Back in Sept. 2003, we spoke with Tom about his retirement from Belt Collins in Honolulu. While head of Belt Collins, he had prepared a demographic study of the Diocese of Honolulu for Bishop Joseph Ferrario. As chairman emeritus of Belt Collins, Tom took a position as general administrator of Sacred Heart Parish, Punahou, and St. Pius X Parish, Manoa.

“It doesn’t feel like I retired,” he commented then, working 70-hour weeks with the parishes and with the Korean Catholic community. I’m still putting all my landscape experience to use, as we have several building projects and 300 to 400 volunteers.” In fact, he helped complete a $2.4 million renovation of Sacred Heart Church and its grounds.

In July 2006, he was appointed planning director for the Catholic Diocese of Honolulu.

Mr. Papandrew received a B.Arch., Architecture, from Arizona State University and did graduate work at Pacific Urban Studies, Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa, and became an instructor of urban planning at the University of Hawaii.

He came to Oahu in 1968 and worked as an architect and landscape architect for the architectural firm of Vladimir Ossipoff. In 1970, he moved to Belt Collins, where he served as the company’s president and chairman for the last 15 years of his 33 years of service. During his tenure, he worked in more than 20 countries as both a landscape architect and architect.

As a delegate of the International Federation of Landscape Architects, he attended a planning recovery summit six weeks after the devastating Dec. 26, 2004 Sumatra earthquake and Indian Ocean tsunami. He also assisted in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina and drafted a manual for ASLA on disaster response for landscape architects.

“I was fortunate enough to spend 10 days with Tom a few weeks before he passed,” Roy Dunn told LASN. Roy met Tom almost 30 years ago when they were both elected to first terms on the ASLA Board of Trustees. “We were discussing the Diocese plan and how well it was coming together. He was accustomed to having public hearings on projects from his work at Belt Collins. No one at the Diocese thought it would work, but he proved them wrong and the response was overwhelming.

“We became close friends over the years, actually more like brothers. Whenever we saw one another, or whenever we parted, it was with a big hug. When Tom was diagnosed with lung cancer last August, he told me that he was receiving hugs from people who had never hugged him before.”