Roxana Dascalu - sparky, feisty, lively and observant

I first met Roxana Dascalu one or two days after Nicolae Ceausescu's Christmas Day execution when I arrived to cover the revolution via western Romania. It was in that heady swirl of hacks, spies, secret police and diplomats that congregated in the reception area of the International Hotel in revolutionary Bucharest.

The late Johnny Krcmar from the Vienna bureau, the first Reuters correspondent to get to Bucharest, had already recruited Adrian Dascalu, and he brought in his wife Roxana. We set up our first office in the hotel.

She was a great find for Johnny and me and others of the Reuters team who deployed over the days and weeks following. She was sparky, feisty, interested in telling you all about what was going on around, and lifting the veil on the bizarre society created by the years of the Ceausescu cult.

And she loved to talk. Feet up, she listened to local revolutionary radio to feed us snippets of news, sometimes tittering with laughter at often fatuous comments being broadcast. She dug out a story for me, I recall, about a well-known concert pianist who was coming out of retirement to “play for freedom” now that the Ceausescus had gone.

She checked out reports from the rumour mill for us. She was lively, amusing, inquisitive and observant - just what we needed.

I left for home early in the New Year and did not see Roxana again - though I was able to recall those dramatic days in an exchange of messages with her last month. She said she remembered “all the Reuters anglophones I learned so much from”. ■