Honoring Traditions
Evangelos Zervos and Maria Tsagaris; Marcos Madias and Kyriakoula Matheos; Panayiotis Magoulis and Eleni Konstantinou; and Nikolaos Malamis and Paraskevi Argyropoulos – these are the names of my eight great-grandparents who all immigrated to the United States in the early 1900s. The first four, my father’s grandparents, were from Kardamyla, Chios and the last four, my mother’s grandparents, were Arcadians, from the villages of Oria- Kastri, Dimitsana and Piana. My grandparents were born in the United States. My father’s parents were John and Maritsa Zervos and my mother’s parents were Thomas and Georgia Morris. My parents are Marcus and Ellene Zervos.
If you are Greek, you realize that my father is the second son of his parents, named after his mother’s father and my mother is the first-born girl in her family, named after her father’s mother. In my father’s family, on his father’s side, there are four first-cousins named Angelo and four first-cousins named Maria. If you are reading this carefully, you realize that my papou had at least three brothers and each had at least one son and one daughter. You might even guess that those cousins are distinguished from one another by their fathers’ first initial which they each have as their middle initial. As my parents’ first-born, I was named Maritsa. Well, sort-of – my name in English is Mary. Anyway, if my husband Dean Tselepis (who is of Greek descent like me on his mother’s side and whose father immigrated from Greece) and I follow the naming tradition and God blesses us with two boys and two girls, our mostly fourth-generation Greek-American children will be Nick, Angelica, Marcus and Eleni.
Some young, independent women might object to giving up naming rights, but my ancestors’ stories of faith, endurance and courage deserve to be lasting, living memories. Evangelos and Maria lived in Pittsburgh during the years of the Great Depression and on a day when there was no food in the house for their three boys, Evangelos managed to earn 25 cents from shining shoes to buy a pound of beef. He and Maria would not eat, but there was joy and thanksgiving in the house that day because their boys would not be hungry. Marcos earned his U.S. citizenship serving under General Pershing in WWI. When his daughter wanted to go to college, he and Kyriakoula ignored the disapproval of relatives and Maritsa went “away” to school where she became a member of Who’s Who among college students. When Maritsa was dying of pancreatic cancer in her early 70’s she suffered the way she had lived her entire life, with grace.
Panayiotis and Eleni had three sons. When their oldest son died, leaving a widow and three children, Eleni, then a widow, herself, said to her daughter-in-law Georgia, (who was also in the car accident that had killed my Papou) “I thank God for saving you, the mother of the children.” Georgia’s parents were Nikolaos and Paraskevi. There were seven children in the family and they lived in Detroit during the Great Depression. My yiayia, one of the best storytellers of all time, vividly describes a time of deprivation filled with love and generosity. Her mother and father welcomed those without anything to their home for meals when there was barely enough for their own family. These memories of love should live forever.
