Old and New Can Blend Well : Heritage of Tragedy Doesn’t Follow Greeks in New Homeland

“When America gets to me, I can go to the Greeks, and when being Greek gets to me, I can run to the Americans. It’s like having a wife and a mistress--in love with both. In Greece, I feel a little of a stranger, rather Americanized, and here in America I can still at times feel like a foreigner.”

Sitting in his office at San Diego State University, Minas Savvas, a professor of comparative literature, is surrounded by paintings and photographs of Greece. A small Greek flag is on the window, and a copy of a frieze from the Athens National Archeological Museum, a gift from the Ministry of Culture, is on one wall. The phone rings and he carries on an animated conversation in Greek, then hangs up and talks briefly to a student in his world literature class about work she missed.

It has been 34 years since Savvas, 47, left Greece, though Greece in many ways has not left him. Nor would he want that to happen.

But, he said, “Greeks have come to America because they chose to. It was not a biological accident. And Greeks make reliable Americans--good citizens. Their crime rate is among the lowest of any ethnic group.”

One of Savvas’ main concerns is that important aspects of Greek heritage be kept alive and shared, and that includes the literature, politics and history.

A poet himself, and translator of Greek poets, Savvas said, “Each year 2,000 poetry collections are published in Greece--and it is a country of 9 million. Greece has won two Nobel prizes for poetry in a 12-year span of time. Half of all Greek songs were poetry first.

“I love Greece because of its heritage and its suffering. To know about Greece is to see its tragedy and to feel wounded by that, and to then feel more in love.”

Savvas, one of several thousand Greek-Americans living in San Diego County, keeps his heritage alive not only by going to Greek functions, listening to modern Greek music and eating Greek food, but by subscribing to four Greek newspapers and three Greek magazines, and by reviewing books in Greek.

“I can’t escape my Greekness even if I wanted to,” he said. “My Greekness is like my face. Perhaps both are imperfect, but they are inescapable, like fate or destiny.”

Savvas also teaches Greek tragedies and the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” at SDSU.

Came to America Alone

Savvas’ own odyssey to America and eventually to San Diego County began in one of the poorest suburbs of Athens.

“My father and mother were refugees, fourth-generation Asia Minor Greeks, expelled from Turkey in 1922,” he said. “When people ask me why I came here, I say, ‘We were four people living in a room 10 by 12’--and that’s all I have to say. It was the size of my office.”

As a child, Savvas endured World War II and the Greek Civil War. In 1945, when he was 6, his mother was killed by an explosion. At age 13, he left his father and older brother and came to America, alone, to live with an uncle in Chicago.

“Greeks migrate to places where they have relatives,” Savvas said. “I was the epitome of the poor Greek. Those years from 1939 to 1952 were among the most horrible years Greece had in this century.”

Eventually, his older brother came as well, partly due to Savvas’ efforts. His father remained in Greece unti his death 20 years ago.

Savvas worked at various jobs during high school and college (as a bartender, waiter and salesclerk). The desire to learn and be educated was strong in him.

In time, he earned a master’s degree at the University of Illinois and received a doctorate at UC Santa Barbara in 1970. Soon after that he began teaching at SDSU.

Cultural Traditions Kept Alive

Angeliki Savvas came from Tripolis, Greece, to the United States in 1967, where she taught chemistry and math in a Chicago area high school before coming to San Diego. Now she and Savvas have a 4-year-old son, Peter.

At home, the two keep some of the cultural traditions of Greece alive. But, said Angeliki: “I did more with my family in Chicago because we lived in a Greek community where most people were newcomers. For the Greeks in Chicago, the community is a more intense experience.

“But 9 out of 10 meals in our home are Greek, or rather Greek-American-Californian, and we watch some Greek movies and videotapes.

“I used to listen to Greek music four to five hours a day, but now with Peter I have two to three hours of ‘Sesame Street.’ At home we speak about 50% Greek and 50% English.”

The Savvases belong to St. Spyridon’s Greek Orthodox Church on Park Boulevard, but also on occasion attend Sts. Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church in Cardiff. The Greek community in San Diego County is centered on the two churches--St. Spyridon’s, with 1,000 families, and Sts. Constantine and Helen, with 350 families.

The church plays a significant role in maintaining both the faith and the culture. Language classes are held at both churches for children and adults.

Several organizations in the church help keep the heritage alive and interact with the community as well, including Young Adult League (for ages 18-45), GOYA (Greek Orthodox Youth in America), and Philoptochus, a philanthropic organization that helps the poor and disadvantaged.

Other organizations are the Daughters of Penelope, and Ahepa (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Assn.), for men only. The North County community is centered at Sts. Constantine and Helen. Father Theodore Phillips was pastor of St. Spyridon’s for 12 1/2 years and now for six years has been pastor of the North County church (for five years the church held services at Earl Warren Junior High School).

His parish, he said, is composed mainly of American-born Greek Americans or mixed-marriage couples and converts.

“People come to the church for a truth that is the faith of our church fathers,” Phillips said. “The main course is the orthodox faith. The dancing and the festivals are the dessert.”

The North County church holds a Greek festival at the Del Mar Fairgrounds each October (St. Spyridon’s also holds a yearly festival, also started by Phillips, which this year will be on the church grounds in late May).

Sts. Constantine and Helen has purchased eight acres near Cardiff and is building a $3-million sanctuary, education center, library and senior citizen housing.

Phillips’ own story is dramatic. He, too, came to the United States after World War II (70,000 Greeks immigrated to the United States between that war and 1965). He was born in Gary, Ind., but his family moved back to Greece when he was 3, and he lived there during the war years.

“I was caught in the war--and we were persecuted from all directions--Communists, Nazis, Fascists,” he said. “We all suffered a great deal. In the village next to mine, the Germans executed all men 15 to 75--1,500 men--and they took all the women and children and put them in houses and set the houses on fire. Then they came to my village and chased me from my home without clothing or food. I ran barefooted into the mountains and eventually found my father and mother, who had also escaped.

“When the Germans left, my parents asked me if I wanted to go to America to be with my uncle, a priest in Sacramento. They wanted me to have a future, and there wasn’t anything in Greece for me. I was 14 years old, and I made a decision to come to America.

Phillips lived with and worked for his uncle, then attended Holy Cross Orthodox Theological Seminary in Brookline, Mass.

Now, after 33 years of priesthood and married life, Phillips said: “You can take the worst experience and use it for growth. I’ve had my share, but they have strengthened me. It has not embittered me, but I appreciate life more.”

Vince Janikas’ father came to America from Greece in 1908. Janikas made a trip back to Greece in 1979 with his wife to trace his Greek roots. “I had to go back to find my culture,” he said.

Janikas acknowledges that he felt fear and wondered what he would find, but it was an experience that caused him for the first time to really feel connected to his Greekness.

“When I walked in the old family house, I looked at the fireplace, and there was a wedding picture of my parents,” he said. “I took a photo of that scene, and when I came back to America I gave it to my elderly mother. This was very meaningful to her, and she died a few months after.”

Greece, for Janikas (he has been back three times now) was a wonderful experience. “But,” he said, “Greece is a museum. There is a past there, but not a future.”

Of the Greek nature, he said, “Greeks are very hard-working people, and high achievers. And there is a tragic sense to them. It’s part of their nature. After all, they invented tragedy. It’s not all ‘Zorba the Greek.’ ”

For those who began life in Greece, the cord is not easily cut, and the pressures of American life do contrast with Greek values, and with the hardships endured.

Greeks in the United States, said Savvas, have obstacles that often prevent them from fully appreciating their past. “First, the Atlantic Ocean is an obstacle, and second, is the capitalistic yearning for success--the struggle to make it beyond survival,” he said.

“In the effort to get a nice hunk of the American pie, there is often no time to recapture our heritage, even if it includes Plato, Homer and Aristotle. To a large degree it is understandable, but it is sad, because the third or fourth generation of Greek-Americans may grow up thinking that Aristotle was simply Onassis’ first name, that Heracleitus is the brand of a Greek wine, and that Arcadia is a little town north of San Diego.”

Savvas said he would like the Greeks in San Diego to have more interest in classical knowledge--to be interested in more than dancing and Greek food.

“A lecture on Homer will draw 30 Americans and seven Greeks,” he said. “The Greek community in San Diego, though, is among the best I’ve seen, and I’ve lived in four or five communities.”

Alex Rigopoulos is a leader in the San Diego Greek community. He is a past president of the community and was chairman of its 50th anniversary celebration, held in 1977. His uncle, Thomas Rigopoulos, was the first president of the community in 1927. (The first Greek in San Diego was Demosthenes Demangos, who arrived in 1893 and was a truck farmer before opening a restaurant at 5th and Market).

Rigopoulos’ father and mother, Louis and Magdeline, came to United States in 1907. Rigopoulos, who came to San Diego in 1951, said: “After college at Northwestern, I came to visit my uncle here in San Diego, and I saw the beautiful weather, and said, ‘I’m not going back to Chicago.’

“We as a community are going through growing pains and moving away from the extended family atmosphere. It used to be we had 50 to 100 families. Now everyone is coming to San Diego. It used to be 90% of the community went to all the weddings and baptisms. Now there are so many people we are losing close contact. The two churches are a reflection of this. Because of a misunderstanding eight years ago, a new community was developed in North County, and now that part of the community is very progressive.”

“Being Greek is not so much a question of origins as it is a question of values,” Savvas said. “The Greek composer Dimitri Mitropoulos and the Nobel Prize-winning poet George Seferis, for example, are representative of my kind of Greekness, more than, say, Telly Savalas or Aristotle Onassis.

“A woman named Gail Burnett who is not of Greek heritage is a beautiful Greek. She is a professor emeritus at San Diego State and holds classical discussion groups in her home. They discuss Homer and Nikos Kazantzakis (author of ‘Zorba the Greek’)--and also eat Greek food and take trips to Greece. She is more Greek than some Greeks I know.

“The passion of the Greek spirit is unsurpassed--of a unique quality. You don’t have to be Greek to identify with that. Lord Byron, Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell all saw it, all sensed it.

“I live an American life. I don’t wear my Greekness on my sleeve. I’m Greek, but don’t beat on a Greek drum. I have American friends, and then I put on another mask and go to the Greek community.

“To call yourself Greek is a very heavy and wonderful burden. I go back to Greece every five or six years. I used to go back more often. I think of what the Greek poet Seferis said, ‘Wherever I go, Greece keeps wounding me still.’ ”