Page 120 - Buletin-SGR-Vrancea

Buletinul Societății de Geografie din România – Filiala Vrancea. Anul 2018│nr. 1

UNIVERSITARY PROFESSOR Ion VELCEA – PIOUS HOMAGE

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Nicolae DAMIAN

Rezumat: În rândurile următoare este adus un pios omagiu profesorului universitar Ion Velcea,
creator de școală geografică. Este prezentată, pe scurt, cariera sa și sunt surprinse ultimele momente
din viața sa, încă plină de vivacitate și de creație.
Cuvinte cheie: Ion Velcea, Geografia turismului, Sibiu, școală geografică

I met Professor Velcea only a few months before the age of 90, when the delegation of the
Vrancean geographers returned from the National Annual Conference of the Geography Society of
Romania, held in Alba Iulia to mark the ,,Centenary Year”. The professor had the same vivacity that I
had learned about twenty years ago when I was a student at ,,Alma mater Sibiensis”, the Faculty of
Geography of Tourism, founded together with distinguished Mrs. Valeria Velcea. A little sad, 28 years
after the founding of the only Faculty of Geography of Tourism in Romania, that soon it will close its
doors.
I am spiritually linked to Sibiu as a student of the Faculty of Tourism Geography in Hermann's
city. Here I formed and began to reveal the mysteries of the goddess Geea - the mother of all; thanks to
Professor Ph.D. Ion Velcea. As a dean, he managed to coagulate a distinguished professorial body,
great names of Romanian geography: Valeria Velcea, Grigore Posea, Vasile S. Cucu, Mihai Ielenicz,
Ion Popescu Argesel, Ion Mac, Pompei Cocean, Mirecea Buza, Octavia Bogdan, Sorina Vlad etc.
Also during the Faculty, in the second year, I remember that at the seminar of rural geography I
received a theme of work. I was under the footprint of a few articles signed by the professor and
published in the Terra magazine, where I had discovered an elevated language and a high scientific
rank. So, I managed to sprinkle a little more than the other students. - ,,You will read, young man! I
see you've written something! ” That was the teacher's authoritative urge.
After graduating from the Faculty, we started working with the oldest tourism magazine in the
country – ,,Romania Tourism”, publishing an interview with prof.univ.dr. Ioan Velcea, dean of the
only Faculty of Tourism Geography in the country. The interview came out well, being published, and
on the phone, the professor tells me that he had just given a doctoral post, but I called it a little late ...
In one year, the professor was part of the doctoral admissions committee. I proposed a new research
theme in the field of cultural geography under the guidance of prof.univ.dr. Vasile S. Cucu. The few
words squeezed by Professor Velcea, as appraisals to me, had a weight on the committee.
We have kept in touch, either by phone, we managed to have discussions of geographic
interest, either by publishing articles in the Student magazine ,,Alps of Transylvania” or in a high
scientific journal founded in 2000, Geocarpathica - both of the Faculty of Geography of Tourism in
Sibiu
Prof. Velcea is linked with Vrancea by the field studies conducted during the period when he
was a researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Romanian Academy (1952 - 1969), by guiding
the didactic methodology of the first degree, by his many students from different generations - some of
whom are the directors of some educational institutions, for the participation in 2012 at ,,Days Simion
Mehedinţi” together with the niece of the scientist Mehedinţi, Mona.
His career has been a prodigious one and he has started successfully since the graduation of the
Faculty of Geology - Geography, the geography department of the University of Bucharest (1948-
1953). Thus, he becomes an associate teacher at the Diplomatic Institute of Romania (1953 - 1957) and
a researcher at the Institute of Geology and Geography of the Romanian Academy (1952 - 1969),

1 Phd., President – Vrancea - Romanian Geography Society.
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