By Dustin Brown
For the first time in its 64-year history, the Federation of Hellenic Societies in Astoria played host to a governor last week, delivering a $180,000 check to George Pataki for the New York State World Trade Center Relief Fund.
Pataki visited the federation’s 29th Street home at noon last Thursday to accept the donation, which was collected through an aggressive solicitation of Greek-Americans across the country.
“This $180,000 will have a profound impact on people’s lives,” Pataki said during a brief ceremony in the society’s main hall. “This is just one example of how the Greek-American people here in Astoria and New York have helped to make this a better city, a better state and a better country.”
The governor, who had just left the official ribbon-cutting at MoMA QNS, the new Long Island City home for the Museum of Modern Art, viewed art of a different sort at the federation, where a temporary exhibit on loan from cultural ministry of Greece displayed copies of artifacts from Greek history.
“You appreciate and everyone should appreciate that we owe our freedom, we owe our democracy and our republican form of government to the people of Greece,” the governor said after marveling at the epigraphs. “Here in New York and in the United States, millennia after the Greeks showed the way, we are still inspired by their thoughts.”
Pataki also pledged to rebuild the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was demolished in the attack on the World Trade Center — a vow that was greeted with warm cheers from the 50 or so people who gathered for the governor’s visit.
The federation, a non-profit organization founded in 1938 to promote Greek-American culture, is best known for sponsoring the annual Greek Independence Day Parade in Manhattan, for which the governor served as the grand marshal in 1999.
The 122 societies that collectively make up the federation mobilized after Sept. 11 to help in the recovery. After sending volunteers to deliver food, water and medicine to the rescue teams after the attacks, the federation embarked on a fundraising campaign that included nationwide solicitations and cultural events.
“All of us, we felt the need to give something back to our society, something back to our people . . . after this terrorist act that hit our beautiful city and beautiful state,” said the federation’s president, Demos Siokis, in a phone interview after the ceremony.
Although no members of the federation were lost Sept. 11, Siokis said 42 Greek-Americans perished that day.
Among them was firefighter James Pappageorge, a Jackson Heights native whose mother Olga and sister Helen attended last Thursday’s ceremony in his memory. His father Demetrios died two years ago.
Pappageorge had only been a firefighter for six weeks when he and his comrades from Engine Co. 23 in Columbus Circle headed inside the burning towers of the trade center. But the 29-year-old was already a veteran rescuer with the Fire Department, having served for many years as a paramedic.
“They used to call him the Gentle Giant, because he was big, broad and muscular but he always cared and treated people how he would love his parents to be taken care of,” Helen Pappageorge said of her brother.
“It was a beautiful thing that the foundation did,” she continued. “For people to still keep on to go out there and volunteer to raise money so that family victims will be OK — it’s beautiful.”
Reach reporter Dustin Brown by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 154.
