American Social Security Checks Keeping Tiny Greek Island of Erikoussa Afloat

This 2 1/2-square-mile island in the Ionian Sea lives on American Social Security checks.

The checks come on the supply boat from the nearby resort island of Corfu for delivery to the elderly men sipping ouzo and playing cards in the waterfront cafe.

They are retired Greek-Americans.

“Almost everyone here has spent years living and working in the United States,” said Dimitris Katechis, president of the Greek-American community. “They have American passports, and they travel to New York regularly to stay with relatives there.”

Erikoussiot Community

A prosperous 1,200-member Erikoussiot community lives in New York City and includes dozens of restaurant owners and at least four millionaires, according to the islanders.

The island has just 225 residents. More than half of them get U.S. Social Security benefits. Their dollars go a long way toward keeping the island’s businesses alive--half a dozen stores and coffee shops, a hotel, two tavernas and three olive-oil processing establishments.

Erikoussa, six miles north of Corfu and about 20 miles off the coast of Albania, is covered with silver-gray olive trees and dark green cypresses. But for young people it has little to offer.

George Katechis, now 75, left when he was a teen-ager.

‘Had to Leave’

“We had to leave, there wasn’t any choice. There was nothing here, no work,” said Katechis, who went to sea, settled in the United States in 1940 and came back 28 years later.

Noted for its skilled sailors, the island once had a fleet of schooners running cargo to Italy and Albania through the Ionian Islands off western Greece.

But the Great Depression of the 1930s and the arrival of coal-fired freighters transformed Erikoussa.

Islanders began migrating to the United States, to run flower stalls and shoeshine stands or to wash dishes in Manhattan diners. Many became American citizens after serving in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. But they kept up the tradition of marrying islanders.

Longed to Return

“I went to America in 1947 to join my husband,” Dorothy Aronis said. “We worked hard, 14 hours a day, seven days a week for years until we bought our own diner. People from Erikoussa earned a reputation for making a success out of life in America. But we always had this longing to come back.”

Aronis, 61, whose daughter studies medicine at Cornell University, said she enjoys her semiannual trips back to New York.

“Life’s much easier for women in America than it is in Greece,” she said. “Mind you, I don’t keep up with looking after our olive trees here. I just grow vegetables.”

The Greek-Americans have brought a quiet kind of prosperity to the island. Unlike many other outlying Greek islands, Erikoussa has 50 telephones, electricity and a full-time doctor.

TVs and Freezers

Drinking water comes from wells. But most homes have color television sets and freezers filled with locally caught fish and home grown vegetables.

“They’re very open-minded people,” Dr. Potheti Grispou, the island’s physician, said of his patients. “Like Americans, and unlike Greeks, they’re careful of their health. Most people come in regularly for a check-up and a cardiogram.”

A few younger Erikoussiots have come back with skills learned in New York.

“I spent five years working in restaurants in New York in the 1970s,” said Stavroula Katechis, 36, who runs the 30-bed hotel with her husband, Aristotelis. “It was lively, but I always felt the stress and danger. I didn’t want my children to grow up behind locked doors.”