The Name That Crossed an Ocean
Yasou!
In my heart, all things Greek mean so much to me. Here is a small piece of why, a true story that gives me chills every time I think of it.
I grew up feeling a great connection to Greece through my grandparents and the many Greek traditions that my family followed. My parents, Gus and Daphne, gave me that connection long before I ever set foot there myself. My grandparents and great-grandparents came from across the Greek islands, Lesvos, Andros, and Crete among them. But it was Plomari, a village on Lesvos, that ran through both sides of my family. My father’s parents, Papou (grandfather) Dimitri and Yiayia (grandmother) Irini, immigrated from Plomari. So did my great-Yiayia Dafni, a generation back on my mother’s side.
Papou Dimitri arrived in the United States from Plomari in 1909. A few years later, he sent a picture of himself back to the Greek church there with a letter on the back asking for them to send him a wife. The church sent my father’s mother, Yiayia Irini, a 29 year old woman from the village. They met for the first time on Ellis Island. Yiayia Irini set sail from the Greek port of Piraeus on September 13, 1921. That date would years later be the birthday of my second son Konstantinos, named after my father Gus (an Anglicized version of Konstantinos) and Yiayia Irini’s father, my great-grandfather Konstantinos. The name had traveled this far. Now, it would travel further. To my boy Kosta. Years later I would learn that my great great grandfather on my mother’s side was also named Konstantinos.
My Papou Dimitri and Yiayia Irini married in Rockaway, New York nine short days later. Yiayia Irini lived in the US until her death in 1975 when I was eight years old. She had never learned to speak English so my communication with her as a child was very limited. During this same era on my mother’s side, my great-Yiayia Dafni from Plomari entered the U.S. through Ellis Island in 1916, traveling to New York City to stay with her cousin.
This part of the book also holds some of the harder parts of my childhood, where love and instability lived together in one home. That’s part of the story too, and it’s in the book. But the traditions and the names handed down, that’s what I wanted to share with you today.
September 13th holds even more significance in my family than I knew when I wrote this chapter. The infamous catastrophe of 1922 in Smyrna Turkey, a great fire that burned for days, also happened on September 13th, the same date as Kosta's birthday. There’s one more piece to this date’s story, one I only uncovered after my genealogy research. One you will find in the Afterword of Called to Greece.
Thank you for following along,
Katina
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