PRE-WAR GREECE
Angeline in the EON 1938 or 1939
After Stella's death, rather than immediately returning to the States, Maria decided to remain in Greece to spend time with her relatives as she mourned the loss of her daughter. She enrolled Angie and Apollo in school. While the children’s Greek was not fluent, within a short amount of time it became so. In order to attend public school, children were required to join the National Youth Organization referred to as EON.
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Apollo in the EON 1938 or 1939
The EON was established by Greece’s authoritarian Premier, Ioannis Metaxas, and was patterned after Adolf Hitler’s youth organization, the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth). Like the Hitler Youth, the children in EON wore military-style uniforms, referred to Metaxas with adoration as Patera (Father) and saluted with the Nazi-style straight arm salute. Unlike the Hitler Youth, the EON served more as a recruiting tool for Metaxism than a military training ground.
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Angeline Athens 1941/1942
During the pre-war years in Greece, as Angeline entered her teens, she evolved into a beautiful, typical teenage girl enjoying her family and all that the Athens area had to offer a young American from Weirton, West Virginia.
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Angeline Athens 1941/1942
During the pre-war years in Greece, as Angeline entered her teens, she evolved into a beautiful, typical teenage girl enjoying her family and all that the Athens area had to offer a young American from Weirton, West Virginia.
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Angeline(C) with relatives in Greece 1940
Being Americans, Angeline and Apollo were popular with kids their age and they developed close and deep relationships with their overseas relatives.
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Angeline with friends in Greece 1940
As she matured, Angeline’s popularity, as might have been expected, also began to make her popular with the boys.
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Family Friends 1940/1941
Maria, too, was able to enjoy a closeness with her extended family that separation by an ocean made difficult. This was especially important to her given the loss of her daughter Stella. In addition, living a Greek life in Greece, she established many new friendships. Among them was the family of a Mr. Stamalianu who would play a small, but ironic role in Maria’s and Angeline’s fate with the outbreak of war in Greece.
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Friends Help Friends In Times of War 1942
With the outbreak of war Maria was desperate to find a way to get her children home to America. Her friend, Mr. Stamalianu, informed her that submarines were whisking people away to North Africa and that he could get her and her children onto one of them. Fearing for the safety of her children in crossing the Mediterranean in a submarine, she declined. Years after the war, in an astonishing case of serendipity, she would see Mr. Stamalianu at the New York harbor where he would inform her that he and his family had made it safely to Egypt by submarine.
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