Because Memory Isn't Eternal: A Story of Greeks in Upstate South Carolina

In 1895 Nicholas Trakas left his village in southern Greece, boarded a steamship for America, and made his way to another southern village, Spartanburg, where he became the South Carolina city s first Greek resident. He opened The Elite one of the finest candy kitchens in the South, built a house on a lot he purchased for $44 and a pet parrot that could cuss in Greek, and began a wave of immigration from his home country into the burgeoning Upstate area.

A century later his grandson, Deno Trakas, a writer and a professor at Wofford College, explores the peculiarly Southern version of the Greek-American story in Because Memory Isn t Eternal. By introducing us to four generations of Trakas family members, their remarkable friends, and their hard-working business partners, he tells a greater story and reflects on how these complex, larger-than-life characters have preserved the best of Greek culture down South. This intimate and often humorous memoir brings us stories of Greek-American marriages, food, language, restaurants, and religion, including the day two Trakas boys accidentally burned down the family s church.

At Greek funerals there is the constantly repeated refrain:Aionia i mnimi May his (or her) memory be eternal. More often, Trakas tell us, memory is painfully, annoyingly short. His loving, illustrated tribute to Greek-Americans assures that these stories and this history will not be forgotten.