Papou

Honor to those who in the life they lead          

define and guard a Thermopylae.          

Never betraying what is right,          

consistent and just in all they do          

but showing pity also, and compassion;          

generous when they're rich, and when they're poor,          

still generous in small ways,          

still helping as much as they can;          

always speaking the truth,          

yet without hating those who lie.          

And even more honor is due to them          

when they foresee (as many do foresee)          

that Ephialtis will turn up in the end,          

that the Medes will break through after all.

                      Thermopylae by C. Cavafy

I never met the man whose name I carry. Papou, (seated second from left) which is the Greek word for granfather, died in Tirana, Albania, far from his native village of Sheperi in Northern Epirus, just a few years after my family arrived in America in 1956. He never got a chance to hold his baby grandson in his arms, never looked into my eyes, never held my hand. Papou drew his last breath without ever being able to embrace and kiss his own son, my father, after enduring the bitterness of a twenty year separation. 

The 22nd of June marks the one hundreth anniversary of Papou's arrival at Ellis Island in 1907.  A few years ago I made the pilgrimage to the island in New York harbor. Millions passed through this way station to the American dream.  I stood in the middle of the cavernous Great Hall retracing my grandfather's first footsteps in America, misty eyed with a lump in my throat. Papou was one of the many young Greek men of his time who came to America to work in its factories, foundaries and mines.  These young men endured horrendous working conditions, the hardship of years apart from their families.  Many suffered injustice, racial epithets and in some cases, violence, yet, they came in the thousands looking to earn a better life for those they left behind. He was 28, 5'6'', with brown hair and eyes and he had 25 dollars in his pocket when he walked down the ramp of the steamer SS Massilia after a long transatlantic voyage in steerage.  Within a week, Papou, who was a cobbler by trade, was working in one of the mills in Biddeford, Maine, mass producing leather shoes. Biddeford was a dingy factory town  on the banks of the Saco river and my grandfather was one of its faceless, expendable minions for three years of his life. He worked long hours, six to seven days a week amidst the deafening cacophony of well-oiled industrial machinary which could chew a careless man up and spit him out in an unrecognizable pulp.  At the end of his shift he would walk home exhausted, his hands raw and impregnated with the smell of leather, to the rooming house that he shared with other bachelors. His only recreation, the occasional demitasse cup of dark, pungent Turkish coffee at the seedy Greek-owned Kafenion on Main Street, where he would sip and talk with his countrymen under the haughty gaze of a portrait of King George of Greece hanging on the wall. 

Papou saw potential in this new land, despite the ever-present hardships. He dreamed of opening up his own cobbler shop, owning his own business. He understood that there was no future living under the domination of the Ottoman Turks who ruled Northern Epirus at the time. After working in Biddeford for  three years,  he returned to the village where he had lived  almost his entire life, just in time to serve dutifully fighting for Greece in the campaigns of the Balkan wars. They were heady times indeed, Northern Epirus was liberated by the Greek Army and even after their negotiated withdrawal the Northern Epirotes managed to earn and declare an independent Republic only to have their hopes dashed by the Greek monarchy and the Great Powers.  Papou was an ardent follower of Eleftherios Venizelos and he never quite gave up the dream of seeing his homeland become part of the Greek State. He was a patriotic Greek right up to his death.  By 1925, Papou realized that the Greeks of Northern Epirus had merely traded a Turkish occupation for an Albanian one. He tried unsuccessfully to convince yiayia that immigrating to America would bring the promise of a better future. Yiayia was skeptical. She had spent her entire life in one place and had never left her native village. She was afraid of the unknown and Papou didn't have the heart to tear her from her family and friends.

Papou was a big believer in education and he scraped enough money together to send my father to Argirokastro, the provincial capital, where he completed his high school education while working as a clerk in a grocery store.  My father was a scholar in every sense of the word,  enamored with learning and someone who held books reverently, as if they contained the instructions for finding some mysterious hidden treasure.  Eventually,  he was one of two young men selected by the Archbishop of Albania to attend the Patriarchal Theological Seminary located on the island of Halki in far off Constantinople.

Papou saw his son off in 1938. That was the last time he would ever see him. Within two short years, World War II came to Northern Epirus.   It was occupied by the Italians who used it to launch an invasion into Greece, however,  it was soon liberated by a  Greek Army driving headlong toward Rome. Papou was elated by the victorious rout of the Italians by the Greek Army and he wrote  my father a tear stained celebrating the victory and his new found freedom. A few months later, German forces invaded from Yugoslavia and the Greek army, its flank threatened by the advancing Germans was forced to give up it hard won gains and retreat south. I can only imagine what my grandfather must have been thinking as he saw the long columns of muddy exhausted Greek soldiers heading south.  The occupiers came in quick succession, the Germans who turned his village into a burning inferno, the Partisans who took what little the Sheperiotes had left, and finally the Albanian Communists.  The Communists were by far the worst of the lot. They closed the border,  making it impossible for him to see his son again,  turned the church where his children were baptized into a stable, uprooted him from his native village and forced Papou to move his family to the city where they were assigned quarters in a gray, dingy apartment block in order to build the "New" Albania.  Papou's life in bondage was punctuated twice by short periods of freedom, only to dissolve as if wakened suddenly from a pleasant dream to find himself living a nightmare that was all too real. He yearned his whole life to live a free man. Fate was to deny him the fulfillment of this dream.

Back in 1985, I traveled to a small town in northern Greece called Drama to spend a few days with my Dad's first cousin. Uncle Kosta was a proud old man with a stubby beard living out his last days as a pensioner, cared for by his widowed daughter.  When I asked him about my grandfather one evening, his eyes lit up and he smiled broadly. "He was like a father to me after my own father died" he said. "Your Papou, my boy, was respected by everyone in our village and I will never forget his kindness to me. "  Papou didn't leave much in the way of worldly goods behind, only some sentimental memories for those whose lives he touched.  All I have to remind me of him is a pair of fragile spectacles, a few faded photographs and a letter he wrote to my father which starts out, "My beloved Nikolaki, I kiss your eyes."

The most precious  gift he left behind, besides the piece of him that lives in us, was the example of his own life. Papou was one of the little people, buffeted by life's ups and downs. Try as he might, many of the events in his life were simply beyond his ability to control. Nevertheless,  as the Cavafy poem suggests he guarded his Thermopylae as best he could. In the end, despite the tragedy of his own life, both his son and grandson escaped to freedom because of his efforts and sacrifice. Papou is never far from my thoughts these days even as my own father slowly slips away from me. Strangely, there is seldom a day that goes by that I don't think of him in some way. He looks at me from his photo and stares into my very soul.  Some day, God willing,  we may finally meet in a place of peace, in a place of repose, in a place of light. Where there is no pain, sadness or fear. We will hug each other the way only a grandfather and grandson can. We will have much to talk about.  Papou,  Kalo Paradiso and Kali Andamosi.

Comments

[Margaret]

Stavros, I really enjoyed reading about your Papou. I imagine that he might greet you with the words "It was all worth it".

[Susan Bournelis]

My daughter Christina just told us about your site. I am married to a Greek!! Have been for 36 years:)
I so enjoyed your piece on your Pappou. My husband's father just died in Greece, and my son, his namesake, felt the loss so strongly.
Pappou kept waiting for Yianni, our son, to have a son and name him Petros. My husbands name!!
I know that you have to be Greek to understand the importance of this tradition.

[Stavros]

Margaret,

Thank you. Readers may be thinking that I come from a family where people never do anything wrong nor make mistakes. Far from it. We are quite human in every respect and often succumb to human foibles.

In my writing I like to concentrate on those things I admire and respect in others. The things that I want my children and grandchildren to remember and hopefully emulate about those that came before them. In the case of my Papou, the facts of his life speak for themselves.

I'm glad you found something in this post that appealed to you. I respect your opinions.

[Stavros]

Susan,

Thank you. After 36 years you are probably more Greek than we are.It's not always easy marrying into a Greek family as my brother-in-law can tell you. It is, however, in most cases, entrance into an extremely close, warm family relationship.

I am particularly fond of the custom of naming your child after grandparents rather than yourself. Both my sons are named after their papous.

[Hermes]

Stavros, another excellent post. It appears you have conducted some very worthy primary and secondary research into your family. And I look how you point out how the example of his life was the best gift. There are not many men built like that any more.

I never saw my papou either but I was also named after him (no, GANYC he was not named Hermes). He was a decorated veteran of the Albanian front. Because of our names, same physiognamy and "strange" green eyes the old people think a ghost is wandering around the Chora when I visit our beautiful Ionian Island. He has always been there for me.

[Stavros]

Hermes,

Thanks. Think about this for a moment, your grandfather was part of the effort that gave my grandfather the opportunity, however short, to live on Greek soil. For this gift, fleeting though it was, I will always praise and respect the heroes of 1940; may their memories be eternal. Greeks, no matter where they find themselves, have much more in common than they realize or is readily apparent. We are interconnected on a variety of levels.

[beal]

Biddeford may be a factory town but is probably ten times nicer and less "dingy" than the towns in that third-world country your relative hails from. Albania?

[Stavros]

Beal,

In 1907, when my grandfather arrived, the main attraction were the mills spewing their waste into the air and the Saco River. They were surrounded by the decrepit, overcrowded company housing that was a breeding ground for disease. The main street was a dirt road ankle deep in horse manure, the main mode of transportation. I'd say describing it as dingy would be understating the reality of Biddeford in those days.

Today, Biddeford's main attraction is the plant that burns New England's trash and is situated in the middle of the downtown area. It's scenic smokestack spews an aromatic witch's brew into the air. Old habits die hard. Biddeford today would be quite unrecognizable to my grandfather, it is dotted by strip malls and fast food joints. The jobs it produces are mostly minimum wage and unable to support a family even with both parent's working.

Your disdain for the third world countries that many immigrants hail from is duly noted. The majority are failed states for one reason or another, and their poverty is dingy, however, dinginess does not always constitute a poverty of the soul. This type of poverty which we Americans increasingly suffer from is much more serious and may even be terminal. Perhaps we should keep in mind that these third world immigrants helped build America, brick by brick. They fought and died in America's wars and are doing so even today.

[Stavros Stavridis]

A moving account of the Greek immigrant who came to America to improve his economic position and worked very hard under deplorable working conditions but survived and succeeded in his new adopted homeland.
We should not forget that these people left a wonderful legacy which we are the beneficiaries of today. May we always honor and respect them for their efforts and ingraining in us the love of Greece. America has proved a wonderful place for Greeks since the late 19th century. I salute them for their courage, decency and hard work.

[Stavros Stavridis]

I have an official document dated 1941 which provides an excellent overview of Northern Epirus. Would be glad to scan it and send it as a pdf for it to be posted on your website. Please let me know if you are interested.

[Ted Laskaris]

Stavros,
Pappou's story sounds so very familiar in both the sense of hope of our immigrant ancestors and the realization that, sometimes, our life dreams just won't be realized. Pappou was no doubt a man of great preseverance and dedication, qualities in tremendously short supply nowadays. How much we can learn from the lives of these sturdy, honest, heroic people. Sometimes I wish we could turn the clock back and let only happiness guide all of our and our loved ones' lives. Dreams, dreams... Thanks for yet another moving, lucid article.

[Stavros]

Stavros,

I'd love to have the document in question and make it available to MGO readers.Thanks for your support and comments.

Ted,

Thank you for you comments. I've been trying to visit your new blog when I can and I love what you are doing with it. I wish I could comment more often there.

You and I are on the same wave length on so many things it scares me.

Both,

Sorry for the delay in responding to your comments.

[John Nicholson[formally Yiannis Nikolaides]]

Thankyou for your writings. They have stirred my emotions. The tears of joy flow freely.
My father migrated to Australia for a new life and escape the Ottoman yoke. Regrettfully he embraced the new at the expense of the old and passed little down the line.
I have now become a papou and look to sites like yours to seek an understanding of a wonderful heritage of Greek blood. Never too late to learn.
Thanks again

[Stavros]

Yianni,

You are very right, it is never too late and there is so much to learn. Many Greek immigrants from the entire expanse of the Greek world, which is not confined to the boundaries of the present Greek state, longed for a better life. Some threw a rock behind them, as the Greek saying goes and leapt headlong into their new life, by trying to forget the old one.

I hope that you will find some things on MGO that will bring you closer to your father, maybe even understand the forces that shaped him and perhaps awaken some long dormant Hellenic spirit that lives inside you.

Thank you for your inspring comments.

[sue karpathios]

trying to find john e nikas email address.can you hrlp me?He is my mothers 1st. cousin and lives in booklyn.