My Dad, Selçuk Bolat

was born on 1950 in Tarsus. The oldest brother of 5 girls and 2 boys. Has a degree on Chemical Engineering from Ankara Academy of Economics and Commercial Sciences which was later incorporated into Gazi University. Had worked on his proficiency in Çukobirlik, Adana, between 1979-1984, until my grandfather’s request to join him on farming business. He had performed this job for 30 years until his demise.

My Dad, was a person that does not mostly show his love to his children like the most of the fathers at that time (loving children when they are asleep), and did not spend much time with us in our childhood due to workload of farming. Fortunately, my Mom was taking care of me and my brother. Certainly, they both have contribution to us to become who we are now, but the bigger part is definitely on our Mom.

My Dad wanted us to liberate ourselves, as his words, since he also attended to college and knows the difficulties of working with a father after his real proficiency. His perfectionist behaviors (like asking us if there is anybody who took 100 from exam, even if we took 80-90) had definitely shaped our character. We also inherited his characteristic of trying to control things, events and even his family due to being oldest and most educated child in his family.

I would like to describe some of his attributes of which people who knew him agreed on, with real life examples;

• He was a person who enjoys life and lives the best of it (when his friends asked him to go abroad and visit Egypt together to see the pyramids, his reaction was “what we are going to do with sand and rocks, let’s go to Amsterdam”; gets compliment about being younger and joyful than myself in a dinner with my colleagues)
• He was highly talented on communicating people, has his own charisma (He became very popular in hospital among nurses and doctors where he was treated on his last days, even he was not able to speak loudly, nurses phoned him and asked how he was doing after he left the hospital, somehow influenced people in a way to whom he interacted)
• He was always the first people who stepped up to dance floor in events and amazes people with his unique dance moves (men and women, who do not know him well, has congratulated him many times due to his dancing skills)
• He does look younger than his age (who can say this man on photo was 65 years old :))