Object ID
2011.6.91
Object Name
Letter
Date Created
1942
Medium
Ink
Material
Paper
Object Entities
Karalis, Elena (is related to)
Johnny, (is related to)
Access Points
Object Description
A letter written by Johnny to "folks" on January 11, 1942. It fills up the front side and half of the back side of the paper. In the letter he talks about an interview and passing a physical exam to be elegible for an Officer Candidate School at a Fort in Oklahoma. He goes on to talk about how things are and asks them to take care of some things for him. He wrote in cursive and used a black pen.
Origin
The donors grandfather, Gus Gianakopulos, came to America with 200 youths from the Sparta area around the time of 1881. Mr. Chaconas was in charge of the trip and when they arrived in Chicago all 200 of them were put in one room together and bought each one of them a push wagon. The group of people would sell one product a day using their push wagons. In 1893 the Gus became a US citizen and was working in the fruit and vegetable wholesale business. He later went back to Greece to visit but called the US his country. In 1900 a few men went back to Greece to get married and on their way back they brought the donors grandmother, Georgia, to Chicago, where her father and brother were. Gus and Georgia got married in December 1901 at the Holy Trinity Church and they invited all Greeks and the story is that there were 98 carriages that attended the reception. They had several children, first a boy then a girl named Daisy, then the donor's mother Pauline, next were two sisters, Virginia and Eleanor, and last was John. The Spartans in the area started a church in a building on South Water Street, but the priest had decided to go back to Greece. In 1908-1909 they built what is now the Annunciation Cathedral on LaSalle Street and in 1910 the church was completed. This church is where the whole family was baptized, married, and buried. The family lived on the north side of Chicago so any Greek schools were too far away for them to attend so a Greek teacher came in Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 25 years. The donors mother, Pauline went to Forest Academy to studied dress design and not much after that she met her husband and moved to Minneapolis in 1929. The two worked and helped out the church they were members of quite a bit. They traveled a lot and often went to Greece but in 1970 he passed away. They had two children, George and Elena and after her husband passed away Pauline and Elena went on many different trips around the world.
Rights and Reproduction
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Citation
Letter, 1942, National Hellenic Museum, https://collections.nationalhellenicmuseum.org/Detail/objects/9003. Accessed 05/01/24.