The OWL
SEPTEMBER 2021 in review
POET & HEALER
J o h n Tr i p o u l a s ‘ 7 4 REFLECTS ON ACS ATHENS
POET & HEALER
John Tr i p o u l a s REFLECTS ON ACS ATHENS
‘74 Class of
I am the oldest of four brothers with siblings Nick, Chris and Emil. We were born one year apart and were always one school year apart. Our family moved to Greece in the Fall of 1972. Until then we lived in Rocky River, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland and attended the local schools. Rocky River High School where I had completed my sophomore year was and still is one of the better Secondary Schools in the Cleveland area. I was a good student there and an up and coming player on the basketball team. Oddly, packing up and leaving for Greece was not, for me, that distressing. I saw it as a quest and from the start my family's two years there turned out to be an adventure.
Sailing to Greece on the TSS Olympia
hair grow longer (Rocky River still had a dress code). Many of the male teachers sported beards. Also there was a diverse student body that included young men and women who were African American, and from Asian, Middle Eastern and Latin American countries. This diversity did not exist at my school in Ohio.
We made the move to Greece on an ocean liner, the TSS Olympia, and while at sea the horric massacre of the Israeli athletes occurred on September 5th. Since Haifa was one of the Olympia's ports of call there were many Jewish passengers on board and we were there to fathom the sorrow, anger and fear of these travelers on their way to Israel. We lived in a house in downtown Athens that my father inherited and so were not near the two neighborhoods, Glyfada and Kissia, where most ACS students lived. Also we arrived late, a week or so after the fall term had started, however Academy Guidance Counselor Kathy Blaser did her best to help us make the transition into our new school environment. First impressions were that the ACS Academy was less formal than Rocky River High. Many of the students wore jeans and sandals to class and the boys let their John (left) and Coach Sam Bryant (right)
ACS was in transition at that time. Newly installed principal Dr. Don Helms was interested in instilling a Mid-Western American style sports culture at the Academy, something I was familiar with from my Ohio school. His vision was met with some resistance by the existing students and faculty who did not want ACS to lose its European character but I think Dr. Helms's outlook added to the ACS experience. Sports bring people together, something benecial to a diverse student body. Also it offered students who were interested in sports the opportunity to train with an outstanding coaching staff. Two of these coaches had a formative and lasting inuence on me. David Housel and Sam Bryant were both young men, in their mid-twenties, at the time and yet each was a powerhouse.
me to take him to the sporting goods stores in downtown Athens where we bought barbells, dumbbells, weight plates and the rest needed to put together ACS's rst weight lifting room. Coach Housel's favorite sport was Track & Field and so he created ACS's rst Track & Field team. He enlisted teachers from the Academy and the Middle School to coach the various events. I threw the discus and my coach was Mr. Savalas, actor Telly Savalas' brother who taught at ACS then. Coach Housel acquired all the track & eld equipment, shot puts, discuses, javelins, and hurdles and measured out the distances for the various running events so that we could have track competitions with other Athens High School students on our campus' newly created track and eld space.
My rst experience with an African American educator was with Coach Bryant. Sam, a top college athlete coached football and track but his specialty was basketball. He was a protégé of Tom Penders, one of the greatest college basketball coaches America has produced. Being taught basketball by Sam was a David Housel phenomenal experience. But even more signicant than basketball, Sam taught Pride. The late 60s and early 70s were a challenging time for the African American Community. For an instructor, a leader, like Sam to overcome those challenges, take the initiative to work in Europe and teach Pride to a predominantly white student body was aweinspiring. He was worshiped on campus.
All the above pales in comparison to what Dave Housel did for my family. My brother Nick, a year younger than me, was, according to the many doctors who examined him, a “late bloomer.” At age 16 he had not yet achieved his growth spurt and was too physically small to compete in sports even though he loved sports. Coach Housel changed that. First he invited Nick to be student-manager of the football team so that he was an important part of the athletic program. Then he recruited Nick to join the Cross-Country team. Coach, Nick and other runners would train on the footpaths that then surrounded the ACS campus often in the rain, often being chased by stray dogs. The training culminated in the team's obtaining the Guinness Book Continental European record for a 24-hour marathon. The training also accomplished a great goal for Nick. His body changed and he went on to run marathon races.
Coach David Housel would selfdeprecatingly call himself “a jock” but he was one of the most capable, visionary and innovative individuals I have ever met. He created ACS's rst American football team. He taught the game and coached a team that competed at the U.S. Airbase in Glyfada. Despite its being ag football, it was a contact sport and our opponents were enlisted Airmen. There is a great biological difference between 16, 17, and 18-year-old schoolboys and adult servicemen yet our team was competitive. Coach Housel decided that ACS needed weight lifting equipment. Since he didn't speak Greek, he recruited
Music was an important part of American and European life at that time. It was also an important part of the ACS experience. Both classical and popular music performances were happening at ACS. I remember attending the classical piano competition where difcult pieces were played by Manolis Papasifakis, George Paras, Aglaia Savalas and others. Popular music was played all over campus. Parthenon Huxley (then known as Rick Miller), Mark Papasifakis,
WINNING THE TOURNAMENT
John Tripoulas, Charles Eliot and (then) Rick Miller
Chris Spheeris, Paul Voudouris and others went on to careers as popular musicians. The sports and music opportunities for students were excellent but they were peripheral to the outstanding academics that ACS offered. At that time education was going through an innovative and adventurous period and many top educators came to Europe to “see what they could nd.” ACS was blessed to have them. All the instructors in all the departments were gifted educators. Not to slight their outstanding contribution but Mary Eliot's Humanities course was a stand-out learning opportunity. It was team taught by Mary Eliot trained in literature, John Demos a visual artist and Harold Lynn a musician and historian. The course was unique in that it combined book-learning of the Greek miracle with experiencing the Greek miracle. We read about Delphi, then we visited Delphi. An unforgettable moment that the class offered was Professor Eliot's tour of the Parthenon. Professor Eliot, an archeologist, and Mary's spouse, knew and taught every inch of every stone of that great symbol of Democracy. A second unforgettable moment was John Demos' slide show of photos of ancient Greek statues accompanied to Bob Dylan's great song “Forever Young.” Graduating from ACS in 1974, I studied English Literature at Oberlin College where two of my classmates were former ACS students Wesley McGrew and Manolis Papasifakis. At that time Oberlin was one of the best places for anyone interested in poetry. Poet and professor David Young
saw to it that all the top contemporary poets made a stop at the College to read their work. Included in this group of guest poets were future Nobel Laureate Tomas
Transtromer and legends such as Larry Levis and Gary Snyder. Attending these readings was an important part of my undergraduate education. Touring Greece with my family and on the various eld trips offered to ACS students instilled in me a love of travel. I wanted to do something nonacademic for a short time between college and graduate school so I joined the circus. Circus work and travel although not intellectual is one of the best ways to stimulate your imagination. I worked as an elephant driver for the Ringling Brothers Circus for a year, joining in San Francisco and leaving the show in New Orleans. I worked for Gunther Gebel-Williams perhaps the greatest animal trainer of all time. It was a unique opportunity to tour the United States and learn to love and respect God's great creation, elephants. It's true that elephant acts are controversial and have been deleted from the circus program so I can only share with you their intelligence, gentleness, and loyalty. Circus elephants protected me from harm on many occasions. Presenting Suzy, my favorite elephant, to a group of blind children who hugged and petted her was one of the most affecting moments of my life. Soon after separating from the circus I enrolled in a poetry writing course at Cleveland State University. Always interested in writing, I had written a few poems about my circus experience and was curious to see if they had the potential to be of interest to anyone. Leonard Trawick, the course's instructor and an excellent poet was very supportive of my work and encouraged me to keep writing. In 1985, a few years
after attending Professor Trawick's course and after receiving many rejection slips one of my circus poems was published. It was my rst published poem, here it is: AT THE CIRCUS At night The Circus Moves by rail At dawn In each new town Setup begins At fairgrounds Or small civic halls Families watch families perform At teardown A red EXIT Floats in the dark I can't begin to explain how much work went into writing those 12 short lines. My father and both my grandfathers were physicians who had graduated from the Athens University Medical School. I had always wanted to be a doctor, so soon after leaving the circus I enrolled in Athens University's Medical School. Given my undergraduate
degree in English Literature I assumed I would become a family physician or a psychiatrist. All that changed when my surgery professor Dr. Basil Golematis quoted T.S. Eliot in his introductory lecture. Dr. Golematis was an excellent mentor who inspired my interest in the surgical elds. He arranged for me to attend a surgical clerkship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and an Obstetrics and Gynecology clerkship at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. Both these clerkships were excellent and formative. Toward the end of medical school my father was informed by the Israeli Embassy that he was awarded the Righteous Among Nations, Yad Vashem Medal. He was given this honor for having saved the life of a Jewish neighbor who was being persecuted by the Nazis during the German occupation of Greece. My father, then a resident doctor at Evangelismos Hospital (the hospital where I now work) admitted his neighbor under a false name and pretended to care for him each day until he could ee to safety. I am very proud of my father's heroism. I chose a career in General Surgery and split my residency training between hospitals in Greece and the United States. Having completed post-graduate medical training, I felt that a surgical career in Greece was best for me. Awaiting a permanent position in the Greek National Health Service I worked temporary posts at hospitals in Greece and England. During that time a serendipitous experience occurred in late
2003. My brother Chris was watching a television program on modern Greek poets and thought he heard the mention of my maternal grandfather, Demetrios Golemis. Because my mother's parents were divorced, Golemis, from Lefkada island, was rarely mentioned. I had heard that he was a doctor who wrote poetry but assumed that the latter was a hobby. The next day I checked his name on the Internet, where Golemis' dates and place of birth corresponded with what I knew about him, but there was no mention of his poetry. There was mention, and this was astounding, that he had competed in the 800 and 1500 meter races at the rst modern Olympic Games held in 1896 in Athens. Following up on this I called the Hellenic Olympic Committee and identied myself as Golemis' grandson. The person I spoke to also mentioned that Golemis was a poet and advised me to check the card catalogue at the National Library. Sure enough there were 8 books of my grandfather's poems in the library's collection. The main street of Lefkada is named after Golemis and a bust of his likeness is in Lefkada's Poets Park next to that of more famous poets Sikelianos and Valaoritis. The Hellenic Olympic Committee was very kind and let me run in the torch relay to honor my grandfather. I took it upon myself to translate a volume of Golemis' poems into English. The collection is titled “Demolished Souls.”
Medical School
This discovery of Golemis was life changing. How could it be that a blood relative that I had never known would have the same interests as me: medicine, poetry and sports? While in medical school and residency training I didn't have time to read and write poetry but after learning of my grandfather's legacy, began to write again. In 2009 I obtained a permanent post in the Greek National Health Service as a surgeon at the hospital on the island of Ikaria. It's Greece's second smallest hospital. The paternal side of my family hails from Ikaria and I have relatives who live there. Some complain that there's not much to do on the island during the winter months but that wasn't my experience. Since Ikaria has a small population everyone knows everyone else. Most of my patients knew my family. I mentioned above that my father and paternal grandfather were doctors. They had cared for patients on the island which made me the third generation of caregivers. This made my work even more rewarding especially when I would hear stories from older patients about the care they had received from my father or my grandfather.
When I wasn't working at the hospital there was time, especially during the winter months, to write poems. Ikaria is physically beautiful and most who visit will tell you it has a metaphysical aura. It's an excellent place to write. In 2016 my collection of
poems titled “A Soul Inside Each Stone” was published by Dos Madres, a small Ohio press. In 2019 a bilingual edition of the book with poems translated into Greek by Socrates Kabouropoulos was published by the Rodakio Press in Athens. I'm pleased to say that the collection has been well received and that I've had the privilege of reading my poems at various venues and on the radio. In 2018 I received a transfer to Evangelismos Hospital in downtown Athens. It's the largest hospital in the
Surgical colleagues at Evangelismos
Balkans. I also received a promotion to “director” in the National Health System hierarchy. Currently I'm second in charge at the Third Surgical Clinic. As mentioned above my father did his residency training at Evangelismos so in some ways things have gone full circle. Transitioning from Greece's smallest hospital to its largest required some adjustment. While on the island, I was, for half my time there, the only General Surgeon plus I was providing the basic care for many of the surgical subspecialties such as urology, vascular surgery and neurosurgery. During the other half of my time there I shared these duties with one other surgical colleague. Now at Evangelismos, the Third Surgery Clinic consists of a team of 5 surgeons plus a full complement of resident trainees. The surgical subspecialties are covered by the respective surgical subspecialists. Despite its massive size patients receive excellent individual care at Evangelismos. I'm impressed with the capabilities of my colleagues. Thanks to the internet, medical knowledge and techniques that were once slow to arrive in Greece now immediately become part of Greek healthcare. I still try to nd time to write poems and have a second collection forthcoming. In a few years I'll face mandatory retirement from the Greek National Health Service but look forward to further challenging surgical experiences during my remaining
time at Evangelismos. If you've read this far, you can tell that my time at ACS has been a formative part of my life. Isaac Newton said that he stood on the shoulders of giants. While I'm not remotely close to being someone of Newton's ability, I can say, that for me, ACS has been a learning experience of gigantic proportions. It's been an honor to have this opportunity to share my impressions of ACS, and I would like to thank Ms. Belina Korovessis for offering it to me. However, I'll be ending this essay on a sad note. On February 10th, 2021 my brother Nick passed away. All who knew him will tell you what a kind, thoughtful, funny, wellmeaning person he was. He was also very intelligent, having obtained a PhD. in molecular biology and worked as a research scientist as well as teaching at the medical school at The Cleveland Clinic. Nick loved his science courses at ACS and had a high regard for Cy Blaser (Biology) and Dede Allsebrook (Chemistry), teachers who inuenced his career path. There was an outpouring of condolences at Nick's passing from ACS faculty and alumni who knew him so I can safely say that my brother was dearly loved by his classmates and teachers. May Nick's memory be eternal. John Tripoulas July 17, 2021 Athens, Greece
Nick Tripoulas
rei ACS Athens All-Class Grand Reunion set for June 11, 2022 We remain ever grateful for the support of those who intend to sponsor, to attend, to perform, and to commit in other ways to the ACS Athens All-Class Reunion.
Tickets purchased for the originally scheduled 2020 Grand Reunion are still valid.
Bring your dancing shoes and your ke for when we meet to celebrate together!
October’s OWL will feature the news, highlights and fun enjoyed by Alums attending the TARPON SPRINGS REUNION!
ACS Athens ALUM PROFESSIONAL NOTES Christina Hudson: Three days in Nafplio, a spectacular seaport with multiple options for fortresses, beaches and cuisine. From Dispatched Europe
Looking for a Two Bedroom to Rent in Rana? A 2 bedroom, 74 square meter fully furnished & equipped apt for rent in Rana. Airy, bright, two balconies front and back side, a/c, smart tv, private parking spot, screens on all windows, replace, autonomous heat, walking distance to port and beaches. 30 min drive from ACS. No pets, no smokers. 2 months security deposit, rent 500 EUR/month, utilities not included. Contact Terry @ 6974442103 or tdontis@ymail.com
The Athens House of Photography is in Kentlands, Gaithersburg, Maryland. · John Demos' classic body of work Greek traditions. Patmos, 1988. Soon to be displayed in the Kentlands Photography Café. Please support this new business by donating here:
ACS Athens ALUM PROFESSIONAL NOTES Alum Rodanthi Athanasiadi is selling a beautiful home Summer House for Sale: Location: North Evia Kanatadika Istiaias (3hr drive from Athens) 2km from the beach The plot is 5.444m and the house 129m. It consists of 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Price: 180,000 euro For more details, please send me a DM.
Enjoy Alum Bessy Ikon’s “Starkiss’d” here:
ACS Athens ALUM PROFESSIONAL NOTES ACS Alum Mariam Elgabry delivered the second of the joint NGO statements to the #1972BWC meetings of experts United Nations today to highlight the diversity of our community #BWCMX.
Great achievement Mariam So proud of you!
Alum, Animal Behaviorist and one of our past Subject Matter Experts Alexandra Panagiotou studies Bob the Turtle.
September 15 Alum Peter Poulides' Opening in Dallas
ACS Athens SCHOOL NEWS As you know the PTO elections will be held soon after returning if you are interested in running for a position please email us at pto@acs.gr. All new families can sign up for the FSNF/Buddy Sponsoring program on the pto webpage and get matched with a family that can welcome you to ACS Athens. We hope to hear from you and see you again in the new school year! #acsathens #acspto #welcomeback See Less — at ACS Athens (American Community Schools).
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