Friday, 23 October, 2009, at 11 a.m., I received a telephone call from Giorgio Reali who apologised for not being able to come to the Board meeting of the “Blood Transfusion” Journal, planned for the following week, because it clashed with his grandchild’s birthday and, explained: “as a grandfather, I just can’t miss it”. He did, however, add: “I shall phone you at the beginning of the week to give you my comments on the subjects which will be dealt with during the meeting”.
Neither we, nor his grandchild, were to see Giorgio, because he died suddenly in the evening of Saturday 24, October.
It might be said that this is the best way to go: at a venerable age, but still physically fit, with all his mental faculties, still engaged with passion in the activity to which he had dedicated his whole life and surrounded by the respect and fondness of the professional and scientific community in which he worked.
Giorgio Reali has, however, left an enormous emptiness in the world of Transfusion Medicine.
Giorgio accompanied us from the beginnings of the discipline based on the groundbreaking areas of immunohaematology and genetics, which many of us never witnessed directly, through its evolution into “Transfusion Medicine”.
Giorgi Reali was a lodestar for many of us during our professional growth, being a strong reference figure on the fundamental issues of the discipline, and always won people’s esteem for his public and active commitment.
Giorgio was born in Bologna on 3 January, 1927; his graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University in the same city. He then specialised in Hygiene and Public Health and in Immunohaematology and worked in the Transfusion Service of the Policlinico S. Orsola in Bologna from 1952 until 1972. From 1972 to 1995 he was Director of the Transfusion Service of the Galliera Hospital in Genoa.
In the “first 43 years” of his career, Giorgio Reali was one of the founders, in 1954, of the “Italian Association of Transfusion Centres” (AICT, now SIMTI, the Italian Society of Transfusion Medicine and Immuonhaematology), and was its President from 1985 to 1992, he was a teacher for various university courses, the author of more than 150 publications (including numerous monographs and book chapters) all on topics of immunohaematology or transfusions, and the father of the Italian Bone Marrow Donor Register (IBMDR).
But many of these activities he continued in the “second 15 years” of his professional life: from 1988 to 2002 he was the Italian representative on two Committees (the enlarged one and the “selected” one) of Experts on transfusion matters of the European Council at Strasbourg, from January 1979 to December 2007 he ran SIMTI’s scientific journal (“La Trasfusione del Sangue”, which became “Blood Transfusion” in 2003) and from 2007 was its Senior Editor; in 2004, at the SIMTI Members’ General Meeting, he was appointed Honorary President of the Society.
Almost 60 years of career and professional activity explain why Giorgio Reali was so well-known by all people working in the Italian transfusion service, but his special characteristics that I would like to remember here were that, despite his great knowledge and experience in Transfusion Medicine and his unchallenged authoritativeness, which can lead some people of a certain age to become intolerant and arrogant, Giorgio was infinitely helpful, very modest and had an incomparable sense of duty always accompanied by a blithe, endearing irony: all characteristics that we find, together, only in the greatest of people.
Thank you, Giorgio, for all that you have given us.