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 20th 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.
