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

by Gianna Angelopoulos

  My mother had arranged for me to share an apartment with two other girls from Crete. Both were attractive: Thalia was dark, with an exotic tropical look, and Stella was fair and blond. Friends liked to joke that we were the “Three Graces,” and amid our scruffy, working-class neighborhood, that was certainly true. We got the feeling that everyone there was watching us all the time—more than one using binoculars.

  They didn’t watch us all the time, of course. They must not have seen those times when I came home in the wee hours of the morning. Which would explain the surprisingly warm greeting I got on one of those occasions. I was returning home so late—or so early, depending on your perspective—that the neighborhood café was already open. I decided to stop for milk and fresh bread before heading home to bed. People were already inside drinking coffee, and when I greeted the owner, everybody there seemed to recognize me as one of the three new girls on the block. The owner made a big fuss over me and showered me with praise—praise that was totally undeserved. “Those other students sleep in all day,” complained the owner. “Thank God I see here at least one student who is up early and serious about going to classes.” (The owner apparently equated my having lipstick on with being ready for class.)

  By the time I had departed for university, my parents were living primarily on a pension; my sharing an apartment was a good way for me to save on expenses. Unfortunately, freedom proved a bit heady at first, and I quickly picked up some bad and expensive habits: French cigarettes, fashion magazines, and, worst of all, some of the fashions I saw in those magazines. I can remember the horrified expressions on my parents’ faces when I stepped off the plane on my first trip home, for Christmas. I was wearing a slit maxidress, boots with platform heels, and a hat. My makeup was extensive and my nails were long—I hadn’t trimmed them since I left home—and painted bright red. It was another “stroke” for my father and another quarrel at home with my mother. “What will our neighbors think?” she said. “Do I care about their opinion?” I retorted. Though I was now a university student and, to my mind, a full-fledged grown-up, my father had not become any more permissive. When I was invited to a highly respectable party in honor of a member of Parliament, my father insisted that I be home by midnight, practically afternoon by Greek social standards. And when I missed getting home by that deadline, I was met by the all-too-familiar wintry-rough-sea eyes.

  School proved stormy too that first year. I quickly ran out of spending money, as did my roommates. So we began assigning one person the responsibility of saving money each week so that we could put food on the table. We ate collectively, often with an extended group of friends. Sometimes there would be a dozen people eating out of the same pot. When it was my turn to cook, I remember thinking that I should have paid more attention when my mother was giving lessons. One time I made a giant pot of spaghetti and accidentally dumped it into the kitchen sink. Fortunately, I had cleaned the sink that day. Even more fortunate, nobody was around to witness me shoving the pasta back in the pot. Mercifully, my mother sent relief packages by ferry each month. Actually “packages” doesn’t do justice to the scale of her relief efforts; they were giant cartons filled to the brim with meatballs, dolmas, cheeses, and other staples of Greek cuisine.

  If only my mother could have rescued us as easily from our academic problems. At year’s end, I was prepared to discuss Wilhelm Reich and to defend the various political positions of student demonstrators, but I wasn’t remotely ready for the finals in my law courses. The most revealing and embarrassing episode involved my commercial-law class. Before the exam, I spied a very attractive, well-dressed man, no more than forty years old, watching from the side of the packed auditorium. I uttered an appreciative “wow” to one of my friends and asked if she knew “the hot guy.” “That’s our professor, Lampros Kotsiris,” she informed me. The class was held from eight to ten in the morning so I had never attended. Years later, when I had become well known in Greece, that professor—still very handsome—paid me a courtesy call. I confessed my classroom sins and we had a good laugh together.

  That first year I wound up failing half my exams and had to spend the entire summer studying to retake them so that I could proceed with my degree studies. I would become a far more diligent student and, also important, far more astute at navigating academics at the university. When I faced classroom difficulties, I would go see the professors outside of class to ask, perhaps even to beg, for a second chance or for some extra work to boost my grades. I was intelligent, earnest, and eager. I was also aware that my charms worked well on male professors (and some female professors as well). Some might consider the use of one’s charms to be less than charming behavior. But in actuality it was a real-life lesson in working the system, a lesson that proved invaluable later when I had to navigate far more treacherous political terrain.

  After my first year, I decided I would fare better living alone. My roommates were lovely people, but they each had a boyfriend, and the logistics became too complicated in the apartment we shared. As soon as Thalia and Stella graduated, they returned to Crete and married those same sweethearts—to lead a life that, at least in my view, wasn’t all that dissimilar to their parents’. Today, they are living happily in Heraklion. But I had grander dreams. I wanted to open my wings and fly.

  I lived alone for the final three years of university. I won’t pretend that, after my initial stumbling, I became a model student. But I did learn from my mistakes. I had been so eager for my first taste of real freedom, so busy trying to demonstrate what an independent spirit I was, that I had neglected to take responsibility for my life. I came to understand that flying requires pulling your wings in as much as it does spreading them out. There was probably no surer sign of my growing maturity than my decision in my last semester to invite my mother to move in with me while I prepared for final exams.

  After my sister went off to the university in Athens, life had become somewhat trying for my mother. She was quite depressed to find herself an empty nester. So she was thrilled to discover that there were a whole lot of young people in Thessaloniki who needed her care in the worst way. A big group of law students studied together for exams. We would gather in the late afternoon and wouldn’t close our books until the sun was coming up. My mother became “the gang’s mother,” cooking two meals a day for all of us. (As it turned out, she would also play this role now and again in the years ahead.)

  And in many ways, because of her help, I became the first woman in our family to graduate from a university.

  EVER SINCE THE DAYS of the Daskalakis-Fazakis family vacation where I attempted to frolic barefoot in the streets of Athens, I always knew I wanted to live in Greece’s capital city. To me, Athens has always been much more than one of the world’s oldest cities and the seat of the government. It was (and is) a cosmopolitan international city in which I knew I wanted to make my future.

  As you’ve already seen, helping to determine the future of my country had been my goal since girlhood, and Athens, the seat of the national government, was the place where I could achieve that goal. Had I arrived in Athens at age eighteen for my law studies, the big city might have swallowed me up. But I had learned some valuable lessons about discipline and responsibility studying in Thessaloniki, and now I felt much better equipped to take Athens on. I arrived with at least the outline of a career plan as well as some notion of where I hoped my ambitions would lead. The first challenge was to establish myself as a lawyer, familiarizing myself with the city—its bureaucratic networks and its political landscape. Once I had attained some proficiency and success as an attorney, I would start to be on the lookout for political opportunities. I believed that my future would lie not in a courtroom but in public service. I wanted to solve problems on a larger scale than one case at a time.

  As I mentioned earlier, my father was retired and living on a pension. So, when I moved to Athens, I felt that I couldn’t ask him for financial support. It was time for me to take complete responsibility f
or my own life. To save money I moved in with Eleni, who was still studying at the university. Without a job and without a source of income, I was forced to sell all the gold chains and other jewelry I had received as gifts through the years, mostly from my parents and my godmother. All those gifts had great sentimental value, but you can’t eat sentiment. As I was gathering the jewelry to take to the shop, my sister began to cry. “Why are you crying?” I asked. “I didn’t take your jewels.” “No,” she said, “I am crying because I am so sorry you have to go through this.” “It’s okay,” I reassured her. “I’ll find a way out.”

  But even with a law degree, finding a way out wasn’t easy, and certainly not an easy thing to do quickly. In Greece at that time, before you could take the bar exam and hang out your own shingle, you were expected to apprentice at an established law firm. That meant a year or two interning at no salary. Many of the nation’s law students—especially in Athens—came from affluent families and, with parental support, could afford to work without pay without experiencing any hardship. For me, the jewelry would make that path possible, but it was, at best, a short-term solution.

  I decided to approach a renowned Athens lawyer by the name of Nontas Zafiropoulos about an internship. Though Zafiropoulos had a very small practice—only about four partners—he boasted many important clients and was exceedingly well connected among the Athenian power elite. And he had a hard-earned reputation as a winner in court. But absent any connections, the question was how to gain an audience with him. Throughout my life, I have found that persistence pays off. Sometimes you just have to show up and keep on showing up until you wear down the resistance. Show up and you wind up making acquaintances that have the potential to become alliances. It’s amazing how often people are willing to help you reach your goal if only you can convince them that you deserve a chance. When at long last I got to see Zafiropoulos, he was quite aware of the substantial effort I had made to get in to see him, the kind of effort that could prove a virtue, he said, in a young lawyer. He was also impressed with my background and the can-do, will-do attitude I projected. He agreed to take me on, awarding me one of the coveted internships in his law firm.

  The firm of Nontas Zafiropoulos and partners handled a vast range of legal matters, from apartment rentals to criminal cases, from shipping documents to divorce. Over the next year, I did a little of everything. Actually, I did a whole lot of everything. I read documents, wrote documents, ran documents to offices all over the city, appeared in court on routine filings, and performed all the basic duties that filled the days and, too often, the nights of the firm’s interns. It didn’t take me long to demonstrate that I was faster, more efficient, and more dedicated than the other interns in the office. I proved particularly useful at court and in government offices where lawyers were often stymied by the long delays that resulted from necessitous document searches. The archives were a mess and, in the prehistoric pre-computer era, the process was unwieldy and often unyielding. The bureaucrats there had a reputation for being brusque and willfully obstructive. I made a special point of courting these people who were so often the object of attorneys’ wrath. As a result, some folks reputed to be among the toughest were willing to help me out with surprising dispatch. The lawyers at my firm believed I worked miracles. The first rule became: If you need it in a hurry, send Gianna. The second rule was: If you need it done well, use Gianna.

  I had quickly become our law office’s “golden horse,” the intern they rode to a considerable profit. But while my efforts—the hard work and long hours—were recognized and garnered considerable praise from the partners, there was never a suggestion that I would be compensated financially any time soon. The system was clearly exploitive and, given my workload and the financial pressure I was under, my resentment was becoming increasingly acute. Finally, after nearly a year, I requested a personal meeting with Zafiropoulos. I prepared to plead my case with the same thoroughness I used when I headed to court. “Look, I’m very happy here and know that I am lucky to have this position,” I told him. “I also know that you are under no obligation to pay me. But my father can’t send me any more money, so I can’t survive like this much longer. I know you are aware of how much work I’ve done for you, how many cases I’ve helped with. And I know how much money you have earned off those cases.”

  As I paused to catch my breath, I noticed he was actually blushing. He had five children and perhaps he understood—maybe even felt guilty about—my struggle. If so, he never said. What he did was far better than a verbal pat on the back. He immediately paid me three months’ back wages and ordered all his associates to compensate me for any future work. The salary was not huge, but it covered my living expenses. Even though I celebrated a great personal victory, I hadn’t as yet done anything to change the system.

  My modest compensation proved to be even more essential than I had anticipated, because I was about to make a naive decision. I accepted a marriage proposal from a man I had been dating, a handsome divorcee with two children who appeared to be affluent. He had a good job and excellent prospects for the future—or so he told me. I thought I was getting a hardworking husband who was a doer, a man I could respect and whose opinions I would trust. But he preferred playing backgammon to working hard. He was far from a doer. Later, after I won elective office, tensions between us would escalate as I realized that he hoped to capitalize on my new position to secure business opportunities. That was hardly unusual behavior in Greek politics, but not acceptable to me.

  I don’t have too many regrets about that unhappy marriage, if only because I have from it one of the greatest blessings of my life, my daughter, Carolina, born in 1983.

  I continued practicing law to pay the bills. At the same time, I made my first move to get into politics. As a result of my boss’s work with the Athens Bar Association, I had become increasingly involved in civic matters. Some of the people I met urged me to take that involvement to the next level and run for office. I have never been the type of person who saw a problem and liked to sit around and complain about it. I’ve always believed in taking responsibility and taking action. But when they first approached me, I was constrained by the fact that I had a demanding job and a baby at home.

  By the mid-1980s, problems in Athens were far worse than mine. On September 14, 1981, the Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper, warned, “Choking on Growth, Athens Turns into Nightmare.” Two years later, on May 12, 1983, the New York Times headline confirmed that warning: “Now It’s Official: Athens Smog Is Europe’s Worst.” Athens was a dismal, unbearable place with four million inhabitants: a gray city with gray buildings, a gray atmosphere, and gray people. Pollution smothered the city and nobody on the streets seemed to be smiling. This civic depression, both economic and emotional, represented a critical challenge, and in the absence of an infrastructure and initiatives by the government to address the problems, my friends pressed me once again to take it on. “You have much to offer,” they said. “You are smart, you are energetic, and you are tough. You can make things happen.”

  So, with Carolina at least toddling along, I felt ready to take the political plunge. Part of my motivation was admittedly personal. I was not happy at work; I felt I did a lot of the heavy lifting while the firm’s partners shared all the glamour and glory—and almost all the money too. And I was not happy in my marriage. I had reached a kind of dead end in my life.

  After being admitted to the Athens bar, I left the law firm of Nontas Zafiropoulos and opened a small law office specializing in criminal law. I preferred criminal law because the stakes were greater and it was all about winning. But most important, being out on my own freed me up to pursue my political ambitions. I had set my sights on becoming a candidate in the 1986 municipal elections. The only problem was that to run for city council I had to convince a political party to include me on its slate.

  As you’ll recall from the previous chapter, at university I flirted with all ideas, marched with all kinds of people
—even extreme leftists—and gave full vent to the natural idealism of youth. But as my political identity evolved, I realized I was the furthest thing from an ideologue. I was, at heart, a pragmatist, anxious to use the power of government to solve problems and eager to work with people of all political stripes who shared the same goals. There was, however, no straddling the center in Greece’s fractious political divide. On the left side of the divide was the Socialist Party, PASOK; on the right, New Democracy. As in American politics today, Greece at that time was paralyzed by the polarization of the two dominant parties. Balanced precariously between the left and the right, the Greek Parliament was unable to take the action necessary to improve life in Athens and the rest of the country.

  By the time I was interested in running for office, PASOK had held power for about five years and—at least to my mind—had created nothing but turmoil. They were good at dismantling the foundations of many Greek institutions but failed to build anything substantive to put in their place.

  I felt I had no choice but to cast my lot with the only viable opposition, New Democracy. Admittedly, that choice was made more attractive by the fact that the party seemed poised to return to power. However, I was hardly a perfect fit with New Democracy; I would always have a lot of Embaros in me and wasn’t inherently comfortable with the party elites who too often seemed to govern by self-interest, which coincided with the interests of the wealthy Greek establishment. I didn’t want to be hamstrung by ideological or political considerations. By Greek political standards, that made me far more of a revolutionary than a classic conservative.