HRISANTHI&apos;S LEGACY
by Irene Pappas
Category: Biography & Autobiography

"HRISANTHI's LEGACY' "Hrisanthi's Legacy" begins as a modern odyssey, the story of a determined woman in an isolated village in Turkish-occupied Crete, with limited personal resources but imbued with courage and vision. She dreamed of a safe life and a brighter future for her children. She was born during the time when the people of Crete lived under the yoke of their Ottoman oppressors, deprived of churches and schools and struggling for day-to-day survival, yet there was hope in her heart of an existence beyond the narrow confines of her small, repressed world. Against all odds, she set her sights on a haven of freedom where opportunity abounded. It was a lofty ambition for a simple, uneducated woman with no real knowledge of what lay beyond the outskirts of her village, but she was undeterred. Responsibility became her companion early in life. The eldest of seven brothers and sisters, she became their substitute mother at the age of twelve when her own mother died in childbirth. For the next seven years, she honed the skills that would serve her well in the pursuit of her dream. She was nineteen when her father arranged her marriage to Manoli Drakakis, a man she had met only once, and her own family began. She gave birth to nine children but only four survived daughters, Erene, Maria and Catina; and a son, Leftheri. Erene died in Crete; the others accompanied Hrisanthi on her odyssey. Their journey began when they left the village under the cloak of darkness and made their way to Herakleion, where they boarded the ship that took them to safety in Piraeus, the port of Athens. There Hrisanthi, as a cook and housekeeper for a wealthy Greek family, and Manoli as a marble cutter, earned the money that took them to the next stop on their voyage Alexandria, Egypt. They knew neither the customs nor the language, yet they managed to survive. Settled in Alexandria, Hrisanthi began to look toward more distant horizons, and America became her ultimate goal. World War I raged in the north Atlantic, forcing the family to look toward a safer passage. Buenos Aires, where other Greeks had settled and work could be found, now became their destination. It was from there that they pointed themselves toward the United States, where liberty and opportunity beckoned on the distant horizon. Leftheri had preceded them and was a copper miner in Butte, Montana, where they would join him. Manoli and Maria left first, to be followed as money became available, by Hrisanthi and Catina. Arriving at Angel Island, the port of entry near San Francisco, they boarded the train for Butte. Instead of the fabled gold in the streets, the newcomers found a hardscrabble city with no airs or pretensions, where tough copper miners risked their lives as they descended into the bowels of the earth for the dollars that supported them and their families. Others, equally tough, worked on the railroads that filled the air on the Eastside where Leftheri lived with never-ending smoke and noise. She had looked upon America as paradise. Now Maria wrote to her mother and sister in Buenos Aires, "This isn't heaven. It's hell." Her brother, Leftheri, known to his friends as Ellos, forced Maria into an arranged marriage to his best friend, Peter Pappas, a man she barely knew, who was fifteen years her senior. At first, Maria adamantly refused. She gave in when Leftheri threatened to leave and never return. Shortly after the wedding, he left. Maria, our mother, settled with her husband, Pete, in a little red brick house located in between three sets of railroad tracks and under the ominous shadow of the Belmont mine and its ore bin. It was a place of dirt roads, paths filled with ruts, humble homes, some with outhouses, and few amenities. There she gave birth to my sister, Julie; my brother, Dallas, and me, inheritors of the legacy our Greek grandmother, Hrisanthi, made possible for us. It was a starting point for an immigrant experience unknown to those who settle