground and didn’t get caught in the political correctness trap. Yet, he also was never insulting of one’s perspective or discouraging for others to think for themselves and beyond their own world.

Many of Henry’s friends were quoted in our pages with words of affirmation and admiration of a life well lived by Henry. He touched many lives in many different ways, and he made our community a better place for having this place as his home.

His death was far more than just too soon or untimely; it also leaves a void of massive size to be filled by his family, friends and fellow educators. Dr. Sinopoli’s role in our world won’t be easy to replace, but Henry would want and expect us to move forward with dignity, peacefulness, intelligence and love. God’s peace be with you, Henry.

— RV