Greek Community Gives Back To City That Gave Them A Chance At Better Life

This weekend marks the 60th Annual Greek Bake Sale in Winston-Salem. Since its beginnings, the close-knit immigrant community here has grown from a few dozen families with a makeshift house of worship, to nearly 400, and a well-established Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church.

This is more than a bake sale. It's a cherished reunion, bringing families together for fellowship and fun. They're also raising money for poor people in the city that welcomed many of them here when they first arrived from Greece a generation ago, and gave them a chance at a better life.

Inside the Church Hall kitchen, a dozen members of the Greek Orthodox Ladies Philoptochos Society stand side-by-side at a long, metal, food preparation table. The lively multi-generational group prepares Greek favorites like baklavá, and finikia, but today's specialty is spanakopitakia.

Rita Georgoulias is quick with a helpful pronunciation lesson.

“Spah-nah-koh-pee-TAH-kyah,” she enunciates slowly and deliberately. “And Greek ladies are very proud of the way they make their pastries! That's a given!” she says as she laughs.

Georgoulias, like all the Greek women here, is wearing a hair net and talking loudly over the chaotic scene.

“There's drama!” she says as a cart carrying trays of spanakopitakia crashes loudly into the table. “You know the Greeks invented drama! Let's hope it doesn't become a tragedy!”

Through it all, the women here continue sharing local gossip while methodically stuffing delicate strips of phyllo with spinach and feta cheese, and folding them into neat, bite-sized triangles.

Fun aside, Georgoulias says these women come together each year out of friendship and love to present something meaningful to the public. It's a tradition that dates back nearly a century.

“With the Greek ladies, it was the recipes that they brought with them from Greece,” says Georgoulias. “They were born in Greece. They came here, didn't know the language. They had very few skills so, they said that the Greek churches of America are built on a slab of baklavá.”

Georgoulias says this type of community effort is part of their DNA - it's only natural for herself, and for many like her here who arrived in America with little more than the clothes on their back.

“We got burned out by the Italians. Then we got burned out by the Germans,” she says. “Then we went to another home that we barely had a chance to flee. Civil War broke out in 1948. That's when my father decided to bring his family one at a time over here. So, that's how I came to be here in 1951 at the age of seven.”

But, Georgoulias says, the circumstances surrounding her family's emigration from Greece to North Carolina were hardly unique. Her sister-in-law Presbytera Betsy Vlahos, came from even humbler beginnings. The eldest daughter of seven children says she had to grow up fast in her tiny village of Sardinina.

“We never even saw a car much less to have one,” says Vlahos. “We were too busy just trying to survive. Trying to find something to put at the table for these little children to eat. We used to split a potato and you know, however we had to do.”

Her mother was often weakened by childbirth and nursing, and Vlahos became her main helper. As the eldest daughter in the family, Vlahos embraced that role, feeding the younger children and accompanying them everywhere they went by foot. But, she admits, it was very limiting.

“Going to school was not one of the musts in the girl's life when I was growing up. Therefore, if my mother needed me to take a bunch of clothes to the creek to wash them, get them back home and dry them on the fence, it was my job to do.”    

Vlahos says that being a poor family with four daughters was a constant pressure for her father.

“The dowry was a big problem for us. If we did not have [a] dowry, we would not have the best of a husband,” says Vlahos. “That's what he was looking at. How was he going to make all of these girls have the best future possible with the small belongings that he had?”

He eventually made the decision to move himself and the entire family to North Carolina, where two uncles already lived, and had arranged jobs for him and his eldest son. The Vlahos family arrived at a farmhouse in Clemmons with one suitcase filled with cloth for diapers. They spoke no English, had no money, and arrived with just the clothing they wore.

Vlahos was 15 years old and remembers it well.

“We always heard that it was the best place on earth, and we did not need to have an extra set of clothes. Because there, people give clothes to people. And so, it was true.”

Shortly after their arrival, tragedy struck. While working in a grain silo, her father contracted a severe chest ailment that sent him to the hospital where he died within 72 hours. Vlahos says that they were devastated, and scared, but with the support of family, friends and community members, they eventually became self-sufficient. She graduated from Reynolds High School, and now has seven grandchildren with degrees who have since entered the workforce.

These are stories that 39-year-old Sophia Vgenopoulos has heard before, but she doesn't mind. She was born in Winston-Salem to Greek immigrant parents.

“Being part of this table means the world to me because these are people who have helped raise me, and being part of this community is who we are and what we love to do. It's an extended family,” says Vgenopoulos.

She keeps the Greek cooking tradition alive in her own home where she says Greek meat sauces, homemade pitas and desserts like baklavá and galaktoboureko are staples.

While the women prepare spanakopitakia, across the parking lot, the youngest members of the church are busy rehearsing Greek songs and dance. They come every week for practice year-round and attend competitions throughout the southeast. It's fun for them, and a way to keep the tradition alive for the next generation.