Landscape Architect Was Also Poet
TAMPA - Allan Chan’s nickname was “MacGyver.”
He earned it at the University of South Florida, where Chan was a landscape architect, said Greg Thiel, former USF track team coach and now athletic director at The Cambridge School in Tampa.
One afternoon, several beefy athletes were struggling to move some 600-pound mats from the floor onto a pickup.
“We were huffing and puffing when Allan showed up,” Thiel said.
Chan showed them how to fashion a makeshift pulley using 4-by-4-inch landscaping timbers and ropes.
When it was in place, “he said, ‘Start pulling like the Egyptians did.’ It was so easy my daughter could have done it,” Thiel said.
“I teased him that with his gift he should have been an inventor. But he said he loved his job. He said he couldn’t believe he was getting paid to work here.”
Chan, who followed Thiel to Cambridge, died Thursday.
He was 55.
A native of Guyana, he came to Florida in the late 1960s on a visa, studied horticulture and eventually became a citizen.
“He loved it here, and he had a real zest for learning,” said ex-mother-in-law Frances Burns.
“Nothing could hold him back. We’re going to miss him terribly.”
Burns said it has been a tragic year for the family.
Her daughter - Chan’s ex-wife, Judy Sanders - died in January.
“He had no real health problems,” one of his daughters, Michele Chan Rice, said Tuesday. “He looked like he was 30. The medical examiner said it was a blocked artery.
“It’s such a blow.”
Fishing was one of his passions. So were painting and writing poetry.
“He wrote about deep things, God and dreams,” Rice said, adding that her father taught her how to be a good parent.
He dearly loved his two grandsons.
“My oldest is taking it pretty hard,” Rice said. “The thing I may miss most is not having him able to watch my sons grow up.”
She said her father never judged others and liked everyone.
Thiel agreed.
“He had a lot of friends, and we’re all heartbroken,” he said.
“What a huge loss for our school.”
