NEW YORK – The news of the premature death of Alice Rigas on August 13 caused grief and emotion to the students and faculty of Columbia University, where she was Asst. Dean & Dean of Registration and Financial Services at the Law School.
Considered a mainstay of Columbia, Rigas provided her services there in various positions for over forty years.
Upon learning about her passing, her colleagues and students contacted her husband Dimitrios and their children and expressed their sincere and heartfelt condolences. And mere formalities did not suffice.
On August 16 they boarded a bus and went to the Frederick Funeral Home in Flushing for the Visitation and the next day they attended the funeral service, held at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church in Flushing, to pay their last respects.
Dimitrios noted that his wife loved and adored everyone and regarded her students as her own children, and we have now come to realize that her love for Columbia Law School was special.
“She loved her colleagues as her own siblings and her students like her own children and their love and respect for our Alice has moved us. We did not expect this many people to come during the summer to comfort us and pay their respects,” he pointed out.
As TNH had reported, Rigas had been diagnosed with cancer four months ago.
Alice Rigas was born in Kastoria Greece in 1949, and immigrated to the United States with her late parents, Christos and Eleni Psaltis, when she was five years old. Her parents worked hard in Manhattan’s fur industry and felt proud that their daughter was able to cross the threshold of Columbia University.
Alice was intelligent, studious and a workaholic, and was one of the more fortunate students of that time, because Columbia University offered her a position before completing her studies and provided her with the opportunity to climb the stairway to success step-by-step and become a dean.
In 1973, she met Dimitrios, who was been born and raised in Athens and had come to New York to study and received his degree in industrial engineering.
They were married in 1975 at that same St. Nicholas Church of Saint Nicholas in Flushing, and had two children, Constantine and Alexandra, which they nurtured with the highest virtues of our nation, with love for Kastoria, and pride for the Greek culture.
Constantine is married to Melanie. Their son, Lucas, is two years old.
