Peter Moskos - Greek Americans: Struggle and Success

First published 2014 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2013013638

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moskos, Charles C.
Greek Americans : struggle and success / by Peter C. Moskos and Charles C. Moskos; with an introduction by Michael Dukakis. 3rd edition.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-5295-1
1. Greek AmericansHistory. 2. Greek AmericansEthnic identity. I. Moskos, Peter, 1971- II. Title.
E184.G7M67 2013
973'.04893dc23

2013013638

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-5295-1 (pbk)

Figures

To PFC Peter Shukas (192344), killed in action in France, uncle to Charles Moskos; SP4 James C. Shukas (194870), killed in action in Vietnam, cousin and godson to Charles Moskos; Patricia Shukas (192377), aunt to Charles Moskos; of Scottish, Irish, and German descent, she became the center of a Greek American family; Charles C. Moskos Sr. (18981979), father to Charles Moskos, grandfather to Peter Moskos; Charles C. Moskos Jr. (19342008), father to Peter Moskos

May their memory be eternal.

Charlie Moskos was a friend.

More than that, he was an outstanding teacher who was one of the leading military sociologists in the country. Hundreds took his courses at Northwestern University. He cared passionately about the country that had welcomed his parents as Greek immigrants and, like most Greek Americans, he was very proud of his ethnic roots.

It was that pride that led him to write this aptly titled book. Greek Americans did, in fact, struggle. They came here to a new and very different land. Although they didnt generally face the kind of discrimination that African Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, and Latinos experienced, southern Europeans were not looked upon with great favor when they first arrived on these shores.

The Immigration Act of 1924 and its infamous quota system were deliberately designed to discriminate against them. In fact, my own motherwho according to Charlie was the first Greek American young woman ever to go away to college in the United States and a Phi Beta Kappa from Bates College in Mainewas discouraged from applying for teaching jobs in at least one suburban Boston community because her name was Boukis.

But the Greeks who came here workedand how they worked! Seven days a week at the fruit store or restaurant, and everybody in the family was expected to participate. Angie Eraklis, a great heart surgeon at Boston Childrens Hospital, once told me that while he was in medical school, he would travel back home to Maine every weekend to bake the pies for his fathers restaurant and then come back to Boston to resume his medical studies Sunday night.

He was not alone. We all worked. We were expected to work. And we were expected to count our pennies, Economia, Mihali. Economia. If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times. Be thrifty, Michael. Be frugal. In fact, the first Greek word my wife, Kitty, ever learned was the word tsingounis. Its probably as close to the word miser as you can find in the Greek language, and there wasnt any question about whom she thought she was describing.

The Greek who came here were for the most part barely educated. Most of them had little more than three or four years of elementary education; however, they had very high aspirations for their children.