Eleftherios' Journey to Success: A Greek Immigrant's Story

By Charles W. Euripides

What is it like to chase the American Dream and succeed?

Eleftherios' Journey to Success: A Greek Immigrant's Story takes readers on an adventure from a quaint village in Greece, across the Atlantic, and right through Ellis Island to the Eastern Coast of the United States. After serving in the Royal Hellenic Army duri

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Apr 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781637301227

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Eleftherios’ Journey to Success

Eleftherios’ Journey to Success

A Greek Immigrant’s Story

Charles W. Euripides

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Charles W. Euripides

All rights reserved.

Eleftherios’ Journey to Success

A Greek Immigrant’s Story

ISBN

978-1-63676-954-7 Paperback

978-1-63730-020-6 Kindle Ebook

978-1-63730-122-7 Ebook

I dedicate this book to my late grandfather, Eleftherios Maheras. My pappoú’s stories have taught me what it means to be hardworking, courageous, and resilient. From immigrating to the United States with less than fifty dollars to opening successful restaurant businesses, my pappoú has defined what it truly means to be a trailblazer.

I would not have become the person I am today if it wasn’t for my pappoú.

Pappoú, thank you for everything.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Author’s note

Part One

Chapter 1. KÁstana, Arachova’s Finest

Chapter 2. The burning of my village

Chapter 3. The Great Escape

Chapter 4. Thanassi from Kalamata

Chapter 5. Corinth

Chapter 6. Welcome to mystras

Part TWO

Chapter 7. Leaving My Village

Chapter 8. The Journey

Chapter 9. The arrival

Chapter 10. The first day of work

Chapter 11. The state fair

Part Three

Chapter 12. Visit to the bank

Chapter 13. Money Jack

Chapter 14. The first customer

Chapter 15. First week as business owners

Chapter 16. Prosperity

Part Four

Chapter 17. The Q’Hut

Chapter 18. The quiggles

Chapter 19. A narrow escape

Chapter 20. From Q’Hut to amigos

Chapter 21. The goodwill man

Part Five

Chapter 22. It’s a small world

Chapter 23. The Dream

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I’d like to thank my family. Mom, Dad, Barbara, and Elefteria, thank you for the constant love and support throughout this entire journey. You were all there for me from the day I brought up the idea I wanted to write a book, and you have been the most amazing support system ever since.

To my grandparents, thank you for always being there for me and for instilling confidence within me through each step of this journey.

Theio John, Theia Voula, and Yiayia, thank you for sharing the wonderful stories about my pappoú Eleftherios and all of his friends from the village. You all helped my fictional story come to life.

Thank you to the Euripides and Maheras aunts, uncles, and cousins, as you all have been incredibly supportive throughout this process.

Lastly, thank you to the team at New Degree Press, especially Eric Koester, Brian Bies, Margaret Danko, and Kendra Kadam, for helping me turn my childhood dream into a reality.

Author’s note

"You have to chase your tee-hee (luck)," Peter Skiouris, the successful real estate entrepreneur and owner of several Giordano’s restaurants in Chicago, once told me. Although I have always dreamed of winning the Mega Millions lottery one day, it occurs to me the luckiest people in my family are those who have chased their dreams as if their lives depended upon it.

During the long, interminable months of the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in early 2020, as we were confined in our house for hours every week, with no trips to the movie theatre, restaurants, or malls, I opted one day to clear out a closet, with the idea that doing any kind of work was far better than doing more homework. In doing so, I chanced upon a box of old black and white photographs in the far corner of my closet.

While looking at the photos, including funny shots of my mother’s family’s trips to the beach, in the mid-1980s, I became interested in tiny photographic relics from the 1940s, all tattered and worn, at the bottom of the box. Many of the relics had handwritten scripts on the back, in artistic cursive writing, I could never hope to replicate. Most of the small, browning photos were of my grandfather’s family, and as I flipped through the collection, one photo, in particular, garnered my attention.

My twenty-two-year-old grandfather stood in the bullet-pocked doorway of an ancient building, perhaps in a mountain village, unsmiling, weary, and in full combat regalia, holding an Italian carbine, barrel pointed downward. On his side was a bayonet and row of hand grenades. I imagined someone took the photo after a major battle in the Greek Civil War, or perhaps after a day of marching on the dusty roads of the Peloponnese. In his military uniform, his sharp features and jet-black hair belied the look of a warrior, not just in war but in life.

I compared the Eleftherios of the 1940s, in the sharp beret, with that of the smiling, gray-haired man at Myrtle Beach forty years later. What happened during those forty years? I turned the photos over, looking for a message or two, but was met with only a name or date, but nothing more. I briefly wondered if the young version of my pappoú, standing in the battle-scarred doorway, knew one day he would be strolling an American beach with a bevy of sunburnt children in flip-flops and sea-weedy hair.

The smiling, handsome man in a checkered shirt at the beach looked straight at the camera as if he was sending a secret message to me, and at that moment, I knew I wanted to learn more about him, his life, and his dreams. I wanted to understand his journey and how he chased his tee-hee to become a successful entrepreneur.

My grandfather was born in 1928 and raised in Arachova, Greece, a small village in the Peloponnese peninsula with less than two thousand inhabitants. Due to Arachova’s size, many individuals are not familiar with the small town or the impact it has made on American society.

The idea of bringing greater awareness to the immigration experience from my grandfather’s village and highlighting immigrant success stories compelled me to write realistic fiction—one that draws heavy inspiration from real stories. As a second-generation Greek American, I was fortunate to be raised in a city with access to many successful self-made immigrants, all with a story or history that bears remembrance and memorialization. Through combining elements of their stories, I am presenting a realistic picture of how a strong work ethic, family dynamic, and perseverance contribute to an immigrant’s success.

By showcasing a successful immigrant’s story from his origin in the mother country to his prosperity in the United States, my desire is to inspire other entrepreneurial individuals to pursue their dreams.

With that in mind, this is the story of young Eleftherios: soldier, brother, entrepreneur. Through Eleftherios’ struggles and life lessons, in the context of historical fiction, I hope readers will see anyone can create their own opportunities and become a successful entrepreneur. Happy reading!

Part One

chapter 1

KÁstana, Arachova’s Finest

In the darkest hour before dawn, Eleftherios strode quickly across the half-kilometer distance between his house and the market in the main platia, the town square in the village of Arachova. Eleftherios, an energetic youth, was anxious to reach the market to earn money for his struggling family. As the second eldest son, Eleftherios bore a lot of weight on his shoulders, yet he never complained. With a beaming smile on his face, Eleftherios trekked carefully ahead, ensuring to keep the large bag of chestnuts which he intended to sell at the open-air market that day securely strapped to his back.

At this time of year in the Peloponnesus of Greece, the summer lingered longer, yet this was not the case in the mountain village of Arachova. Eleftherios quickly zipped his jacket to shield himself from the brisk, cold morning air. This was the first indication of colder weather. It was the type of day when one knows the summer has departed. With the season’s departure also comes the absence of its pleasures. The heat gives way to the cold mountain air, and the bright green of the fields turns to a dull gray. The vivid fragrance from the summer blooms departs and is curiously replaced with a slight charcoal smell of burnt wood from neighboring villages.

Though the war had been raging in Europe for two years, with the brief exception of a two-day occupation in 1942 courtesy of their Italian guests, nothing of significance had happened in Arachova. Violence may have been absent in the village, but the effects of the struggle had rippled through the community. Food was scarce. Many Arachovians walked the streets with skeletal features and an obvious lack of energy. Streets had abandoned cars at every corner, and the homes were pitch dark due to the shortage of fuel.

As boys tend to do, Eleftherios usually isolated his fears and anxieties from his everyday thoughts. He naively looked forward to a time of peace and normalcy. With this in mind, he even found time after tending to the farm and running errands for his parents to meet with his brothers and friends in a small, improvised coffee shop operated out of Theo Evangelos’ old building near the platia. It was Eleftherios’ and his brothers’ first entrepreneurship project—a nameless coffee shop. His brother Costas gathered the coffee, the finest available obtained from neighboring gypsy traders, while Paris assembled the various pastries their mother had prepared, all made with honey due to the shortage of sugar.

Their friends Sam, Harry, and Cousin George visited to play cards, share stories, or pass the latest news. For Eleftherios, this small coffee shop was his home away from home, a place of comfort where he could speak his mind, listen to visitors, and learn something about the vibrant world outside of the village.

Eleftherios, thinking about the café, looked to the dark sky. No stars, only clouds. Maybe rain was to come for the first time in two months.

Rain in Arachova made the roads impassable, and no roads meant no trucks or tanks. In the distance, he heard a small but definite rumble. Probably some thunder, he thought. Or maybe someone had dropped a piece of metal from a barn. Despite this overall optimism, his thoughts turned to the war and all the horrors that could possibly befall his home village. He thought of the earlier incursion by the Italians a year ago, the chaos, and looting. The thought of that horrible two-day period was something he tried to exorcise from his mind. Yet like a hungry wolf outside a mountain cabin, those thoughts never went away and always seemed to be right outside the door, ready to pounce.

Surely, if something were to happen, the news would have reached Arachova by now. Surely one of the visitors to the village, men and women in the know would have tipped them off.

There were many visitors to the small village. From time to time, even in wartime, there were visitors or outsiders, mostly businessmen or government officials, traveling from village to village, and they would bring the news of the world to his small, nameless coffee shop.

Continuing his walk through the village with his sack of chestnuts, he thought of the people who seemed to know the most about what was happening. The villagers, half of whom could not read, relied primarily on word-of-mouth for news. Some sources were ridiculously unreliable, such as the traveling gypsies who spread wild stories about inconceivable acts and atrocities committed by the Germans in