Finding the Way: A Memoir

By Dr. Constantine Mavroudis

About the Book
Dr. Mavroudis was born in Thasos, Greece in July of 1946. He spent the first year of his life in his birthplace before immigrating to the United States with his family in 1947. In his inspiring, extraordinary memoir, Dr. Mavroudis recounts his youth in New Jersey with his parents making a living through a luncheonette-ice cream parlor and his rise to become one of the most world-renowned pediatric congenital heart surgeons.
Dr. Mavroudis established the second successful neonatal cardiac transplant program in the world. He made many scientific and clinical contributions to the field by his research, multiple publications, his numerous editions of his textbook, Pediatric Cardiac Surgery, now in its 5th Edition, and educating the next generation of surgeons, including his own son.
Finding the Way is the tale of resourcefulness, hard work, and where humble beginnings lead to extraordinary endings.
About the Author
Dr. Constantine Mavroudis graduated from the University of Virgina School of Medicine (1973) and completed General Surgery Training (1973-1979), Thoracic-Cardiovascular Training (1979-1981), and was a Research Fellow (1976-1977), all at the University of California-San Francisco.
His first faculty position was at the University of Louisville School of Medicine (1981-1989) where he became Chief of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and rose to the rank of Professor of Surgery. He was recruited to Children’s Memorial Hospital-Northwestern University, the Feinberg School of Medicine, in 1989 as the Wills J. Potts Professor of Surgery, Division Director of Pediatric Cardiac Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief. During 2008-2011, Dr. Mavroudis was chair of the Department of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery with a joint appointment in the Department of Bioethics at the Cleveland Clinic. During 2012-2019, he was Director of Congenital Heart Surgery, AdventHealth for Children in Orlando, and Professor of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. In 2020, he became Professor Emeritus of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and was recruited to Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis as Chief of Pediatric Cardiothoracic Surgery.
Dr. Mavroudis spends his leisure time training for athletic events. He has completed eleven marathons, eighty-five Olympic distance triathlons, and fifteen 70.3 Ironman Triathlons in the United States, Europe, and Africa. He and his family enjoy fishing trips, winery visits, SCUBA adventures, and sailing vacations.
Dr. Mavroudis is happily married (forty years) to the former Martha Smith of Louisville, Kentucky. Together they have two children, Paula and Constantine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Jan 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891273061

Book preview

Mavroudis_Title_Page.eps

The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2024 by Constantine Mavroudis, MD

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

Dorrance Publishing Co

585 Alpha Drive

Pittsburgh, PA 15238

Visit our website at www.dorrancebookstore.com

ISBN: 979-8-89127-808-0

eISBN: 979-8-89127-306-1

Chapter 1

Beginnings

As a child, I remember many stories that my father told me about his life. The descriptions were recounted to me during moments of serenity, mutual love, affection, and quiet reflection that moved quickly towards fascination and dazzling recreative moments resulting in a story. It was not Homer, William Shakespeare, or Mark Twain, but it was the great storyteller of my life, my father, Thomas Mavroudis.

Let me start. My father was born circa January 1896 so it has come down to me by his stories. There is some evidence that he was born in 1894 or 1897, but mostly he told me that he was born early in 1896, or as he put it, towards the beginning of the Year. In many cultures, people are tagged to their birthday with regard to important commemorative events such as wars, hurricanes, great floods, destructive fires, and monumental political events. It goes like this: When were you born, George?

George responds, Oh, I was born three months after the great flood of 1921.

As to my father, I do not think that he knew his birthday since, in Greece, birthdays are not celebrated as much as name days, the day that the saint after whom one is named is celebrated. As an example, my birthdate, as far as I know, is July 19, 1946, and the celebration day of St. Constantine is May 21st.

Demetrios Mavroudis, my paternal grandfather, must have been around thirty-five years old at the time of my father’s birth. That makes his birth date sometime during 1861. Imagine, my grandfather born in the middle of the American Civil War! He matured and married my grandmother, Pelagia, and they had two children, Mavroudi (his actual first name) and Thomas (my father). My grandfather was a merchant, which means that he had a boat and hired sailors to help him gather olive oil from Thasos and sail across the Aegean Sea to other ports mostly in Macedonia and Halkidiki to trade the oil for goods that could be sold back in Thasos. The crew was human with the exception of a donkey which was used to transport the cargo upon embarkation, arrival, and return to Thasos. Loading and unloading the cargo was straightforward since the sailors were capable of performing this task; the donkey’s role was to transport the olive oil and goods to and from the villages. However, unloading the donkey was another matter, altogether. It was the custom to sail the boat close to shore, temporarily anchor, and then shove the poor beast overboard and count on the donkey’s innate ability to sight the land and swim accordingly to preserve his life. This actually worked since there were no methods to hoist the animal from the boat to terra firma in those days. One fateful day, the donkey, having been thrown overboard, got his leg and hoof caught in a net which was inadvertently thrown overboard as well. The donkey was drowning. In those days, and nowadays as well, livestock was expensive and in fact some were preferred pets with affectionate names, and pleasing personalities, even donkeys. No telling how many merchant trips would be necessary to buy another donkey! Well, this particular donkey was worth saving. My grandfather jumped into the sea; he was a good swimmer; and while he was attempting to free the beast from the net, he was kicked in the shin, resulting in bleeding and a broken bone. As I remember from my father’s story, both the donkey and my grandfather were saved, for the moment. His leg became gangrenous; he was offered an amputation; he refused; and he died of sepsis, leaving my father and his older brother without a father to care for them.

My father used to call himself an orphan, owing to the fact that he had no father; but he did have a mother. The common view in the United States is that an orphan does not have any surviving parent to care for them. However, when one considers the circumstances, one lost parent, especially in the early 20th century in rural Greece, is a tragedy. The widow would have to become a washer woman, taking in laundry while suffering the consequences and indignity of not having a husband and father of her children to provide for her and protect her. Nowadays, this situation is not unlike the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) [1], and other groups who label any child who has lost one parent as an orphan. I was puzzled at my grandfather’s choice not to have the amputation and expressed my concern and mild indignation. I figured that a life with one leg is better than no life at all. My father brought me back to those times of no reliable anesthesia, no skilled surgeons on Thasos, no antibiotics, no leg prostheses, no way for a one-legged man to earn a living, and a lifelong subsequent disabled existence. In addition, it was not a sure favorable outcome since, in any case, the mortality for amputation was extraordinarily high. It was like the Gordian Knot [2] without an unraveling solution.  

This catastrophe happened a few years before the onset of the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars. It is of some interest that my father was born under the flag and yoke of the Ottoman Empire. Technically, at that time, he and all the Greeks on Thasos and eastern Macedonia were Ottoman Turks. It wasn’t until the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars that the armies of Greece, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania united to wage war against the Turkish Ottoman Empire and consequently ended the Ottoman presence in Europe. Thasos and the surrounding areas were liberated and became Greece once more after centuries of occupation. While this was welcomed by the Balkan states and Greece, the tragic effect of these wars was to raise the international tensions that resulted in World War I [3].

In any case, my father grew up in poverty that was to be eventually marked by the Balkan Wars of repatriation, World War I (1914–1918), the 1922 war of Greek aggression and imperialism against the Turks, World War II (1939–1945), and the Greek Civil War (1946–1949).

My uncle Mavroudi served in the First World War and survived, which was not a given in those days. It was not clear where he served and what his duties were. However, he had come home without injuries and lived a long, successful existence in Thasos, all the time writing and receiving letters from my father. Years later, I came to understand the depth of their relationship. On my first visit to Thasos at about forty years of age, my cousin, Ellie, took me on a tour of Kalirachi, the village of our birth on the island of Thasos. We came upon a house that was being renovated. Ellie told me that this house belonged to my deceased uncle Mavroudi, which was sold to a Scottish author who wanted remote lodging to write his novels. It just so happened that the Scottish writer was at the site organizing and directing the renovation project. I explained to the Scotsman that this house belonged to my uncle and asked if I could step inside, for sentimental reasons. He was a very nice guy with a charming Scottish brogue and invited me in. As I was looking around, I found a photograph on the wall, which was likely my cousin, Pelagia. I asked my new friend if there was something that my uncle left behind.

He said: Yes, I found some personal effects that I was keeping, thinking that someone would come to claim them.

It was too good to be true! He went into the next room and emerged with an old cigar box in his hands. He opened it in front of me and produced a photograph.

Do you know her? he asked.

I replied, Yes, I do; it is a photograph of my sister, Peggy, upon her graduation from grammar school.

Imagine, he was handing me an historical treasure. In the cigar box were affectionate letters from my father, more pictures of my sister, brother, and me as well as commemorative postcards of visits of bishops and other historical events. There was also a document, written in Turkish, which was the deed to the house. I remembered that the house was constructed in the late nineteenth century. Thasos was under the yoke of Turkey then. I remained speechless as I read one letter that my father sent to my uncle Mavroudi, the translation of which is:

My dear and loving brother, I miss you very much and long for the time that we can be together again.

The letter goes on to relate the news of our family. The other letters were similar in tender reflections and nostalgic moments. It was really like reliving history, in this case, my history. I still have the treasure box.

After the Armistice of November 11, 1918, my father yearned to move to America and create his own fortune in the land of opportunity. As a result, in 1919, at the age of twenty-three years, he emigrated to the United States to become a member of the Greek Diaspora. The plan was to go to America, make a small fortune, and return to Greece. There he would marry and live out a comfortable existence in what may be called paradise, namely, an ancient Aegean Island with abundant olive trees, a pleasing climate, a flourishing culture, and dependable family ties. He left behind his brother and mother who was suffering from an unknown disease, likely tuberculosis, which consumed her during my father’s stay in the New World. When he remembered this very painful part of his life, he would always shed a tear. I wondered what he was thinking. His mother died without his comforting presence; he was half a world away without the means to come home and mourn her. It was sad, actually. I felt for him. Besides grief, he must have felt some responsibility for his absence and some guilt for his choices. I pondered how I would feel if my mother, Panagiota, would die in this manner without my presence to mourn her. It struck home and resonated with me.

The New World for my father must have been a bitter-sweet welcoming. The first experience was being processed through Ellis Island [4]. After an arduous North Atlantic Crossing, immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island were tagged with information from their ship’s manifest describing their circumstances and vital statistics. They waited on long lines to undergo medical assessment, legal inspections, and suitability to determine if they were fit for entry into the United States. Ellis Island processed millions of newly arrived immigrants to the United States. They were Jews escaping from political and economic persecution in czarist Russia and Eastern Europe, Italians fleeing poverty, as well as Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Serbs, Slovaks, and Greeks. They left their homes in the Old World to flee from war, drought, famine, and religious persecution for a chance to prosper in the new world.

These were the circumstances which awaited my father on his arrival in Manhattan to become a hat check boy in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. He learned English quickly while suffering the indignation of highfalutin guests who treated him with contempt and dismissal because of his Old-World origins. He was used to being treated with more dignity and respect. He would fix that in the years to come. Soon thereafter, he managed to open an ice cream parlor and confectionary store in Brooklyn. In those days, ice cream was made in confectionary stores until the rise of refrigeration in the 1930s [5]. So, if you wanted to enjoy ice cream, you had to go to the neighborhood ice cream parlor. During one of our conversations, I remember my father making circular hand movements with an imaginary wooden spoon in his right hand while holding a rather large would-be metal bowl in the grasp of his left arm. He was mixing fresh cream, ice, sugar, and fruit to make some of the best iced cream in Brooklyn. Maybe it is an overstatement, but it certainly seemed that way to me. The imaginary images were so real that I can still taste the make-believe strawberries in the French vanilla ice cream.

Back home in Greece, the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) was being fought between Greece and the Turkish National Movement during the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire as a result of their defeat after World War I [6]. The war was started because the western Allies, spearheaded and supported by British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, had promised Greece territorial gains from the remains of the Ottoman Empire. The Greeks maintained claims of the land, owing to the fact that Anatolia had been part of Ancient Greece and the Byzantine Empire before the Ottoman conquest in 1453. My father’s first cousin, John Mavroudis, fought in this war in Smyrna, and was killed in action. His name graces a marble war memorial in Kalirachi, the village of our birth. The war ended badly for the Greeks, which halted the land acquisition, resulting in huge population exchanges and a shaky peace that exists even today [7].

Meanwhile, back in the United States, my father sold the confectionary store in Brooklyn and moved to Union City, New Jersey, where he opened another confectionary store with access to the public but also had a concession stand into the lobby of a burlesque theatre. I never asked the name of the theater, but there was a famous burlesque theater named The Hudson Theatre on 38th Street in Union City just across the Hudson River from Manhattan [8]. The entertainment featured showgirls who danced to the tunes of piano and banjo players in striped shirts and straw hats. Standup comedians added humor to the show. My father’s concession stand sold sandwiches, ice cream, and chocolates. I assume that the audience liked the refreshments.

It is not clear whether it was The Hudson Theatre or another named theatre that housed my father’s confectionery concession.  However, it was Union City, New Jersey, and it was the source of considerable income which resulted in my father selling the concession for a reported thirty thousand dollars, which in those days was a substantial sum of money in today’s currency. I asked about this enormous sum and my father noted that the new owners paid him in installments over the next few years. So, in 1929 Thomas Mavroudis embarked for Greece to find marital stability, an olive oil exporting business with partners, and reunification with his beloved fatherland. He was betrothed to one of his partners’ sisters who was awaiting him in Thasos. Upon arrival, he met for the first time his intended wife, but fate would intervene. Another, rather appealing nineteen-year-old woman who was beautiful, shapely, and attractive caught his eye and captured his heart. She turned out to be my mother. Their courtship started with a romantic walk which included my father’s inquiry about whether she, Panagiota (Pauline), loved anyone else. She said no and my father asked her to marry him. They wed sometime in 1930 and until my father’s death in 1985 were very much in love and devoted to each other. This marital choice caused much consternation with his partners who proceeded to cheat him out of his investment. My mother told me that my father became so distraught at losing his fortune that he retreated to the forest for several days in solitary reflection to make sense of what happened to him. He recovered, became a sea merchant with two small boats, and had two children before World War II, Peggy and Demetrios, my siblings.

World War II started in Poland in 1939 but did not involve Greece until October 28, 1940, when the Italian Army invaded Greece from Albania which was the start of the Greco-Italian War [9]. The Greek Army was initially successful in pushing back the Italian forces into Albania, which provoked the German Army to invade Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. The eventual occupation of Greece was divided between Italy, Germany, and Bulgaria with Italy occupying approximately two-thirds of the country, while Germany controlled Athens, Central Macedonia, Western Crete, and some islands in the Aegean Sea. In an action of permanence and audacity, Bulgaria actually annexed Western Thrace and Eastern Macedonia thereby fulfilling their longstanding territorial ambitions to secure naval and shipping access to the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.

MavroudisC_001.png

Figure 1: Map shows the Axis Occupation of Greece in the early stages of World War I [10]

This Bulgarian occupation and annexation weighed heavily on our family. The wartime Bulgarian Army was brutal in occupation, causing many who experienced the ordeal to prefer occupation by the German Army over the Bulgarian Army [11]. In the initial days of the Thasos occupation, many of the male inhabitants were rounded up, brought to central locations within the villages, and beaten on their hands and feet to the extent that would incapacitate them for some time. Among those who endured this torture were my father and maternal grandfather, Constantine Demetroudis, after whom I was named. After the beatings, my father carried my grandfather home on his back while crawling over the stone-lined street. My mother, who never thought that she would see her father or her husband again, regained her composure and treated them both for their injuries. I was told of this story by both my father and mother. Ironically, they were given a slip of paper that signified that they were now citizens of Bulgaria with allegiance to the same. This was in keeping with the translocation policy of relocating Bulgarian families to Kavala, Thasos, and other occupied areas to repopulate the region that would eventually become Bulgaria in name, culture, and loyalty [12]. My grandfather never recovered from the beatings that left him limping with poor use of his hands for the rest of his life.

He was one of the lucky ones. There were many summary executions, school closings, religious conversions, and forced transportation to labor camps, which often meant horrible extermination. There were exceptions to this brutal occupation, however. One of the Bulgarian sergeants, who was stationed in Thasos, knew my grandfather from his pre-war yearly work trips to Thasos to gather the ripened olives from my grandfather’s orchards. They were friends, albeit opposing friends in in a time of war. As it turned out, the Bulgarian authorities were planning to send my father to a work camp north of Bulgaria. The sergeant took it upon himself to notify my grandfather that the port would not be guarded that night and advised that he urge my father to escape to German-held land in Ierissos (Greek: Ιερισσός). Ierissos is on the northern and easternmost peninsula of Halkidiki, which is about forty to fifty miles by boat from Thasos.  My father successfully escaped and landed in Ierissos. He was alone, however. My mother, sister, and brother were in Thasos; he had to get them to Ierissos. Fortunately, a distant cousin, Mr. Leontarakis, and a fellow sailor had a boat that would transport the family out of Thasos.

What comes next is the story of my courageous and steadfast mother, Panagiota, who demonstrated her resolve and bravery in what could only be described as amazing. This story comes from my mother and is confirmed by my brother and sister. They boarded a boat that can be likened to a skiff-like vessel with a sail that was just big enough for five to six people. They embarked in the afternoon and were scheduled to sail in sight of land along the coast of Macedonia from one beach or port to another. This is called Yalo-Yalo (in Greek, Γυαλό Γυαλό). This kind of sea voyage was common in those days since any impending disaster could be resolved by sailing closer to land and disembarking if necessary. There is even a folkloric love song about this whereby the sailor finally retires from his journeys to stay with his love. Unfortunately, there was nothing calm or romantic about this trip.

On the first day, the seas were rough with rain and waves breaching the gunwales of the boat, resulting in flooding and bailing out the water. This got to be difficult and the captain, shall we call him that, was worried about the waves and the submerged rocks which could easily scuttle the boat. In my mother’s mind, there was no going back. She told the captain that she would go to the front of the boat and watch for any rocks and alert them to move in one direction or another. Why they believed her is a mystery to me. My mother was capable of stretching the truth at any