My grandfather - "Papou" - was named Dionysios Marusi. He came from a farming family in the area of Pakia, in southern Greece. Family lore has it that he decided to move to America to escape the military draft in Greece at that time. This would put him squarely in the family tradition of resistance to war. He came from Greece in 1907 on a ship called Principe di Piedmont, out of Naples. For some strange reason, at Ellis Island his English name was given as "William." He arrived with his wife, Alexandra, his 2-year old son, my Uncle Spiro, and a young woman, perhaps a relation, who cared for the baby.
They settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a kind of mecca for Greeks at the time, and, with money from his well-to-do wife;s dowry, purchased a candy store, all the time adding children: Antonia, Maria, Stavroula, my mother Christine, and two more boys- Nikos and Charles. There was also another daughter, Minerva, who died very young. All of them, following the Greek custom, bore "William" as their middle name.
Around 1918 or 1919, America went through one of its periodic "morality" spasms, and one by one, states passed laws against the consumption of liquor. One would put a sign in the window that said "DRY" to signal that this family too wanted the law to pass. My grandfather posted a huge "WET" sign in his window. Despite his effort, the law passed and Prohibition became one of the dumbest laws of the land ever - and there is much competition for that honor. During the Depression, he lost his store, but, as my mother always said, "rolled up his sleeves" and went to work in a candy factory.
In 1940, with the Italians and the Germans were poised to invade, Dionysios Marusi went back to Greece, to try and sell some of his wife's ancestral land near Gythio, a lovely port town quite close to Pakia. In this he was unsuccessful, but he did visit the home of his nephew, my Uncle George, and there attended a wedding of a cousin. A photo was taken of this occasion, and imagine my amazement 65 years later to arrive in Pakia at the home of my cousins and see my grandfather looking out at me from this photo. Word has it that he was quite the life of the party - he loved to dance and got so drunk that when he went horseback riding he fell off his horse. "WET," indeed. He hated Germans until the end of his life, given the atrocities committed by Hitler's Army during the occupation of 1941-44.
Later, when the family had moved to San Francisco, he had a house on Westgate Drive, where I lived before my dad came back from the Pacific War. There was a dog named Lucky and a haunting picture of Jesus, whose eyes, it was said, would open and close if you stared at them long enough. Every day, my grandfather would down a glass of lemon water and a tumbler of wine, first thing in the morning. He spoke no English. I used to sit next to him at the table and he would show me his hands, which were wrinkled and veiny. "Nyonyo (my nickname) look. Papou old man." We all, my cousins Denny and Danny and myself bore his name in one form or another - "Denny" and "Danny" were the usual translations of Dionysios; "Bill" was the extension of some immigration officer's moment of twisted inspiration. He died in 1960, at the age of 80 or so.
One story about him especially bears repeating: One Sunday, my grandmother and all her daughters attended a wedding at the the Greek (now Armenian) Church on 7th street in San Francisco. Before the wedding they were waiting outside and one of the daughters asked, "When will the wedding party get here, mother?" At this moment, my grandfather, who had slipped away to have some drinks, came around the corner, smashed, and leaning on a building for support. My grandmother pointed to him and said, "I don't know, but here comes the bride."
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