Nick and Mary Mathews
In 2007, the Richmond Times Dispatch declared, “The best-known people in Yorktown, [Virginia] since the days of George Washington and Lord Cornwallis were the late restaurateurs Nick and Mary Mathews, whose generosity has left its mark throughout the town.” Nick and Mary Mathews, my cousins, never had any children, but their influence remains and their legacy continues to enrich lives.
Born in Sparta, Maria Aris Papamihalopulou emigrated from Greece to New York in 1930. She was earning her way selling dresses for 30 cents when she met Nikolaos Minas Matheos, a transplanted native of the island of Karpathos. Nick was the youngest son of a town mayor, but he had to take on the tedious jobs of new immigrants – West Virginia coal miner, Chicago busboy, Pennsylvania steelworker, New York cook, and Depression-era rent collector in Brooklyn. As reported by William Tangney, founder and editor of the York Town Crier, when Nick’s boss ordered a poor family’s furniture piled out in the street in the snow for nonpayment, “I could not stand it,” my cousin said. “I paid their rent with my paycheck and I quit.”
They married and eventually settled in Yorktown. At the same time, they developed a sense of responsibility to their new country. “It was destiny,” Mary told The Daily Press of how she and Nick came to live in Yorktown. They fell in love with the town’s history and opened a lunch counter in 1944 that became Nick’s Seafood Pavilion. They rolled up their sleeves and gave the business their all.
“With work, you can accomplish everything. Never lie and never cheat anybody, never, ever, ever,” said Mary to The Daily Press in September, 1990.
All my cousins wanted was a chance to work. Neither expected the success they would achieve. The lunch counter became a world-renowned 450-seat restaurant. Their customers included everyone from heads of state and ambassadors, to Hollywood celebrities like the late-Perry Como, John Wayne and Elizabeth Taylor, to local townspeople and tourists. They accumulated roughly half of all privately held land in the village of Yorktown.
But it was their generosity that defined their lives. The restaurant’s success allowed them to express their gratitude and patriotism on a larger scale than most Americans. They adopted many new immigrants, offering not just a job but unflinching support. My maternal grandfather, George Minas, Nick’s second cousin, came to join the restaurant shortly after he came to United States from Karpathos. Nick and Mary became my grandfather’s American father and mother.
Men and women in military uniform always ate free at Nick’s. A long-time friend, Edith Elliott, told The Daily Press in 1998, “[Mary] felt they represented the sacrifice that gets made for freedom . . . . Whenever she talked about the service people – those who died for the country – she would just cry and cry.”
When Yorktown’s lights were turned off in 1972 because of a dispute between the county and the Yorktown Trustees over the electric bill, my cousins covered the balance. Mary told The Washington Post, “Can’t have no lights . . . . Should have even more lights, for the people to come to see where the liberty was won.”
They gave repeatedly to hospitals, military bases, historic sites and Greek Orthodox churches. They built a hospital on the island of Karpathos. Mary refused to apply for Social Security or Medicare benefits, believing the well-off should not take advantage of such government programs.
Nick and Mary also donated 23 acres of prime real estate overlooking the York River for the Yorktown Victory Center, a living museum that honors America’s war for independence. For tax purposes? For recognition? No. “Because this is Yorktown,” Mary explained to The Washington Post. “This is where the freedom was won. People should have a place to come and see, and think about what began here.”
A York Town Crier editorial declared that their response to living the American Dream “was to give, and to give again, and to keep on giving – with no thought of return.”
In 1983, their generosity was rewarded when President Ronald W. Reagan asked my cousins to sponsor the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Yorktown, honoring them as the first naturalized citizens to sponsor a U.S. Navy ship. While they were flying to Pascagoula, Mississippi, for the christening of the ship, Nick suffered a fatal heart attack before landing. Mary insisted to continue with the christening. In what many called her most moving speech, she held a photo of Nick to her chest as she reflected what America meant to her: “. . . liberty, freedom, justice, and peace to the free world, and to those small nations that depend for their lives and happiness on the American flag that signifies freedom.”
In the years after the christening, Mary often stood on the pier, a short walk from the restaurant, as the Yorktown went by. She would gather us, her family, and friends and wave small American flags at the sailors who knew her as the ship’s godmother. The U.S.S. Yorktown was known to play “God Bless America,” her favorite song, over its loudspeaker each time it passed the restaurant.
In 1992, Mary became the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Socrates Award from the American Hellenic Progressive Education for her fervent patriotism and philanthropy. In prior years, the award went to former presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In 1998, she was honored as the Outstanding Virginian by the Virginia General Assembly.
Mary died of a stroke in September, 1998. Until she suffered that stroke, she was at the restaurant daily. In one final act of kindness, she bequeathed virtually her entire estate, including the restaurant, to the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia, which operates the Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown Victory Center. She wrote in her will that she wanted everyone to know about “the blessings of democracy commenced in my native land of Greece and later here in this area . . . .” The restaurant closed in September, 2003, after Hurricane Isabel decimated the property.
Today, while the restaurant no longer remains, Nick and Mary Mathews’s legacy does. It is seen by the thousands of visitors to the Yorktown Victory Center each year. It is remembered often when benefactors of their generosity tell of these two Greek-Americans who dreamed an American Dream, lived it, and shared it with so many others. It is felt by my family, with generations inspired by my cousins’ example – their love for the United States and the principles of freedom and liberty “commenced” in Greece, their gratitude for the gifts the United States affords, and their unwavering, tireless commitment to serving the public.
