Chris Kappas: Are we doing pretty good with this thing so far?
Joe Forte: Yeah.
Chris: Are you all happy with that?
Joe: I just listened through our last session a couple of days ago. I'm trying
to remember where we left it off. I think we said that we would start to dig
more deeply next time into your taking over and the changes you made in the
business, the development of the business and businesses under your care. But
there's a bunch of holes we left, too, in the narrative before.
Chris: Oh I'm sure.
Joe: About what you did right after school, a little bit more about your
experience in school. Maybe some things back in the old country, too, that we
haven't finished with. I mean, we covered it a lot, but I think there's always
more to press even though you were young back then.
Chris: Well, going back to the old country, Greece, as we've said, I left at
nine years old.
00:01:00After the war, from the villages, mother and I spent most of ourtime in Athens with people that were new relatives. We stayed in a hotel type of
thing, we didn't want to overburden any of the cousins or aunts because Athens
was getting crowded then. Actually waiting for my father to send the necessary
funds, tickets to come to the United States.
Joe: Had you been to Athens before that?
Chris: Yeah from about 19-- we stayed up in the villages.
Joe: Yeah, but before you went to Athens because you knew you were getting ready
to move to America, had you ever been to Athens?
Chris: Yes, on and off for medical reasons, one thing or another, mother would
send me. But mostly, I remembered after being there, after four or five years
old,
00:02:00then when I was much younger. But Athens right after the war from 1945 to1948, [19]49, before the Civil War started, was very vibrant. Eighty percent
up--well maybe not 80 percent--a lot of the population moved to Athens because
it was an agricultural country. There was nothing to--Athens was growing when we
went there waiting for my dad to send the necessary funds to come over here. We
overstayed in Athens. I probably shouldn't say this, but my father trusted a
distant relative of his to take care of us, quote unquote, to see that we needed
anything, whatever. It turns out that
00:03:00this distant relative took financialadvantage of my dad. We found out this much later on, where my dad thought we
would come over immediately, but the excuse was, yeah, we're getting ready to
send your wife over and Chris, there's been a delay here and a delay there with
waiting for the necessary papers. Unfortunately, the gentleman fraudulently took
advantage of my dad. You gotta take into consideration the history of the
country, the poverty involved. I don't know how many children he had, but
definitely took advantage of my dad, and it took a while to get here. When we
finally got passage, Joe, my father had under, maybe those days, first-class
passage for us.
00:04:00Well, we wound up in the bottom of the ship under cargo. We wereliterally in a banana boat. Mother, the whole trip, I think it was close to
three weeks. It was an Italian merchant ship, was completely bedridden because
of seasickness. Of course, I, being so young, I was running around, I'm trying
to enjoy myself, whatever. But that gap there hurt my father very much. Then, of
course, my mother was so innocent, she didn't realize what's going on until we
got here. The stay in Athens was three or four years, I remember quite vividly,
the vibrancy of the city, the war being over. Of course, they had the other
headache of a possible civil war. It was then under
00:05:00the Kingdom of Greece, KingPaul and Queen Frederica. I remember as a child, my mother dressing me up in the
national costume of whatever the national costume was back then of the kingdom.
Joe: Do you remember what it was?
Chris: The costume?
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: I have a picture of it somewhere, if I can find it. Oh my goodness
gracious! [Laughter] My high school friends made fun of me [Laughter].
Joe: I could imagine. [Laughter]
Chris: Short pants, a little protruded stomach, and a hat. Oh Lord, it was very
amusing. They took a picture to send to my dad. But it was not a bad situation
in Athens then. It was not a bad situation. We would occasionally go back up to
the villages where my grandmother was and her two daughters, my two aunts.
00:06:00 Butwhen we left in 1948, the civil war was getting pretty tough. As I mentioned
earlier, both my aunts were taken under by the Greek communist guerrillas.
Mostly the young girls or the young boys back in those days, they would ship
them up north to other communist countries. And it was called in Greek a certain
word, but it's rounding up the children to be indoctrinated into the communist
doctrine. As I mentioned before, the Truman Plan and the Marshall Plan helped
liberate Greece from being taken over by the communist guerrillas. It was a
stroke of genius as far as George Marshall goes and Harry Truman. You may not
00:07:00agree with some of the decisions that Harry Truman made back in those days, buthe made decisions, right or wrong.
Joe: The buck stopped there.
Chris: The buck stops. [Laughter].
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Actually, reading David McCullough's biography of Harry Truman, he won a
Pulitzer Prize on that, the historian. And actually, it's not a Harry Truman
saying that, but he did have it on his desk "the buck stops here". It was a
gambling--Harry loved to gamble. As he gambled with his friends, they would pass
a deer knife, a buck knife around as to who's turn it was to bet, the buck stops
here, okay, your turn, or something similar like that. And I found that to be
interesting. I've always enjoyed that quote as I got older and going into
business, that you do have to make a decision whether you believe is right or
it's wrong. It's sometimes important in your life. You got to make decisions.
00:08:00 Anyway.Joe: Yeah, keeps you moving.
Chris: I'm sorry?
Joe: Keeps you moving.
Chris: Absolutely.
Joe: The experience of the civil war, was that greater or different in any way
in the city than it was in the villages?
Chris: Yes It was a horror story. It was son against father, father against son,
brother against brother. Of course, the Greek Orthodox church was under
tremendous attack. They would kill the local priest, or they would kill the
local village mayor or whatever. They would go into-- my future mother-in-law,
my future in-laws that got all caught in there, they would go into their houses,
wanting to know who the spouse were for the national
00:09:00army. They would put aknife on your throat and said, if you don't tell us what's going on, we're going
to just decapitate you. We were in the United States then. We had very tough
time communicating. Well, my dad did, and my mother, to see where her sisters
were. We knew they were abducted. Anna, who came later on to the United
States--well, both of them later on came to the United States--would tell a
horror story of how she escaped. Even today, some of the Greeks have a hard time
forgetting that period in their life.
Joe: It sounds like your family, and folks that you knew and knew personally,
felt oppressed, put on by, threatened by the communists. Were there others that
you knew who took the side of the communists?
Chris:
00:10:00Absolutely, even cousins that took sides with the communist movement. I'mnot sure whether even the Greek communist guerrillas knew exactly what they were
fighting for. But I think at that time, King Constantine and Frederica had just
come back. I think they had gone, exiled to Egypt, I'm not sure, and came back
and left, they may have left again. I don't recall my history on that. But it
was not a good time.
Joe: I'm also curious about the relative whom you describe as having taken
advantage of your father. The nature of that agreement, was he being paid by
your father to host you, and he extended that stay?
Chris: He was being taken care
00:11:00of by father, to take care of us, but not to thepoint where he would delay our trip two to three years, and then give us tickets
that were baggage.
Joe: You're saying he delayed because it was lucrative for him?
Chris: Yeah, it was lucrative for him. Absolutely. He took advantage of my
father who was here and we were there. You have to understand one thing about my
father and my mother: complete trust. How much can you trust somebody even if he
was a distant relative? He wasn't a first cousin, but he was a distant relative
from the same village that my dad was from. How much trust can you give somebody
without being taken advantage of? And I think my
00:12:00dad, his concern was us. Hedidn't know about all this till we got here. He didn't know about the delay.
Joe: Is that a quality that you remember in him, as being extraordinarily
trustful of folks? Was it a personal philosophy of his, that he would trust
people to make them trustworthy or give them the benefit of doubt?
Chris: He carried his philosophy here in the United States at Blacksburg when he
first opened up his restaurants in a way that I remember growing up. Alumni
would come in and say, Mr. Nick, thank you so much for not having me pay for my
food, you helped me here and you helped me there. He carried that onto his
customers here, that if he saw a student that just was having a hard time,
particularly the GIs they came back after the war because on the GI
00:13:00Bill. Theywere limited as far as income, even though they were on the GI Bill. But I wish
I'd have kept all the cards and letters that he'd gotten over the years, how
grateful the students were. I may have mentioned before, I said, Dad, Baba in
Greek, I understand you come to Blacksburg, but why did you stay? He said, I
loved the students. The students loved him. It was a reciprocal thing. Henry
Decker's class, I believe was 1943, one of the best alumni here. He passed away
about four or five years ago, I think. You all may have heard of Henry Decker, I
don't know. He would come to one of our restaurants when, and I think it was his
00:14:00class that gave my father a class ring.Joe: Really? [19]43 or something like that.
Chris: I still have it. Now, they did it under the table 'cause they didn't want
anyone to know, 'cause they erased it. But I still have that ring.
Joe: That's great.
Chris: It's something else. A Greek immigrant to come to the United States, not
knowing the language, not a formal education. He was not dumb. To be thought so
highly from a class of Virginia Tech to give my dad a class ring.
Joe: That's a great story.
Chris: I just get emotional thinking about it. He had never forgotten that. But
I believe the Henry Decker's class was 1943, but you may want to look that up. I
just don't recall. He was very trustworthy. He was well liked.
Joe: The relative who took advantage of him, was his reaction to finding out
about this
00:15:00one of understanding, forgiveness, outrage? Do you remember?Chris: Do you know, Joe, that we never confronted him?
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: But he always knew that we knew. I think the last trip that I was there,
his wife sort of avoided me and my wife. He was getting a little senile. But
over before that, I think they knew that we knew what was going on. And why
bring it up?
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: What good is it going to do?
Joe: Right.
Chris: He was an educated man, a learned man. He took advantage of my dad. What
are you going to get back? Let somebody else judge him.
Joe: Did he, though, feel that the circumstances were
00:16:00such that I guess heneeded the money and come to some peace with it by himself or--?
Chris: My father?
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: He accepted it. In Greek, we say, Ti állo na káno [Τι άλλο να
κάνω], what else was I going to do? What else was I gonna do?
Joe: He had his family with him now. So, you got there.
Chris: Of course, my father was, never said no to my mother about anything that
she wanted. We keep saying in Greek, the historic know that the Prime Minister
Metaxas said to the Italian ambassador about getting permission to talk about
Greece. No, you're not coming in. Well, my father was that way to my mother. He
felt the world of her. There were twenty-some years in difference. When she got
00:17:00here, she left Greece physically, but mentally, she never left Greece. Shelearned to learn English, never learned to drive. But her heart and her mind was
still at the old village or back in the old days in Athens. Because of that, my
father brought over her sisters and her mother, and later on, a lot of families
came because of my dad, because of his sponsorship. Back in those days, you have
to have a sponsor to come here, other than a relative.
Joe: When you came over, he talked about--you're expecting first-class or your
father hadn't paid for first-class but--
Chris: Well, first-class was different back then. [Laughter]
Joe: [Laughter] Whatever that meant back then.
Chris: Whatever that meant. Yeah, definitely was not first
00:18:00 class.Joe: The guy bought lesser tickets, and your mother was sick the whole time, but
you said that you spent your time running around exploring the boat.
Chris: A lot of people probably took me under their wing a little bit.
Joe: Do you remember much of that? Were there other children, or who did
interact with?
Chris: There were other children. All I remember basically just running around,
somebody taking me by my hand and leading to this or going to eat, because in
our little cafeteria down on the bottom. There was hardly anybody up on the
upper decks, particularly in cafeterias of some sort and everything else. I
remember mother being so sick that I would go up to eat and I would bring her
oranges or fruit because that's what she requested. But she was in sick bay.
Well, she stayed sick. It was a very rocky, I remember just tremendous
00:19:00 waves,just rocking the boat back and forth. It was April, so right after winter, but
the Atlantic was not forgiving. I remember that boat was going like this. It was incredible.
Joe: Were you yourself sick at all?
Chris: No, not that I recall.
Joe: Interesting.
Chris: It didn't bother me. Well, you're still young. Maybe I was playing games
with it. I don't know. But there were a lot of people that did not go well with
them, and it just took forever!
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: It just took forever.
Joe: Well, with your mother being sick and you seem to have a lot of freedom to
roam the boat and it seems to be a small, contained community in which you
placed your trust. Was this probably the greatest independence from your mother
that you'd experienced, or had you been independent for a while, in terms of
just, go do your thing?
Chris: I'm not
00:20:00sure I get the gist of your question. I experienced someindependence there when Mother was sick, but I knew she was there.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: She always hovered over me a little bit. I was an only child.
Joe: And she couldn't do that now on the boat, right?
Chris: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. She was a disciplinarian, she was not domineering,
she was a disciplinarian. My father never raised a hand to hurt me, where
sparing the rod and spoiling the child was not in my mother's vocabulary. She
was strict with me. But as I got older, we got along well. But it was
00:21:00 okaygrowing up in Blacksburg.
Joe: We talked to some about that last time. We talked about how you felt
arriving, what you did as a child growing up in Blacksburg, and the Little and
the Big Theater and the mowing grass, all that stuff.
Chris: I forgot about that.
Joe: We know that you go to [Virginia] Tech eventually. What's behind that
decision? Was it--?
Chris: But before we would go to that, I want to finish something with my dad too--
Joe: Oh yeah, sure.
Chris: Is that, after we got here--again, knowing that my aunts were well and
whatever, my father and my mother in particular never stopped giving aid to her
relatives in the village or anybody that she knew. She was a godmother to a lot
of children, always sending money and
00:22:00clothes, particularly clothes. In highschool, I would go to the post office with just packages full of clothes to send
to Greece. From that point of view that my father at times, we may have
mentioned, it was maybe the second Truman Doctrine to my mother's people and
hence some of his people too, but particularly my mother side of the family. He
really took care of everybody.
Joe: Would she organize drives to collect clothing to send over?
Chris: We didn't do that.
Joe: Where did it come from?
Chris: Mother would buy them.
Joe: Oh, really? So she bought new things and--
Chris: Oh yeah, she would buy them. There were no hand-me-downs from where. I
mean, we didn't know that many people we lived above the old Greek's restaurant,
above Harley Shoe Shop. But then when we moved a couple of blocks up to Sunset
Boulevard. Still, a lot of the times it was a
00:23:00store. My first trip to Greeceafter high school, my first trip to Greece, I remember getting on the train in
Cambria to go to New York to get a ship to Greece. I had--what do you call those
trunks at the end of the bed? What do you call those?
Joe: Foot locker?
Chris: Yeah. This big and this wide, full of clothes. I think I took two or
three of those trunks with me, checked them into the train station at Cambria,
Christiansburg, the Pocahontas. It was called the Pocahontas. I had to change in
Washington, so we had to make arrangements for that bulker to go straight to New
York City for me to pick them up. I really don't know how I did it out of New
York, whether I had some help, I don't recall.
Joe: You must
00:24:00 have.Chris: I must have had some help, because, from the train, I took them straight
down to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, wherever the ship was. It was in 1958 or 1959, I
believe. When we landed in Greece, we went on a bus to go to my mother's
village. I think the whole village must have been distributed clothes.
Joe: I imagine so.
Chris: That was incredible. I just don't remember how I did it. There has to be
somebody up in there and I'm sure there was somebody up in New York helping me.
I just don't recall that far ahead.
Joe: You mean someone your father had arranged? A conductor or something like that?
Chris: Yeah.
Joe: Clothing only or other things?
Chris: Clothing. No other things would've survived. When I did that trip, that
was a two week trip.
Joe: Yeah. Nothing perishable.
Chris: But my father did a lot and never
00:25:00stopped. Again, he's never said no tomy mother.
Joe: Is the restaurant doing so well that you all are comfortable and able to do
this, or are you going without so that he can help?
Chris: The restaurant is doing well to support one family. But mother had other
ideas. When the oldest sister came over after the civil war, she got engaged
with a gentleman and had to marry in Virginia. My dad brought him into the
restaurant. His name was Jim Havelos.
Joe: Yeah, you mentioned it.
Chris: He became a partner with my dad. But before that, there were other people
also involved in my dad's restaurant, other than family. I came into the
restaurant business after I went to school at [Virginia]
00:26:00Tech. I didn't knowwhat I wanted to do. I thought I would be a little more independent. I went to
Richmond. I had a job there working with Virginia Electric Power Company called
VEPCO back in those days. I left my father with Jim, partners, and after a
while, I realized my dad was getting up in age. And Jim wanted to do things with
the restaurant, and he was nice enough to say, if you want to come on in, that's
fine, take your dad's place, all that good stuff. That's how I came into the business.
Joe: When you went to Richmond, did you think you were leaving the restaurant
behind, or did you know that you would come back someday? Did you think you were
embarking on a career that would take you in an entirely other direction?
Chris: I'm glad you brought that up. I had a phone call one night from my
mother, and ethnic mothers have a way, especially if you're an only child, to
make you
00:27:00feel guilty. I think her concern was, what are we going to do withoutyou? You need to come back, and all that other stuff. I didn't particularly like
my job in Richmond, either. I saw the handwriting on the wall, I wasn't going to
be there long.
Joe: What were you doing at the power company?
Chris: I was accounting. I don't remember. Payroll? I don't remember what it was.
Joe: Was that your degree, business?
Chris: I'm sorry?
Joe: Your degree was business?
Chris: Yeah, I studied accounting at [Virginia] Tech, and then I also--for a
time, I went to the National Business College in Roanoke. I learned more at the
National Business College and in my dad's restaurant than I did anywhere else,
just practical knowledge in business. But I did come back to Blacksburg and with
Jim. That's when, over a period of time, we decided
00:28:00that we had to remodel therestaurant, we had to do something. That's when we went from the Blue Ribbon
Restaurant, we changed it to the Greek's, what everybody else was calling it in
the community.
Joe: When you came back in.
Chris: When we came back. Not that I was that instrumental. Jim had a lot of
ideas, too, of what to do. I was much younger.
Joe: Out of high school, was it a given that you would go to Virginia Tech, or
were you looking other places?
Chris: No other place. Initially, I made a mistake by enrolling in the Corps of Cadets.
Joe: Right, you've talked a little bit about that.
Chris: My mother liked uniforms, she wanted me to go in. Then she wanted me to
study engineering. By the time Christmas arrived, I realized that the engineers
were doing very well without me. But the Corps of Cadets, I was a day student, I
had to live in the dorms. It was
00:29:00difficult for me going back and forth, tryingto be in the Corps or whatever.
Joe: One year you spent in the Corps?
Chris: I spent a year in the Corps and then I dropped out. But it was a good experience.
Joe: Yeah, I bet.
Chris: Some of my friends went all the way through, went in the Army, Air Force,
whatever. When Dr. Hahn in 1962 decided to make it a comprehensive university
and de-emphasize the Corps, there were a lot of alumni that were in the Corps
that were upset. Henry Decker was one of them. But I can go back forever on
that, but the decisions have to be made.
Joe: What year did you graduate?
Chris: I was supposed to have been out of there in [19]62, [19]63, but I took my
time. Who knows? It was forever.
Joe: You stayed in touch with friends who went all the way through the Corps and
into the service?
Chris: Oh, yes.
Joe: They got out, they're in the [19]60s in the service, so now we're heading
into Vietnam.
Chris:
00:30:00Probably, maybe back in those eighth, maybe three or four quarters ofgetting a degree from [Virginia] Tech. The only degree I have is from the
National Business College, an Associate Degree. But I got involved in business
pretty good. One thing I must say about that experience with me, is that I
stressed to both my children how important education is. My daughter went to
Radford and she wanted to do a Master's at American. My son studied biology at
Virginia Tech and I told him, you almost have to go to graduate school or
medical school, and he decided to go to graduate school at University of North
Carolina.
00:31:00But both Maria, my wife, and I felt that we didn't push education. Wedidn't push them to the situation where they were stressful. This is what you're
going to have to get ahead in life, it is to get a good education. I will
remember when my son defended for his PhD in microbiology at Chapel Hill, there
was, I don't know, maybe two or three hundred people in there as you will see
when you defend yours. The underclassmen, graduate students, and professors on
this committee there, and he finished his dissertation, his presentation, by
showing a picture of me and my wife up there and saying that, if it weren't for
my parents, I wouldn't be here today, stressing education. My lack of
accomplishments in academia, I wanted my children
00:32:00to progress more than I did.What's a better way of putting it? Have I digressed here a little bit?
Joe: No, that's great. [Laughter] You've referenced often the notion of the
American Dream, that your father lived it, that you are living it.
Chris: It's a misused term now. I think we throw it around like a football or
basketball in America.
Joe: Perhaps, but the component of that is the sense that each subsequent
generation should do better than the previous. Is that something you and your
family held?
Chris: Yes. He had the opportunity to come here, but once he got here, it was up
to him what he did with that. I was amazed at the old restaurant that he had
before all the partners came and whatever, how much the
00:33:00Black community thoughtof my dad. He must have had fifteen or eighteen people from the Black community
working for him, even though they weren't allowed to eat in the front of the
restaurant. We grew up in a segregated South here.
Joe: Sure.
Chris: But just growing up, the amount of respect from the Black community was
tremendous. I was most impressed with that, as I was with the alumni coming back
as former students. But he treated people equally.
Joe: This is the South during Jim Crow, right?
Chris: Oh my goodness!
Joe: Is there any backlash that he's experiencing as a result of his
relationship with his Black employees, the Black community?
Chris: Never. I don't remember any backlash at all. I just remember
00:34:00that we hadmentioned this with the Black barber shop on College Avenue when the Civil
Rights Movement started and they wanted to make an effort to recognize
themselves. They came into the restaurant one night and they said, Mr. Nick,
we're going to come in for lunch tomorrow and we're going to sit up front, do
you mind? They asked permission from my dad and from what he told me, he said,
of course, I don't mind, you're welcome to sit wherever you want to sit.
Joe: This is in the [19]60s?
Chris: [19]50s, late [19]50s. [19]50s, [19]60s, somewhere in there, because I
graduated. Yeah. I grew up in a white elementary school in Blacksburg High
School. Our only Blacks, they had their own school in Christiansburg Institute
in Christiansburg at the bottom of the hill there as you go
00:35:00down. When I'd goout and play on Progress Street or behind the fire station, played with my Black
friends. Things have changed. My son, growing up in a different era, a
situation, he'd always talk about, in grade school, about Steffen, what a great
guy he is. Who's your best friend? Steffen, and so on. Steffen Williams or
whatever his name was. I finally met Steffen's parents. I finally met Steffen: a
little Black boy. Never did my son ever mention race. That's how much we've progressed.
Joe: That it wasn't relevant, yeah.
Chris: It wasn't relevant to him. I didn't say anything to
00:36:00him. They were goodfriends. I don't know what happened with Jim Crow. That happened way before I
got here. You would have thought the Civil War would have solved some problems,
but I'm not sure what it solved. [Laughter] We're not gonna get there?
Joe: Yeah, I guess the historians--the jury's still out on that, maybe.
Chris: Absolutely. But that's the story of my dad. He treated people equally.
Everybody. Because he sold alcohol, I think maybe there was a negative to some
of the people in the community. But other than that, he had a good relationship
with everybody.
Joe: When you came back
00:37:00from Richmond and were partnering with Jim Havelos, yourfather's partner, what's the way in which your father is, I guess he's somehow
transitioning out of control of the business? Is he retiring at this point?
Chris: Yeah, he was gonna probably hand over all the reigns to his former
partner had I not came in.
Joe: How old was he?
Chris: Who, Jim?
Joe: No, your father at the time.
Chris: My father? Who knew? Seventy-eight maybe? Closer to eighty? He died
ninety-eight years old.
Joe: So, he lived twenty-four years.
Chris: But he saw the handwriting on the wall. He was not eased out or anything
like that. Even though Jim and him probably had personality problems. I was much
younger, and I
00:38:00had to learn a lot from the restaurant business. It's just what Iremembered helping out once in a while. But Jim showed me a lot of stuff that I
didn't know, that I wasn't aware of. Initially I would always work out front,
and then slowly, I worked back in the kitchen. And Jim's wife, Anna, my aunt,
she was sort of the front person of the restaurant, and she did a lot for the
restaurant. She had a tremendous personality where she attracted a lot of people
in there. Very attractive lady. She really worked hard, and Jim. There were some
difficulties for both families. Then when we decided to do the Greek
00:39:00Cellar, toexercise our on-premise license, we had to remodel the basement, and we had to
find someone to manage it and to run it. Then Jim says, Chris, what do you
think? I have a brother in Winston-Salem, and his wife, and he was a maitre'd
there working with somebody else in the restaurant business. What do you think
about asking Sam and Dina to manage the restaurant for us because upstairs,
downstairs, it's going to be difficult. He was correct. I said, absolutely. They
worked up till their retirement, and they did a tremendous job. Sam would be the
upfront guy managing the bar in the front, and his wife Dina would be in the
kitchen. Best lasagna and best pizza I've ever had in my life.
00:40:00Back in thosedays, nobody knew what pizza was. But that was, again, part of the family. So we
have extensions here.
Joe: Yeah. What was the structure like? I mean, I don't imagine that you were
incorporated, but you're all kind of owners--?
Chris: Initially, it was a partnership, but then we did incorporate. We had
Greek's Restaurant, Incorporated.
Joe: Then you drew salaries individually?
Chris: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And then another extension was later on in 1971.
We had an opportunity to extend the Cellar-type of restaurant and go in the
basement where now Sycamore Deli is.
Joe: Yeah, you mentioned that location.
Chris: And we didn't want to hurt Sam or Dina in opening up an exact restaurant
like the Cellar. We decided to do an upscale restaurant, which was way ahead of
our
00:41:00time. We called it the Mediterranean.Joe: Down in that Sycamore basement, is the upscale--
Chris: Exactly. We had Harold Hill, who's in the Architecture Department, God
rest his soul, he's gone now. But anyway, Harold designed the restaurant for us,
Mediterranean style, Greek columns, Corinthian columns. I mean, it was just
incredible. Again, who do we get to run the restaurant?
Joe: Somebody had to marry somebody.
Chris: So, we had to find a manager. So I knew, and Jim knew, and Anna knew a
couple in Christiansburg: Mary and John Dritselis. They owned a little
restaurant, a place called the Palace Restaurant, the Palace Cafe. They were
doing a minimal amount of business. They were young. Again, I don't recall whose
idea that was. It may have been mine, it may have been Jim's, it may have been
Anna's. But anyway, we all decided, let's ask Mary and John Dritselis to see if
they would run the
00:42:00restaurant, and they did from 1970, [19]71 to about 1980.Being an upscale restaurant, the only business that we had that was promising
was probably Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night. John was a wonderful
cook. He's still with us, by the way. He's living in Richmond now. They managed
the restaurant for us. But we found that after a year or two, that we just
needed to change it, that people were not coming downtown for prime rib and
oysters and salmon, things like that. We were really ahead of our time. So we
changed it basically to another Cellar we called the Greek's Two.
Joe:
00:43:00How long was that there?Chris: About ten years.
Joe: Till what year?
Chris: About 1980 something.
Joe: Is that when it became, what, the Lantern or something? Or Pedro's?
Chris: No, it was still Greek's Two. I opened up Souvlaki in 1980, [19]82. Mary
and John decided to do their own thing and open up a place called Cricketts, if
I remember correctly.
Joe: In that downstairs location, or something else?
Chris: They left the downstairs location. In the meantime, my first cousin, Anna
and Jim's son, George Havelos, we felt he was old enough to run Greek's Two.
Then John and Mary did their own thing with Cricketts which is located or was
located on Main Street where old Sharkeys was, not at the corner but the next
building but--
Joe: Yeah, the corner was Arnold's, and Sharkey's was--
Chris: Cricketts was there for about a couple of years. Mary and John had some
kind of a
00:44:00personal problem. I don't remember what it was. They closed therestaurant. In the meantime, we stayed open with Greek's Two with George.
Joe: And Greek's Two is where now?
Chris: Where Sycamore Deli is.
Joe: Still down there.
Chris: Still down there, 'cause John and Mary left. So we put George there,
Jim's son, to run it.
Joe: Exactly.
Chris: That didn't last long because George was involved in a car accident that
left him paralyzed from the chest down. We were faced with a decision of what
we're gonna do with Greek's Two. Jim and Anna were devastated. Their son was
paralyzed in a wheelchair. We decided to liquidate that. We sold that.
Joe: You owned the building?
Chris: We did not own the building. It was owned by HCMF. I believe they're
still in business now. They still own the building where Souvlaki is
00:45:00 presently.Joe: They still own that building?
Chris: They still own that building, but I think under a different name.
Joe: Okay.
Chris: I'm not sure.
Joe: But you guys owned the building the Cellar is in?
Chris: We owned the Cellar building. The new owner of The Cellar Restaurant has
50 percent of the building, and I own 50 percent of the building. My aunt Anna
sold her half to Kevin Long, the owner of the restaurant.
Joe: Gotcha. When I got to town in fall of 1987, that Sycamore location was a
Mexican restaurant called Pedro's. That came right after you?
Chris: That was sold, that was redone. In the meantime, we sold Greek's Two.
Maybe it was Pedro's. I don't remember who sold Greek's Two. We had to do
something. Then the tragedy of it is that George, three or four years later,
passed away from a blood
00:46:00clot. It was a devastating injury that he had. Butanyway-- boy, you're making me bring back memories.
Joe: I know, tough stories.
Chris: That was not very good.
Joe: I'm interested in your father at this time. You said he died at the age of
ninety-eight, but he retired sometime in his seventies, so for twenty years,
he's still in town?
Chris: Yeah. He was our guy at the cash register at the old Greek's. He was
doing all the cash register stuff.
Joe: And does he ever word in your ear about how you're running it, or was he
just leaving that to you?
Chris: He'd come in around eleven o'clock, work the cash register and leave
around one or two o'clock in the afternoon, and maybe come back in the evening.
Joe: Generally leaving the running of it to you?
Chris: Yes, with Jim and Anna, of course, absolutely, and Sam and Dina in the basement.
Joe: Right.
Chris: Absolutely.
Joe: We had talked previously about another Greek's in the
00:47:00parking lot behindThe Cellar.
Chris: That was before George's death, and before John and Mary Dritselis left.
I decided that maybe an ethnic restaurant or a shish kebab cart would do well in
Blacksburg. I mentioned to Jim that, growing up in New York, I see a lot of
vendors out on the street selling shish kebabs, hot dogs, espressos, whatever,
and I said, maybe selling Greek shish kebabs on College Avenue might work. I
said, and then maybe get George involved too because he's young and all that
stuff. That's what happened, I got George involved, and Souvlaki brought the
cart down in 1980, and then John and Mary left Greek's Two. We put George in
there and then the accident, so I had to sell Greek's Two. In the meantime,
00:48:00George was laid up in a wheelchair and he was my partner at Souvlaki. Initially,I had the cart from 1980 to 1982 where I went into next to Books, Strings, and
Things with Souvlaki and stayed there till, I don't remember, 1990 something,
went over to where Little Doc's is, where Souvlaki is now. You came in 1987?
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: When did you work at Souvlaki?
Joe: Probably [19]89 or [19]90.
Chris: Okay. Then I moved into Little Doc's before that.
Joe: Yeah, you were there.
Chris: Yeah, I was there. That was another thing that we had to go through, to
introduce people to ethnic food in Blacksburg in Southwest Virginia.
Joe: Yeah, we talked a lot about that last time. You named it Souvlaki because
it's the one thing you were serving in the pushcart, correct? The pushcart was
named Souvlaki?
Chris: No. In
00:49:00Greek, souvlaki is generic for shish kebab.Joe: Right.
Chris: Souvla, meaning skew.
Joe: That's what you were serving at the cart?
Chris: That's what I was serving out of the cart. I think I was just serving
pork tenderloin, just pork only. When I moved indoors, I had chicken and pork.
Joe: You added chicken when you moved indoors, and you added the gyro at the
same time?
Chris: Yeah, I added the other stuff, absolutely.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Absolutely, the gyro--now it's gyros, of course. It was a hard sale, but
anyway, it worked out. But it was difficult for me at times and for the family,
that I was involved in trying to sell Greek's Two, trying to get Souvlaki
started. George felt that he wanted to do something different. He decided with
another partner to go behind the Cellar, and we get into a
00:50:00family situationhere, to do another Greek's restaurant.
Joe: Because this isn't anything your partner is in.
Chris: In the meantime, the Cellar had closed up for about a few months.
Joe: Yeah, the downstairs part.
Chris: The downstairs, till a new owner came in, and they called that another
Greek's, but then George died and then the other partner left, closed the
restaurant up. A Greek tragedy to-- it's hard to describe what we went through
that time. Between George being incapacitated, George's death, liquidating the
restaurants, it brought a financial and emotional toll, particularly on me and
on Jim and Anna
00:51:00also. With George's death, Jim followed him about two or threeyears later with his death. And Anna, right now, suffered a stroke about a year
or so ago, and she's in a nursing facility, and I see her often. We went through
a lot since 1921.
Joe: Yeah, indeed.
Chris: I didn't mean to get into our family discussion here.
Joe: No, no worries.
Chris: I don't know how much you can retain this or go into this.
Joe: As you're opening the pushcart and liquidating and going through all this,
are you married at this time?
Chris: Oh, yes.
Joe: You talked about meeting your wife in New York. When did that happen?
Chris: I met my wife in June of 1971 in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were
00:52:00visiting their friends, family, whatever, and we were there at the same time.Anyway, somebody introduces us. I met her in June and I married her in December
of 1971. Going to New York and seeing all the vendors gave us an idea, maybe
something like this might work in Blacksburg.
Joe: Yeah, that's right. You mentioned that.
Chris: I mentioned so many things, I'm going to repeat myself! [Laughter]
Joe: We're moving circularly. Something else you talked about with regard to the
move to ethnic cuisine, starting to serve Greek food, is difficulty finding
suppliers and distributors for some of the things.
Chris: When I first opened up Souvlaki?
Joe: Yeah. Then that led to cultivating relationships with folks in Chicago,
correct? Let's talk a little bit about that.
Chris: Well, I knew that the distributors who were in Chicago. They were called
Kronos
00:53:00Incorporate. They did the gyros and the pita bread, they did spanakopita,they did all that stuff. But I could not get a food distributor to buy it from
them to sell it to me, because they had never heard of pita wraps or gyros or
pita bread or anything like that. Of course, the spanakopita, the shish kebabs,
I could make. But the gyros, I just couldn't possibly do that. I would order the
gyro out of Chicago and I would pay the freight, whatever, and finally there was
a Greek grocery store maybe in Charlotte that had pita and gyros, that I would
drive to Charlotte and pick that up. The local people out of Roanoke wouldn't
even talk to me about it. They said, we don't know anything about that, it's not
gonna sell. Finally, the Kronos people found the distributor out of--
Joe: I think it was in Lexington you said.
Chris: Lexington,
00:54:00Virginia. Thank you for reminding me. Wonderful people. Theyhandled the pita bread for me and other things, sub rolls and whatever later on.
Joe: Did that remain, or did you ever get it coming through Roanoke or closer?
Chris: After a while, yeah. All the people in Roanoke had it. Even when I left,
we bought stuff out of Roanoke.
Joe: Does Kronos still supply Souvlaki?
Chris: Yeah absolutely, they're still in business. But after they sought of got
to know me and they invited me up to McCormick Place--I think it's called in
Chicago, huge for a restaurant convention. Chicago has a large Greek town, so my
wife and I, it was very nice. We spent about five or six days up there, they
hosted us. And now I don't know what Mike, the new owner, does, but we start out
with maybe five cases of pita bread or five cases of gyro a month. Now we do
fifteen, twenty
00:55:00cases of pita a week.Joe: Yeah. I can imagine the pitas that go through that place.
Chris: I told you, basically we sold it on our toothpick. People would leave and
we'll just--
Joe: Catch them at the door.
Chris: Yeah. It was a tough sell. What do you think? You want to continue?
Joe: It's up to you.
Chris: It's three o'clock, I have a four o'clock appointment, maybe do some work
at the office maybe for a few minutes, but we'll continue for a few more minutes
if you want.
Joe: Where would you like to go to now?
Chris: I'm not sure.
Joe: We've talked a lot about what's happening with the restaurants and the
structure of it, your partners, and decisions about food, and a little bit about
your father at the register and was it your partner's wife?
Chris: Anna.
Joe:
00:56:00 Anna.Chris: She was the face of the business basically and Jim was sort of behind the
scenes a lot. He was thought of a lot by the customers, but Anna and I were
upfront. To them--
Joe: You were also a face of the business.
Chris: Oh, yeah.
Joe: Talk a little bit, if you would, about your experience engaging the
patrons, the Blacksburg community, as this restaurateur.
Chris: Well, I guess I got a lot of the stuff from my dad. I'm a people person.
We would just engage the customers as they walked in. They would know us. We
knew them by name. We knew what they wanted. Being friendly. It was just part of
our ethnic thing that we felt that personality and in particular Anna also
giving that personality to the restaurant. It was just not a restaurant. We're
people
00:57:00there that ran this thing, that cared about the customer and try to giveus the best food and the best service possible. I'm not taking anything away
from franchises, but we still have mom-and-pop stores that do that. We
interacted very much with the customer. We just felt that that was the way to do it.
Joe: To what degree was that your idea of what was good business, or was it
something you just enjoyed or a combination of the two?
Chris: Did I enjoy the restaurant business?
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Yeah, I enjoyed it. It was-- as you know, it's very difficult, and at one
time, we had three operations going on practically, and maybe with Souvlaki,
four. It's a very demanding business. You're almost married to it. It's hard
work. I've washed dishes, I've washed
00:58:00pans, I've mopped floors, I've cleaned outgrease traps, sewer lines. If you're not there to do it, who's going to do it at
four o'clock in the morning if the sewer's stopped up, if your help does not
come in? There was always something. I may have mentioned it before, the
restaurant business is like a spaghetti strainer of a business.
Joe: I was just going to say that, when I was working with you, you said this to
me once, and I was wondering if there's something you remember or said often, is
that you said that the restaurant business is like a sieve, like a strainer.
You're never going to plug all the holes, but you spend all your time trying to
plug as many as you can.
Chris: Plugging holes! The margin of the restaurant business is not tremendous,
but if it's not going out the front door, it's going out the back door. If it's
not going out the back door, it's going into the trash can. If it's not going in
the trash can, it's going down the beer drain.
00:59:00You have to watch everything. Youhave to watch your salesmen. Your salesman comes in and says, oh, so and so
chicken is so much pound this year or this week, or pork is so much. Then you
say, okay, I'll take five cases of that. The order comes in four days later,
it's not what he quoted me. It may be five or six or ten cents or a dollar more
than he quoted, and I have to check that out. You've got to check that order in.
Joe: Was that common?
Chris: Oh, no.
Joe: Do you think intentional, or--?
Chris: No.
Joe: Okay. What about downtown rent?
Chris: We'll go to that in a minute. You mentioned about was that dishonesty,
very uncommon. But going back to when we had the Cellar, I was in the back door
one day. A truck driver comes in and goes into the walk-in cooler, says, you got
five kegs of Schlitz and five kegs of this, whatever. How many do you
01:00:00want? Whenwe first opened up the Cellar, we had Schlitz White regular beer, Schlitz Dark
beer, one tap, Budweiser, and Michelob, maybe four taps.
Joe: You had Schlitz Dark?
Chris: Schlitz Dark, great beer.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Schlitz was out of Roanoke, and the Budweiser was out of Radford-- Yeah,
I think it was Radford. No, Pulaski! I'm sorry, Budweiser was out of Pulaski.
Great people, wonderful people. Edens Distributing Company and Porterville
Distributing Company in Roanoke. I used to smoke back in those days. I'm back
there smoking a cigarette, and here comes the distributor for Schlitz. The truck
driver goes in, I watch him take the kegs out of the truck. As he's taking the
kegs out of the truck, the keg has a
01:01:00cover on top, where you tap the keg, it hasa cover on it. He was taking the cover and throwing it into the truck. I didn't
pay any attention until after maybe about a month or two of this. I said, why is
he throwing that cover from the tap into the truck? Schlitz back in those days
was ten or twelve dollars a keg. Old Milwaukee was five or six dollars a keg.
Joe: I see where you're going.
Chris: That bothered me. I picked it up, and I went back to Jim, and I said,
Jim, what does this say? This says Old Milwaukee. I said, he's leaving us Old
Milwaukee instead of Schlitz. That bothered me a lot.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: I'm not gonna mention
01:02:00names. I called up the distributor, said so and so.Says, no, it couldn't be. I said, yeah, it is. I said, I'm writing a letter to
the ABC Board. He says, no you're not! I said, I'm writing a letter to the ABC
Board. They came up immediately and took care of the situation. I never had to
write the letter.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: They were apologetic. I don't know if it was the truck driver, I don't
know if it was the owner, but that doesn't make any difference. But again,
you're plugging up holes, you're trying to make a profit, you're trying to
support your family, you're trying to pay rent, food costs. I don't know what
food costs now. My food costs as if it was 28 percent. I think the national food
costs now in general restaurants is 35, 38 percent. You can look that up, I
don't know. I still get trade magazines from the restaurant association,
01:03:00 thatthe first year of business in the restaurants, the failure is about almost 90 percent.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: Very high. Joe, never get into the restaurant business.
Joe: Okay. [Laughter]
Chris: Okay?
Joe: Well, you did pretty well, though.
Chris: I'm sorry?
Joe: You seem like your places have done pretty well.
Chris: Yeah. We paid attention. We were there.
Joe: That's what it takes.
Chris: Again, at the old Greek's, we had Jim, Anna, and myself, and Dad
retiring. At the Greek's Cellar, we had Sam and Dina, tremendous work ethic.
John and Mary Dritselis, tremendous work ethic at Greek's Two or Mediterranean.
You gotta be there.
Joe: What was downtown like? I'm trying to get around to how much of a hardship
downtown rent was. Was it a premium back then, or was it not really?
Chris: It wasn't that bad till about
01:04:00early [19]80s. Then downtown evolved alittle bit. Some of the landlords are hardcore.
Joe: Do you think that came in with more liquor licenses and the realization
that there was a very profitable business to be had here?
Chris: Yeah, yeah. Being a landlord now, I find that you should make it good for
your tenant so he can make a living, and good for yourself, that you can make a
living off the rent. Don't gouge somebody. Some landlords are pretty hard.
That's the way they operate. That's fine. Shopping center rent is called triple
net. You ever heard of a triple net that the shopping center charges? A triple
net rent when you go to a shopping center is your rent, you pay a part of their
insurance and part of their real estate taxes,
01:05:00which, depending on the space, itcan be a burdensome on the business.
Joe: Yeah.
Chris: All right.
Joe: Want to call it?
Chris: Yeah.
Joe: All right.
Chris: Did we have a good time today?
Joe: Absolutely. Did you?
Chris: Yes. But I may want to edit some of this stuff. [Laughter] I want to
continue this a little more. This is a reflection from Chris Kappas.
Joe: Correct.
Chris: Jim Havelos is not here.
Joe: Absolutely.
Chris: George Havelos is not here. My aunt is not here. John and Mary Dritselis
are not here. Sam and Dina Havelos are not here. So Joe, you're relying a lot on
my memories of what I think happened.
Joe: Correct.
Chris: I don't want anybody to listen to this audio and misconstrue anything
about how bad I was treated or how good I
01:06:00was treated or whatever. This is my opinion.Joe: Absolutely.
Chris: This is what I think happened. I want that on the record.
[End of interview]
01:07:00