Men achieve greatness many ways. Some seek it. Occasionally it falls on others. Still others become great simply by being who they are, by playing by the rules, and living good lives.
I want to introduce you to a great man I once knew.
His name was Ioannis Panayotis Kanellopoulos. The English translation is John Peter Kanelis. He was my grandfather. We called him “Papou,” which is the Greek term for grandpa.
He was born 129 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1885, in a tiny village on the southern peninsula of Greece, the Peloponnese. He would marry my grandmother, who lived in a nearby village, in 1919.
They had moved to America by the time they married. They brought seven children into the world, starting with my father, Peter; then, in order, came Tom, Eileen, Alice, Elizabeth, Constantino and Sophia. All the children became successes. They all had some heartache and grief along the way, but they have done well.
They owe it to their upbringing.
Papou wasn’t an educated man. He never learned how to drive a car. He toiled as a laborer in a Pittsburgh, Pa., steel mill. Then the Depression hit. He then sought to manage a hotel in Bellows Fall, Vt. That endeavor didn’t work out.
My father — as the eldest child — then helped herd the entire family across the vast country, to Portland, Ore., in the late 1930s.
Papou then operated a shoe-shine stand in the basement of a major downtown Portland department store. That’s what he did for the rest of his working life. He shined shoes. He snapped the buffing rag so smartly it sounded almost like music.
I’ll acknowledge that my grandfather didn’t do a lot of grandfatherly things with me or, as near as I can remember, with any of his grandkids. We didn’t go on outings with him and my grandmother; neither of them drove. I recall a couple of memorable all-inclusive family outings on the Oregon coast that included a whole host of aunts, uncles, cousins and, yes, my grandparents.
My grandmother died in September 1968. My grandparents were married for 49 years. Papou would live until 1981, when he passed away at the age of 95 — which is not bad for a man who smoked stogies daily for nearly his entire adult life.
I want to remember him today as a great American because of the simple dignity with which he lived. He didn’t achieve outward, look-at-me greatness. He didn’t call attention to himself. He simply achieved greatness by being who he was.
He came to the United States of America in search of a better life than the one he left behind in that tiny Greek village. By God, he found it.
Happy birthday, Papou.