What Could We Lose by Isolation?

When our adoration with debating turns to immigration, citizenship, deportation and things like border walls, my mind quickly turns to my paternal grandfather, Louis Daravanis.

Papou, the Greek word for Grandfather, which is how I always knew him, was born on Oct. 26, 1899 in Saranda Ekklisies, Turkey. Saranda Ekklisies translates to 40 Churches in English. He was the sixth of nine children of Aristedes and Maria Daravanis. An older brother and an older sister died in childhood before Papou was born.

Papou was no wall-flower. He was socially and politically active as a youth and teenager. He was an anarchist, a disrupter, a dissident, a heretic, an inciter, an instigator, a malcontent, a rabble-rouser, a radical, a rebel, a revolutionary, and a troublemaker. The source of his anger was a segment of our world’s history known as the Greek Genocide.

According to Greek-Genocide.org: "During the years 1914-1923, whilst the attention of the international community focused on the turmoil and aftermath of the First World War, the indigenous Greek minority of the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey's predecessor, was subjected to a centrally-organized, premeditated and systematic policy of annihilation. This genocide, orchestrated to ensure an irreversible end to the collective existence of Turkey's Greek population, was perpetrated by two consecutive governments; the Committee for Union and Progress, better known as the Young Turks, and the nationalist Kemalists led by Mustafa Kemal "Atatürk". A lethal combination of internal deportations involving death marches and massacres conducted throughout Ottoman Turkey resulted in the death of one million Ottoman Greeks.”

In his 1921 book, The Genocide of the Greeks in Turkey, journalist and author Kostas Faltaits sites the eye-witness account of 18-year-old Paraskevi Anastasiadou, who fled her town of Ortakioy and hid on a mountain overlooking the town when the Ottomans marched in.

“Continually, they gathered people and butchered them incessantly with their knives and hatchets. No sound of gunfire was heard; just the shouts of people being butchered reached us. Later, gigantic flames shot up from the ravine and, as we learned from a man who reached the mountain escaping from Turkish hands, the Turks had poured petrol over the people they had gathered in the ravine both dead and alive, and set fire to them.”

Papou stood up in defiance. He never said how he protested, but it had to have been actively and publicly because, by his own account, he was “arrested,” put “in jail” and destined for execution.

Friends and family of Papou’s parents somehow broke him out of the “jail” or concentration camp he was being held in and got his butt on a boat heading to America, probably with little more than the clothes on his back, and maybe a toothbrush.

He was only 16, the same age as my son, Nik, is now. A teenager minutes away from execution by firing squad, or hatchet, or fire, who knows; by himself, fleeing the only home he knew for a country where he did not know the customs or language. The details have been lost to history, but what I do know is after two months at sea on a steamship known as the Patris and two days in quarantine at Ellis Island, he began a new life with his eldest sister, Goldie, and her husband of barely one year, Chris Pavledes, in Hart, Michigan.

Chris and Goldie Pavledes owned and operated pool halls, cafes and restaurants in and around Hart and, later, Ludington, Michigan, which, I assume, is how Papou got involved in the “food service industry,” first as a waiter, then owner/operator of Blackstone Sweet Shop on North Clark Street in Chicago just a few blocks north of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre and later at his 24-hour The People’s Lunch Room on Broadway in Gary, Indiana.  

In America, Papou obtained his U.S. Citizenship and was a very proud Greek-American until his death on June 16, 1978. He married, fathered and raised two daughters and two sons, each of whom grew to be respected and responsible people, spouses, parents, grandparents and, for one of his daughters today, a great grandparent. At the time of this writing, Papou’s six grandchildren have become positive and successful adults in their own rights, and his nine great grandchildren are now either teenagers nearing high school graduation or young adults establishing their own destinies.

He kept his Greek heritage at home, speaking in his native tongue with his wife, my Yia Yia (Greek for Grandmother) Angeline and when speaking with his children, siblings, and friends who were Greek; and

in the Greek Orthodox Church which he attended dutifully and tithed to, and in the celebration of Orthodox Easter and Christmas. Elsewhere he did his best to accommodate the people around him by speaking in broken English with whomever did not know Greek; by serving free coffee at all times and one free meal a day to the members of Gary’s police and fire departments, and to anyone who was hungry regardless of their ability to pay, such as Tom “the appliance guy.” Papou’s youngest daughter, my Aunt Mary, told me that Tom had a small shop where he fixed toasters, washing machines, and refrigerators, among other things, a few doors down from The People’s Lunch Room. Tom lived by himself in a small room at the back of his shop. Every day, Yia Yia and/or his children would hand-deliver a free dinner to Tom from Papou’s restaurant.

“One day, your Papou found Tom dead in the back room,” Aunt Mary told me. “I remember your Papou telling the funeral director that this man had no family, that (Papou) was going to try to sell the stuff in (Tom’s) store, and whatever your Papou made was all this man had. After everything was done, I remember going to the cemetery and visiting the grave. There was just a small marker on the ground. Your Papou said that that was unacceptable. We went to the (cemetery) office and he bought, out of his own pocket, a headstone for the man. Who would do that today?”

Many years after Papou retired and sold his restaurant, he and Yia Yia lived with my Aunt Mary and her family in a basement apartment we all pitched in to renovate. But before he moved in, he made sure Aunt Mary had an American flag and the proper mounting hardware to fly the flag outside the home, she told me.

Thankfully, America of the early 20^th century was welcoming to people of all nations who came to her shores and borders either voluntarily or who, like Papou, were fleeing persecution and death. Because if the fear and distrust toward non-Americans of today were espoused then, then Papou could easily have been turned away or deported back to Turkey where, because of the anti-authoritarian stance he took, would have been promptly and brutally executed. Then none of his good deeds and services would have been realized and none of his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, or any of the generations yet to come would have been born and their contributions to the world would have never been, or will be, realized.

Papou finding sanctuary in America is prominent in my mind and heart with every word I type and every breath I take. Because without that sanctuary, I would not exist because he would not have been allowed to further exist. What are we really losing when we push away, or hold back with walls, or return to persecution and death our fellow man, woman and child born in other countries?

So much is gained when we open our arms in welcoming and charity, and so much is lost when we cross our arms in defiance and scorn.