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

by Gianna Angelopoulos

  There was no question that after our child was born I would move to Zurich. It was not just that Theodore’s business interests were centered there. Our marriage had created quite a splash in Athens, which can be a very small city. Our courtship had been spent in virtual hiding. Now, although we could go out anywhere, we were recognized everywhere. We were under intense media scrutiny and became the objects of curiosity for everyday Athenians. The media would always have its sport with me, but most of the Athenians we encountered were generous with their good wishes. Yet it was all a bit suffocating. We wanted to start our new life and our new family with some degree of privacy. Switzerland, by its nature, pretty much assured that. In Zurich, we would be just another affluent businessman and his family.

  Despite my eagerness to embrace my new life, I felt a sense of sorrow and I knew I had to deal with it quickly. It had been such an extraordinary privilege to serve in Parliament, to be entrusted by voters with their most vital needs. While apparently nobody in my party would object if I kept my seat while living abroad, I knew I wouldn’t be doing justice to my constituents. I had no choice but to resign.

  Party leaders who had so often been irritated by my independence—I could remember their faces when I stood up in Parliament and questioned why so many government officials required black limousines at their service—were dismayed by my decision. They tried to convince me to retain the seat, saying I could fly in occasionally for important meetings or votes. “Nothing was given to you,” the speaker of the Parliament told me. “You succeeded by yourself. You can’t now abandon something you tried so hard to attain.”

  But how could I possibly speak to people about their needs when most of the time I would be in my lovely mansion in Switzerland, far from Parliament and far from Greece? Did the party leaders really believe that I could claim to represent working people from a distance and given my changed circumstances? Did they actually think I could jet or yacht in a couple of times a month for votes and then go home having done my duty? That didn’t fit with the serious notions of public service I had nurtured during my life. It would be dishonest, a fraud on the voters whom I had promised just two things: I would tell them the truth, and they would be the beneficiaries of my total dedication. And the truth was that I could no longer give them my total dedication. If I felt guilty—and I did—it was not for forsaking my dream, but their dreams.

  There was a rumor that because the Angelopoulos family was politically nonpartisan and, with its wide-ranging interests, needed to work with politicians on both sides of the aisle, my father-in-law had encouraged my parliamentary exodus. That’s not true. Never happened. In fact, Theodore was quite disappointed with my decision. He was very proud of the position I held and enjoyed seeing me in the limelight.

  Neither Theodore nor party leaders could change my mind. Because the decision was so wrenching and emotional for me, I wasn’t sure I would get the words exactly right. Once again I called on my trusted friend Lefteris Kousoulis, the man who had written my letter of support to New Democracy that had propelled me into Parliament. Now he would write my letter of resignation, dated September 5, 1990, effectively book-ending my parliamentary career.

  Ironically, my resignation paved the way for Nontas Zafiropoulos, the lawyer for whom I had worked fresh out of college, to win my former seat in Parliament. I went from being his golden horse in the law firm to his golden chariot in politics.

  Years later, even after I had accomplished a great deal for Athens with the 2004 Summer Olympics, people would tell me of their disappointment over my quitting, because they had believed in me. They didn’t really understand when I explained that I had quit out of respect for the office and for them. That decision—both right and necessary—still pains me. But that has been the story of my life. Nothing has been attained without some pain. People see me today and they think that it has been easy for me, that I merely grabbed opportunities or had doors opened for me. There is no truth in that. Nothing came easy to me. And every opportunity I received demanded that I sacrifice something I truly loved.

  IN JUNE 1991, we celebrated the baptism of our son Panagiotis at our home in Athens, with Archbishop Iakovos conducting the ceremony. Our immediate families, our closest friends, and anyone who was important in Greece at that time were there. Theodore’s parents, Panagiotis and Eleni, were the godparents. It was a joyous occasion, one of the happiest days of my life. I was thrilled that my father was there to see his grandson all dressed up in the white silk christening outfit that Theodore himself had worn at his baptism.

  It would be the last time I saw my father. I am so lucky to have that day as a final memory. While I was pregnant, his health had continued to decline. On July 25, while Theodore and I were in Italy celebrating our first wedding anniversary, my father, Frixos Daskalakis—a tower of strength, a man of enduring principle, and an inspiration to me throughout my life—passed away.

  What a turn of fate. After my father and the rest of my family gathered for the joyous event of Panagiotis’s christening, our family gathered again, this time in Crete, mourning at my father’s funeral. I cried, and I cried hard. I couldn’t help it. My life had turned in an unexpected direction. I had begun to live a new life, a life of love and high expectations, a life so unlike the life I had led before. And my heart broke because my father was not there to share my happiness. Our happiness.

  In September, more than a year after our marriage and my resignation from Parliament, we made the move to Zurich. For me, everything felt new—a growing family, a big home, a new city, a new language, and a life that centered around the demands of my husband’s business.

  I dwelled mostly on my own challenges. But what a shock it must have been for Theodore too, even if it was a happy one. A year before, Theodore had been a confirmed bachelor, certain that he would never marry again or have children. Now his quiet home had been overrun by a wife, two children (and another one on the way), nannies, teachers, dogs, and all the other trappings and accoutrements of a household of considerable means.

  I expected I would be kept busy with household duties, which would certainly delight my mother. But Theodore was already well taken care of by a Portuguese couple, a butler, a maid, a chef, and a chauffeur. So, as a housewife, I was pretty much out of a job. Theodore liked it that way, at least while I was pregnant. He would have preferred it if I just lay in bed. He was overly protective, worried about the baby every time I made the slightest move, lifted anything, or bent to pick something up.

  The combination of the final months of pregnancy and my first Swiss winter meant I was usually confined to our home. Theodore and I had a lot of time to talk. He confided in me about his earlier marriage. He and his wife had been unable to have children and had gone through extensive tests without finding any medical explanation for the problem. He told her they didn’t need a child who looked like them, and they had discussed adopting children. Theodore suggested orphans from Asia or Africa—and as many as she wanted (and this was before Angelina Jolie). They would love any child whom they brought into their lives. The plan didn’t work out and Theodore said “end of marriage.” So it was natural he regarded our children as treasures and the very best kind—unexpected treasures.

  Despite all the demands of work and of a home that was now bustling with life, I was amazed how our lives proceeded in orderly fashion, kind of like a Swiss clock. Okay, sometimes it may have been a bit of a cuckoo clock. The night Dimitris was born was certainly one of those occasions.

  Theodore’s bachelor home, with its three separate floors, hadn’t been designed for the lives of a married couple with three children and a large staff. Consequently, while I was pregnant with my third child, we moved into the Dolder Grand Hotel nearby so that our home could be transformed into something a little more family friendly. It was quite late on the wintry night of February 16, 1992, when I announced to Theodore that our baby was coming that very night and that he had better call the doctor.

  “You’re go
ing to call a doctor at this hour?” Theodore asked, his years in Switzerland having apparently yielded an overly developed sense of orderliness and propriety.

  “I should tell the baby to wait until it’s working hours in Switzerland?” I replied. “And if the baby won’t wait, will you promise to stay here with me and deliver the baby? Give me a break.” So I called the doctor myself and obviously woke him up. I could tell he was every bit as annoyed as Theodore had anticipated he would be.

  “Are you sure?” the doctor asked in a sleepy voice. When I told him I was, he said he would meet us at the hospital.

  Theodore still couldn’t get over how I had bothered the doctor at that hour. Exasperated, I told him: “I don’t give a damn. I want a healthy baby.”

  So we grabbed the suitcase that was already packed and ready and headed off: Theodore, my mother, and the nanny (who was really a nanny-in-waiting), and I all piling into our Range Rover. It was snowing heavily, but we proceeded to the hospital without incident—and without any further discussion of inconveniencing the doctor. He arrived shortly after us, clearly annoyed. And he was even more annoyed when he examined me and determined that the baby wasn’t coming imminently. “It’s not time yet,” he pronounced. “You are not ready.” We began arguing. I told him I had given birth twice and knew when my baby was coming. And he insisted that he had delivered a lot more than two babies and that my baby wasn’t coming soon. “Go back to the hotel and go to sleep,” he ordered, “and when the baby is ready, I am sure he or she will call us.” When I suggested that it would be easier if I remained at the hospital, he practically barked, “Go home!”

  It was after midnight when the four of us piled back into the Range Rover and returned to the hotel. When we got there, the concierge asked, “Mrs. Angelopoulos, what happened?”

  I was still mad at the doctor, so I took it out on this poor man. “Does it look like anything happened?” I snapped.

  Theodore tried to calm me, assuring me that the gentleman was only conveying his concern. “With a silly question?” I said. “I left with a belly and returned one hour later with the same belly. What possibly could have happened?” Then I told Theodore I needed a scotch. He was so stunned by my request—I neither smoked nor drank alcohol while I was pregnant—that all he could do was inform me that the bar was closed. I told him to get it opened. A hotel employee eventually fetched me a scotch and I downed it in one big gulp.

  We returned to our rooms, put on the TV, and sat around for a while until Theodore said he needed to go to bed. I went too, but I couldn’t sleep. At about four thirty in the morning, I shouted, “Theodore,” and when he lifted his tired face to me, I told him, “It’s time.”

  “Time like last time?”

  “No, time like it is now.” I called the doctor once more but there was no answer. He had apparently taken his phone off the hook.

  So, once again, Theodore, my mother, the nanny, and I all piled into the Range Rover and drove back to the hospital through the snow. When I got there, I told the nurse to wake the doctor because the baby was on its way. After a quick examination, she agreed that the baby was coming—and coming very fast. When the doctor arrived, looking no happier than the first time, Theodore explained that he wanted to be in the delivery room. “In Greece, at the last minute they locked me outside and I never forgave the doctor,” he said. Having already butted heads with me that night, the doctor didn’t want any more trouble. He assured Theodore there would be no problem.

  And for once the doctor was right. Indeed there were no problems at all—except for one. While I was doing my breathing exercises, Theodore and the doctor were chatting away like they were at a cocktail party, going on about cars and watches and the stock market. The whole night had been conspiring to make me crazy, and I was telling myself, “Now don’t go boot the doctor out of the delivery room, because you need him there.” Having had enough of their mindless chatter I barked, “I am so bored with the two of you.”

  The doctor said, smiling, “Then give birth right away.”

  I’d really had it with this doctor and told him I was leaving the room to take a walk. When I tried to get up, the baby must have taken it as some kind of signal because it was on the way.

  I have this extraordinary image etched in my mind from right after Dimitris’s birth. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock, and through the huge windows of the delivery room I could see the snow coming down as the light was just coming up in the sky. Against that shimmering backdrop, I first looked at my beautiful son who is named after Theodore’s revered Uncle Dimitris. Then the nurse took the baby and handed him to Theodore so he could wash him. I could see how Theodore panicked, imploring with his eyes, “Gianna, Gianna.”

  “Theodore,” I told him, “I can’t help you now.”

  All mothers and fathers know that whatever the ordeal in bringing a child into the world, giving birth turns out to be the easiest part with kids.

  Just like any other mother, I had my share of headaches and missteps in raising all of my children. Some of them were unforgettable.

  For instance, I remember one time when our nanny and my mother were feeding Dimitris. He was sitting in his high chair. His nanny grabbed a bottle of clear liquid, thinking it was water, filled the sippy cup, and handed it to him. Dimitris sucked on the cup and exploded into tears as if he were being tortured, and he turned red. When I ran into the kitchen, I realized that the nanny had filled the sippy cup with my mother’s homemade raki (the alcoholic beverage I described in chapter 1). “I sure am a great mother,” I said to myself, laughing as I took the cup away from Dimitris. “I’m training my baby boy to drink raki!”

  On another occasion, Panagiotis grabbed an ice cube and put it into his mouth. Theodore, who was drinking his scotch, thought Panagiotis was choking. Panicked, he got up, picked up our son, and ran downstairs shouting, “Gianna, Gianna, help me!”

  Or the time Carolina grabbed a fruit-flavored hard candy wrapped in cellophane and ate the whole thing—cellophane and all!

  Despite those inevitable mishaps, of all the things Theodore and I have accomplished in our lives, I’m proudest of how we raised three wonderful and remarkably well-adjusted children. Our kids are intellectually curious and have dreams and ambitions of their own. They have been privileged, but aren’t spoiled, and none of them would consider sitting around and living off family wealth. Though we obviously could afford it, they have never asked for expensive gifts, have never tried to show off, and have never bragged about our business or our money. Never. They have always been down to earth. Because of their parents’ lives, our children met many famous and wealthy people. But they understood that it was never right to drop names or gossip with their friends. In our family, the dinner table was a bastion of privacy. Theodore and I talked freely around our children, confident that, even from a very early age, they grasped the concept of discretion.

  Nevertheless, Theodore and I worried about the effect of their growing up in a strange world of wealth and power, where everyone they knew lived in a megahouse and was surrounded by nannies, tutors, butlers, and chefs. Growing up in that world—our world in Zurich—the children weren’t exposed to what we thought of as “real people.” Real people were those we ourselves had encountered every day of our lives growing up in Greece. As you’ve read, I grew up in modest circumstances and attended public schools. At a young age, Theodore began working in his family’s steel plant. Before he mastered business and a host of languages, his father required him to work alongside the men who were doing the toughest jobs and the heaviest lifting. Theodore learned all of their names and about their lives and families. He showed them the same respect that they showed his family. We shared that critical belief in the dignity of labor. My father had taught me how important it was to respect people who worked hard no matter what their job.

  Our children are polite and respectful to everyone who works for us, whether a top executive or lawyer in the shipping company, or the person who clean
s our home. Both boys took hard-hat jobs at a shipyard in Holland, where one of our companies builds yachts. They were treated the same as the other workers, which was the way they preferred it. We told our children repeatedly that they shouldn’t expect to graduate college and come to work in the family business—not in the exalted position of boss’s son or daughter nor as a hard-hat either. After they went out in the world and had careers of their own, then if they wanted to join the family business, we would see.

  Theodore has always been very sweet and affectionate with our children. They find it easy to talk to him. I am a bit tougher and more demanding, the one who assumes the role of the enforcer, but in no way am I the mother who always says “No!”, “Don’t!”, “Be careful!”, and so on. But when the time comes that I do say “No!” everybody understands that I mean it. I never cared what other parents allowed their children to do or to own. But I was often willing to negotiate with my kids about things that truly mattered to them. If Carolina agreed to be home from a party at 1:00 am and was two minutes late, the next time there was no deal. I know it sounds a lot like the way my father raised me, an arrangement with which I wasn’t enamored as a young girl. But I have come around to see certain matters his way. My children learned at an early age how important it was to honor promises and to respect a deal, principles that have provided a good foundation for their lives.

  I had to be away from home quite frequently while they were growing up because of business or Olympic-related trips. I confess I have felt guilty like every working mother does. When I was home, I always tried to connect with them at dinner, even if I had to return to work afterward. Sometimes you can learn a great deal just by watching their faces closely because faces betray a lot of feelings. If the children had already eaten dinner I would ask them to sit with me while I ate. I was very honest with my kids. I encouraged them when they were doing well. But I was not one of those mothers who believed that everything they did was automatically swell. If they misbehaved or underperformed I let them know it. I offered criticism but tried to temper it with advice on how they might have fared better. I didn’t always try to protect them from hard truths or to assure them that all in life would be sweetness and light. Our family has two mottos: “Life is not always fair” and “Others may, but you must not take anything for granted.”