My Greek Drama: Life, Love, and One Woman's Olympic Effort to Bring Glory to Her Country

by Gianna Angelopoulos

  AFTER THE WAR, my father returned to Heraklion and reassumed a position with the Union of Producers of Crete. A private, nonprofit agrarian cooperative, the union helped its members market citrus fruits to buyers and consumers around the world. Most of the members were, like my grandfather, operators of small family farms who pooled their produce for better prices and better distribution. In my father’s time, agriculture was one of the leading industries in Crete and in other parts of Greece.

  My father held what would be regarded, at best, as a mid-level position with the union. He assisted in promoting sales of Greek goods abroad, mainly to Germany and other northern countries. He helped develop manufacturing facilities for preserving fruit. But he was bright, ambitious, and, having lost six years to the war, a man very much in a hurry. Intent as he was to advance his career, he was just as anxious to complete his university degree.

  Shortly after resuming work, he sought permission to spend some time in Athens preparing for his final exams. The director of the cooperative considered university to be the province of the elite and regarded a degree as irrelevant to their business of buying and selling. As a result, he discouraged my father from concerning himself with academic matters. “What do you need with this university and this degree?” he repeatedly asked. But my father persisted and eventually received permission. He became a regular on the one-day boat ride from Crete to Athens and earned his reward: a coveted business degree from what was then called the Commercial University of Athens (now the Economic University of Athens).

  He would rise to become head of the national board of collectives.

  My father forged strong and lasting relationships with farmers, traders, and merchants all over Greece. This talent was one of his most important professional skills. He learned that keeping in touch with people was essential in running a successful business, just as it would be essential for me decades later when I launched my political career.

  Although by every measure he was successful and we lived quite a comfortable life in Heraklion, my father never became wealthy like many men in comparable positions. When he retired, he didn’t have much more than his pension to live on. He wound up building apartments on top of our home to rent and thus provide extra money for his and my mother’s retirement years.

  Marika Papadaki, my mother, was born to a prosperous Herak-lion family. When her father, Yiannis Papadakis, was a boy, he worked for various merchants in town, impressing them with his intelligence, business savvy, and initiative. As a young man, he was able to capitalize on his experience and connections to secure bank loans that enabled him to start a business, and he became very successful exporting olive oil, raisins, and other Cretan products, primarily to Egypt. He became prominent in Heraklion social circles and was well known around the island. I recall a picture of my grandparents sitting with friends around a table full of roses playing a card game. My grandfather was quite handsome, with “brilliantine” on his hair and moustache. He wore what looked like a very expensive suit. My grandmother, Rodanthe, was also decked out in finery. Both were a vivid contrast to the modest country style of my paternal grandparents.

  In 1936, my grandfather decided to venture just outside Heraklion to inspect some fields and to visit some of the farmers he worked with. He chose to walk the long distance back and worked up a considerable sweat. When he arrived home, he took a long drink from the well before thoroughly dousing himself with the cold water. Eight days later he succumbed to pneumonia. My grandmother was left a thirty-nine-year-old widow with three children to care for.

  My mother was just four years old at the time. Her life changed dramatically. She remembers the interior of her once bright home turning black. Black cloth was draped over their elegant furniture, which is the traditional way Greeks mourn. Black cloth covered the full-length mirrors. Her mother, who enjoyed wearing stylish clothes, was herself dressed in black and wore no lipstick, face powder, or any other cosmetics. She dressed my mother in black as well and even tied a bow of black ribbon on her head. My grandmother wore black mourning clothes for decades, in fact, and as a widow, she never regained the stature she had enjoyed in her married life.

  My mother was a good student and, having learned English in school, secured a job as the only administrative secretary at the only English-language institute in Heraklion. At about the same time, my father was looking to improve his skills in English, hoping to expand the markets for the cooperative’s products. When he walked into the language school, he was instantly smitten by the attractive and charming young woman who greeted him. Apparently he was not alone. Years later he would tell his daughters that he always had to get in line at our mother’s desk to see her. Literally! It seems that the male students always had some problem, a bill or paperwork that required urgent help—and only her help would do!

  The courtship of my father and mother could not exactly be described as a whirlwind. Perhaps my mother was reluctant to commit to a man so much older than she was. But persistence was one of my father’s strengths, and he earnestly pursued Marika for more than four years before she agreed to marry him. During that time, she came to recognize his many virtues. My father was not just older but also better educated and more worldly and sophisticated than the typical Cretan man. He traveled often, particularly to Germany, and regaled her with tales that seemed quite exotic. My mother envisioned a new life that would expand her horizons. She imagined herself accompanying him on business trips, where she would join him for dinners or at elegant parties. In January 1955, when he was in his midforties and she was half his age, they were wed.

  That world of dinners, parties, and dances would remain in her imagination, however. Nevertheless, she did travel with my father a few times. She told me about one trip, for instance, to a trade show in Leipzig, Germany. My mother was freezing while she stood by my father at his cooperative’s trade booth. After a few hours, she pointed out to her husband that the visitors to the booth were not interested in talking business. They were just interested in grabbing a handful of Greek pistachios.

  After just a few months of marriage, she discovered she was pregnant—with me. She wasn’t at all happy about it. She didn’t tell my father or even consult a doctor. She had her own idea about how to handle this disturbing development. “Every day,” she confessed to me years later, “I would jump rope about two hundred times, hoping maybe you were not strong enough and would just go away. I still feel guilty about that.” But I was very strong (as I would prove—to her continued dismay—throughout my childhood). A month later she began to experience dizziness and nausea and the secret was out. The jump rope went into the closet. My official date of birth is Monday, December 12, 1955, at 23:55—or so my father insisted, because in Greece, Tuesday the thirteenth is considered bad luck. My sister followed in September 1958. My mother’s destiny—at least until much later in life—was to lead the more traditional life of the Cretan wife and mother.

  By Cretan standards, my family was very fortunate. My father’s career was flourishing and we lived comfortably, if never ostentatiously. Inheriting my father’s intellectual curiosity benefited me far more than did his business success. As a result of his travels, his extensive reading, and his keen intelligence, he was more open-minded than the typical Greek father of his day, and certainly of his generation—at least regarding certain matters. He encouraged Eleni and me to pursue higher education and to strive to realize our career ambitions, believing that we were every bit as entitled to pursue our dreams as any man’s son. When, in classic Greek fashion, friends or colleagues lamented his lack of a son whose achievements might help support him in his old age, he abruptly dismissed their concerns. “I don’t need a son,” he would say. “I have Gianna!”

  We went for family holidays to the beach, but there was nothing he loved more than taking us on trips to historic places. Obsessed with language, he would hold forth on history, mythology, and culture, and I hung on every mind-expanding word. Eleni was not as enchanted by the
performances. She would complain, somewhat justifiably, that she not only had to hear the lectures from him at Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympics (and a place of great importance to me some years later), or Delphi, the site of the Temple of Apollo, but also again, after we returned home, when I repeated the lessons almost word for word.

  Tales of the prophecies of the Delphic Oracle particularly enchanted me. It was said that when men asked her if they were destined to die in war, she would reply with such verbal dexterity that her prophecy, depending on the listener’s interpretation, would always be right. I recall posing on a rock at Delphi, pretending to be the oracle—the priestess Pythia—and terrifying little Eleni with my fertile and less than gracious imagination: “You will be captured by the enemy and you will be tortured until …” (You see, I preferred a prophecy with only one possible interpretation.)

  The enemy most likely to torture Eleni, at least through her early years, was naturally her older sister. We had opposite temperaments. I was outgoing, rambunctious, and quite willing to challenge and provoke authority (especially the authority of my mother). Eleni was shy and cautious. It made her very nervous when we flirted with trouble, almost always trouble of my making.

  I once sneaked out of the house to get some cotton candy at a local festival, leaving my sister home alone. I promised Eleni I would return in a matter of minutes, but I had failed to anticipate the long line. The wait was getting so long that I panicked. I ran to the front of the line and said: “Sorry, there is an emergency with my grandmother and I have to leave. Can I please have one?” But the “emergency” occurred a little too late. I had taken only a few bites when my mother showed up and angrily disposed of my sweet treat.

  I was never really chastened, however, and have, throughout my life, remained quick to challenge the established ways and the conventional wisdom. I have always been particularly contemptuous of silly rules that made no sense to me.

  I’m not sure I can explain how, as a little girl, I developed such an outsized personality. But at a very early age I had a rather strong sense of self and an inflated notion of purpose. When I was just six years old, I required a tonsillectomy. My father decided to entrust my care to a surgeon in Athens whom he knew from the army. That meant my first airplane flight. Just before walking out to the plane, I bent down rather dramatically and scooped up a handful of the earth. I wrapped it in a handkerchief that my mother always made sure I carried and tucked it away in my small handbag.

  When my father puzzled over what I was doing, I told him, “I want to take some of the land with me because I am leaving.” I had learned this symbolic gesture from “The Soil of Greece,” a famous poem written by Georgios Drosinis, in which he wrote:

  Now that I am leaving and shall go to foreign lands,

  And we shall live apart for months and years,

  Let me take something from you too, my blue beloved homeland.

  Everyone started to laugh because the narrator in the poem is departing on a long voyage and leaving everything—his country, his family—behind. He doesn’t know if he will ever return to his homeland. Even though my tonsils wouldn’t, I would be returning to Crete very soon.

  While my sentimental gesture may have been over-the-top, theatrically speaking, it nevertheless reflected a genuine emotional undercurrent that has always remained at the core of my life. My father had hoped that I would be inspired to pursue a career as an archaeologist. But even as a youngster, I knew digging for ancient Greece wasn’t my thing. I told my father I was far too impatient for archaeology. Always in a hurry, I would probably wind up dropping and breaking some of the country’s most valuable treasures.

  But the lure of history was not lost on me. I didn’t just read books; I consumed them. I read history and realized how individuals could change the world. I began reading newspapers and following the shifting alliances among Turkey, Greece, the United Kingdom, the United States, and other nations. One word in particular caught my fancy: ambassador. Ambassadors were the critical players in deciding the fate of nations. They carried secret documents, negotiated treaties that altered the course of history. I decided that that’s what I wanted to be. An ambassador.

  Everyone with whom I shared this dream laughed at me. “Are you out of your mind?” the Greek chorus said. “This doesn’t happen unless you belong to a wealthy family that already had somebody—a father, a grandfather, or, at the very least, an uncle—who was an ambassador. And in all your careful studies,” the same chorus teased, “did you ever notice any women ambassadors carrying those documents or signing those treaties?”

  History, in fact, supported their view. Greece didn’t appoint its first female ambassador until 1986.

  I felt that, like my father, I was first and foremost a patriot whose greatest joy would come from my service to the Greek people. I dreamed of achieving something monumental, something historic, for my country. And that remained my dream until it became a dream fulfilled. My father lived until 1991. He saw me elected to the Athens city council and then to the Greek Parliament. He was there when I married into one of our nation’s most distinguished families.

  I regret that he didn’t live to witness the ceremony in 1998 when, after I led the successful campaign to bring the Olympics home to their birthplace, Greece honored me with the title of Ambassador.

  AS I’VE SHOWN IN EARLIER CHAPTERS, my father had a modern outlook and was broadminded about certain societal trends. He supported his daughters’ academics and career ambitions even when feminism was just in its infancy in countries far more progressive than Greece. My mother, on the other hand, was wedded to more traditional ways. Although those two perspectives may seem decidedly at odds, my sister and I perceived the divide this way: Embaros was all about play, while our home in Heraklion was all about work, duties, and responsibility.

  My father, with his commanding personality, ruled the roost. But his long hours at work and frequent travel meant that far more often my mother was left in charge. She was, by nature, sweet and was totally devoted to her daughters. Yet she was unshakable when it came to the conviction that Eleni and I must be equipped to perform the traditional roles of Greek women. She made sure that we spent long, boring hours during our school holidays mastering the essential household duties: how to clean, how to sew, and how to cook. While other kids in our neighborhood were out playing, we’d be stuck in our master sewing classes. Fortunately, these tedious exercises were often held on the veranda, where we could look up from our needles and thread into our glorious garden. Lush with flowers—tuberoses, gardenias, roses, jasmine—and filled with herbs—always lots and lots of basil—our garden perfumed the air with fragrances so seductive that it surely compared favorably with the Garden of Eden.

  I didn’t do a very good job of masking my displeasure when my mother assumed the role of drill sergeant, though. I would vehemently deplore what I was certain was a waste of my precious time. “Someday I will have servants in my household and I will do none of this,” I would say. She wouldn’t even bother to challenge my fundamental assumption. Instead, she’d simply say, “Even if you have servants, you have to know how to control the household and how to check that they are doing their jobs well.”

  Indeed, some of the lessons my mother taught me proved to be very useful to me in the future.

  In recent years, when visiting my children, I have taken great pleasure in surprising them by preparing home-cooked meals. “Surprise” may be a bit of an understatement. They were actually shocked, having no idea that I even knew how to cook. Despite these rare moments, when I have reflected my mother’s notions of maternal duty, I was always my father’s child, having spent almost my entire life on a path that, at least traditionally, was viewed as more the son’s than the daughter’s.

  As I mentioned, growing up I clashed far more often with my mother than with my father. Unlike many Greek fathers of that era, he never raised a hand to us. Then again, he never had to. He would bristle with anger when eithe
r I or Eleni violated what he viewed as the essential standards of a civilized society, like respect for one’s elders or modest dress. A glower from him was far more frightening than a scolding or a spanking could ever be. He had gorgeous gray-green eyes, but when he was angry, they turned into a wintry rough sea and delivered an unambiguous message.

  Though my parents had enough money to send us to a private school for our grade school education, my father insisted that his daughters attend public school. His reasoning was virtually the same as when he encouraged us to play with the children in the village of Embaros. He didn’t want us to slip comfortably into some elitist, upper-crust stratum of society; he preferred for us to mingle with a broad cross-section of real Cretans. He needn’t have been that concerned. After all, we grew up between two classes. We learned how to be women both from my aunt, who worked on the farm in Embaros in her simple cotton dress and headscarf, and from my mother, who wore lipstick and small hats that were the rage in Europe. Though she is now in her eighties, my mother, once the city girl whose sister-in-law had to tell her to don plastic gloves when she cleaned the walnuts lest her hands turn black, tries to get back to Embaros once a month to ensure that everything is in order. I likewise try to return to Embaros every time I have a chance—along with my children—to get in touch with my roots. The ability to move between the world of the farm and the world of the city and to communicate with people across class and economic lines has proved to be an invaluable asset to me throughout my life.

  Students in Greece attend elementary school through the sixth grade and then high school through twelfth grade before going to university.

  After completing elementary school, I attended the First Herak-lion District All Girls High School. There were about sixty girls in each class and the teachers treated us like numbers. We attended school from Monday through Saturday, enjoying no weekends at the time. We were required to pull our hair back and wear unattractive uniforms. I particularly hated the socks. Worst of all, the school was surrounded by high bars. The bars didn’t stop the hundreds of young military reservists from ogling us, however, while they paraded past our school every week. Half of the love stories in Heraklion began on those fateful Friday afternoons.