Letters (& a precious gift) from Eleni Xanthopoulou...

Last March (on the what would have been my father Steve's 95th birthday), I stepped up my search to find out more about his own father: the heretofore mysterious Xanthoulis Xanthopoulos. When  (during the Ottoman Empire) did he leave Skopos in Thrace, with whom and where to first? Did he visit NY in 1913? Where were his relatives? Some of us cannot even agree on what his first name was, even though all his official papers (including the petition for naturalization that he signed) say Xanthoulis and not Xenophon. But I digress...

While in Greece last summer, I was able to connect -- at the last minute by telephone in a rather amazing way -- with Eleni Xanthopoulou, the adopted daughter of Xanthoulis' brother Kostas. Since then we have had an ongoing, revealing correspondence. And this with a woman I have yet to meet in person! Nevertheless, she has supplied me with documentation that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is the real deal.

She not only referenced Stockton, California, in our initial phone conversation (and knocked me out of my chair!), but talked about photos that her family received -- and saved all these years! -- with boxes of clothes sent to Greece by my grandmother, Pauline Xanttopulos. Subsequently, I received photocopies of those images. This one of my Uncle Gus' family was taken more than 55 years ago... 

Then a precious gift: a photo of Kokony Xanthopoulou -- wife of Efstathios Xanthopoulos (for whom my father was named), Xanthoulis' mother and my father's paternal grandmother. This was the first time my father's sister Mary or any of us had seen a picture of her. If my father was around he'd probably say,  "What's the big deal? I, of course, met my grandmother when she visited us in Naousa around 1925 before we came to this country."

But he's not around, and it is a big deal. And for that we have to thank Eleni Xanthopoulou. Stay tuned...