The Christ Pappas Family

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This story is about:

• Christ Pappas - Born in Hania, Crete 1928 -  Arrived at Ellis Island in 1954
• Joann Pappas - Born in Hania, Crete 1944 -  Arrived in New York in 1962

My paternal grandfather-- Michael Papadomanolakis-- had emigrated to America in the late 1890s as a single man. He found fellowship with fellow Cretans who had settled in the region and also worked in the coalmines. In the beginning he had a hard time finding work with his long name, which he spelled the way it sounded in the original Greek—Mihail Papadomanolakis. At the encouragement of a friend, he listed himself as Michael Pappas on a work request registry one day and immediately was offered a job work.

He took up work in the coalmines of Wheeling, West Virginia. Times were rough and he told stories later in his life about entire weeks of darkness, because of the soot in the sky that blocked the sunlight.

In the early 1900s a picture bride was brought from his native Hania named Anna Petrakis. It was a typical “proxenio” or arranged marriage that was commonplace back then. A mutual friend brought Anna to the United States.

They married in West Virginia in the early 1910s and had their first two children-- Andrew and Gregory. While Michael worked in the coalmines they rented rooms to borders, mainly new arrivals from Crete, who also worked in the mines. They referred to these people in their Gringlish as "bordarous".

Times were difficult for the immigrant family. My grandfather, who had saved up a bit of money, decided to return to Greece for good with his family in the 1930s with their two American-born sons, and re-settled in Hania, where the couple had their third child, Christ (my father).

An unfriendly political environment in Greece in the late 1930s and the impending war forced the family to send their two oldest sons (my uncles Andrew and Gregory)-- now teenagers-- back to America, alone. It was easy for them because they had been born in America and were US citizens, but it was a difficult decision for their parents. In the end, it was a decision of survival.

In May of 1941 the Nazis invaded Crete. My dad was a teenager and often recounted stories later in life about the “umbrella men” falling from the sky, referring to the German parachute landing of thousands of troops. The war was brutal and throughout most of his later life, he told stories he could remember of escapes from firing squads in nearby villages and round ups of the Jewish population of Hania.

As a teenager he was active in the organized resistance against the Nazis, serving as a “runner” of messages between the various safe houses and resistance camps. Such messages were often sewn into hems of pants, or pasted into schoolbooks to make the passing of German checkpoints possible.

He was also used as a decoy—a skinny, unassuming youngster, to distribute “prokirikseis” or anti-German propaganda flyers throughout the city in the middle of the night, encouraging the civilians to participate in the resistance against the Nazis. He was often accompanied by friends from the neighborhood. One in particular whose name he recalled was Stelios Kohilakis.

(Fast forward early 1990s: My dad lost touch with Stelios after the war until the early 1990s when I was serving as president of the national Pancretan Youth Association. One of the chapter presidents of the Cretan Youth of Long Island, NY was named Jon Kohilakis. My dad saw the name on a list and told me about a buddy of his named Stelios Kohilakis that he “ran with” during the war. I immediately called Jon and asked what his dad’s name was. It was Stelios. The two re-united a few months later at a convention and thanks to the Pancretan Association, two buddies from the war years were re-united many decades later.

Back to the war period… My grandmother Anna had already experienced emigration to the United States to marry a stranger, a difficult life in a mining town, repatriation to Greece in the 1930s and the difficult decision to send two of her children back to the United States alone. Now the horrors of the Second World War were upon her, during which she chose to be especially active in the resistance against the Nazis, assisting Allied troops during the ten-day Battle of Crete and in the ensuing evacuation of the island. The Allied Supreme Commander, with a letter of acknowledgement, honored my grandmother for her actions in support of the Allied cause.

My grandfather Michael, did his part too, in the war effort by hiding a friend and neighbor—a member of the Cretan Jewish community and assisting him to ultimate freedom, never to hear from him again, but knowing for certain that he didn’t share the same fate with other Cretan Jews, who perished when their boat was sunk by a torpedo while they were on their way to Auschwitz.

He arrived on Ellis Island on July 13, 1954 on the Nea Hellas and eventually made his way to meet his parents and older brothers in Pittsburgh. He started working at his brother’s diner-- The New York Lunch, while taking English classes.

A few years later the brothers invested in a larger restaurant on Pittsburgh's North Side called the Blue Bell, which they ran until the early 1960s when they bought an even bigger restaurant called the Chateau Restaurant and Lounge, in the heart of the industrial corridor of the city called Manchester.

My dad’s brother (Uncle Andrew) died suddenly in 1962 on New Years Day. That summer, my dad took his mother to Greece to see family and help her recover from the loss of her son. While having coffee with a friend at a coffee shop in his hometown of Hania called “Panellinion” a young lady named Ioanna (Joann) Tzanakakis passed by. She was 18 years. He was 34.

She recalls joking with her sisters about his long sideburns and the wide, bell-bottomed pant legs, from which they could sew an entire skirt. Within a few weeks of family “negotiations” and against the will of the young Joann, the couple got engaged and married — and were on the boat to America in September of 1962, days after their wedding.

 My mother endured a cross-ocean journey with a man she hardly knew, while on her way to a country she hadn’t even dreamed of ever visiting as a young girl. Her arrival—with no knowledge of the language, or no friends, family or familiarity of any kind, must have been terrifying for her.

My mom and dad lived through the race riots in Pittsburgh that broke out after MLK was assassinated. My mom recalls a curfew of 7pm in the city where the restaurant was located. Many times my dad stayed at the restaurant all night, protecting his property. Despite the fact that the entire block was burned to the ground by rioters, my dad’s restaurant was left untouched by the rioters. My father had a reputation in the neighborhood of being tolerant of other races and helpful to those in need.

But they lived… Happily ever after and spent four decades together, eventually moving to a bigger house in northern suburbs of Pittsburgh where my brother (Andrew) and I were born and raised, living a normal life with summer vacations in Greece for everyone except my dad, who worked tirelessly at the restaurant with his brother Greg and his other partner “uncle” Stavros Kavoulakis.

The restaurant was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, closing only on Christmas and Thanksgiving, for almost 30 years. Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church and the activities of the local Cretan Association of Pittsburgh were a big part of our lives.

My father passed away at 69 years of age in 1997—his memory lives on in all of us, especially in his grandsons whom he never met (My brother’s sons)—his namesake Christos, and his two younger brothers Nektarios and Manolis.

In memory of my father, Christ Pappas and his parents, Michael and Anna.

And in honor of my mother, Joann (Tzanakakis) Pappas, whose fortitude and strength is a shining beacon for all around her.