Memories of Evris
This page is dedicated to the friends of Evris. After his death, his students created the Facebook Group "Evris Tsakirides, We will Miss
You Dearly." Our goal is not to
duplicate that wall, but highlight some of the most memorable moments that
some of you shared with him. If you would like to share your thoughts, please
contact Melya.
Evris co-founded with Melia
the "Voice for the Animals Foundation." For more information,
or if you would like to make a donation in memory of Evris,
please visit the Foundation's Web site.
I remember this day
like it was yesterday--the first day of Latin in 7th grade. Evris
had us act out new vocabulary and then we heard his cat music which made the
whole room erupt in laughter--which he thought was hysterical. Even though I
was terrible at Latin, I can still hear him saying "ambulat."
You made sure I passed your class the first semester, and the second semester I
got honors.
You did so much for Crossroads and for animal rights. Crossroads will not be
the same without you.
Rest in Peace Evris.
Melissa
After being in Evris's class and a member of the HARP club 7 years ago, he
instilled in me a never-ending love and compassion for animals. I have been
volunteering since high school at the Santa Monica Animal Shelter when I go
back home and now volunteer weekly at the Honolulu Zoo to care for the animals.
In January, I even took in two homeless kittens right off of the street who are still happily living with me. Evris
is the inspiration behind my future career in animal welfare and has forever
impacted my life in the short time that I spent with him.
Rachel
When I first heard
the news, it struck me very, very hard. Evris was
such a great man. I remember the first time I heard the cat music, and how much
I laughed. I remember the drawings and all of the other pneumonic devices that
helped me remember everything (I still use those drawings to remember the
charts). I remember Auxilium, and how helpful that
game was and how much fun it was as well. His teaching style was so unique, so
interesting, that you couldn't help but just love him. I was fortunate enough
to have him as a teacher, and I'll tell you, everything he taught me, Latin and
non-Latin, will stick with me forever.
A great activist, and a great man. Evris,
we will all miss you. Rest in peace.
Matthew
I cannot even begin
to describe how fondly and vividly I recall my time in Evris's
class SEVEN years ago. I recall wheezing with laughter on several occasions and
I have no sort of asthma. This, however, was far from at the expense of
learning - It was Uncle Datio and his unfortunate
accident - it was "ad, prope, PER, post."- that made me laugh uncontrollably. Evris
had getting latin into a
seventh grader's head down to an art. Meyla, you have
my sincerest condolences. Evris was a truly
remarkable person and I will always hold my memories of him, and his class,
near and dear.
Paul William Rodi
Evris was my first Latin
teacher, in 7th grade. He was also one of the first animal rights activists I
ever knew (and I thought he was crazy because of it at the time).
Nine years later, I still study ancient languages, and I've been a vegan for
almost four years now.
Largely due to his influence, I went into college majoring in Greek and Latin,
which led me to study cuneiform. Hopefully one day I'll have my PhD and become
a professor.
If it weren't for him, maybe I would have never figured this out and I would
have gone through life doing something I didn't care about.
Mallory
I've had a few
teachers who used to play music in the classroom, but no one played brazilian elevator music on
cassette tape
Alex
From
his friends and colleagues
The Barrels
It was 1974,
Athens. There were tanks in the streets. E Pluribus Unum was written on them.
Curfews were imposed at will and those that disobeyed were given very harsh
treatment. The Junta’s spies were everywhere. Anyone could disappear at any
second. Piercing the terror were the songs of Theodorakis. He had won the hearts of the people. Defiant. Proud. Left
wing. Greek. It was illegal to listen to Theodorakis or to sing his songs. People had been killed
for this. We had all heard the stories.
One warm
summer night, Evri and I joined a group of friends at
a taverna called the Barrels. It was so named because
of the hundreds of barrels stacked around the room, filled with wine. Marios Stratigopoulos, his
brother Costa, and many more friends were there. We will a long table in the
center of the room.
After eating
a huge meal, with too many courses, everyone lit up their cigarettes. The
discussion immediately turned to politics. The Junta was getting stronger with
backing from the Americans. Theodorakis had just been
arrested. The city was seething. Marios snuffed out
his cigarette. In a very low voice, he started to sing a well known song by Theodorakis. A song of revolution.
One by one the whole table joined him, singing as loudly as they could, banging
their glasses on the table.
Suddenly the
owner of the taverna ran over to us. He whispered in Evri’s ear that there were two colonels from the Junta
sitting at the table next to us, listening. Evri
motioned to the others to stop singing. One of the colonels approached our
table. “Hey that was a nice song you were singing. My friend and I would like
you to keep singing it.” We all looked at each other. It was clear he called
for back up. Marios and Evri exchanged a sarcastic smile. With an obvious gleam in
their eyes, they began to loudly sing Byzantine chants. And
extremely well.
The officer
was furious. He came back to our table and said, “No, I don’t mean that song.
The other song you were singing. Can you sing that one again?” Louder and with
more defiance, the whole table continued singing Byzantine chants. Angry and
disgusted, the two colonels walked out. We drank and sang Theodorakis
till dawn.
Melya
Papingo
in the snow
After visiting my aunt in Ioannina, Thanassis and Evris and I decided to head north. We arrived in a small
village named Papingo, high in the mountains of
northern Greece. It was Saturday night. The taverna
was packed. The whole village was there. It was freezing cold and snowing outside.
Evris, Thanassis and I sat down at the
only available table. Next to us were two guys completely absorbed in a game of
tavli (backgammon). We order
wine. It was December so they has just stomped the grapes. It was the most
delicious wine we had ever tasted. So we ordered more.
After a few glasses, I asked Evri to sing. Slowly he began to sing Tria
Karavia (Three boats). Acapella. It is one of the
most beautiful songs in Greece. Extremely difficult to sing.
Heart wrenching. As Evri
began to sing, the two guys behind him who had been absorbed in their game,
froze, their hands in mid air. They turned, entranced by his voice. They stared
at Evri, mouths open for the whole song.
Evri finished. A hush fell over the whole taverna.
The room was filled with the kind of religious awe that one is used to feeling
in church. No one said a word. Suddenly from a far corner of the room, an old
man began to sing, inviting Evri to answer. It’s
called Kathistica – table songs. After a few
choruses, the whole tavnerna joined in. We sang and
danced and drank and ate till dawn. Greek style.
The next morning was Sunday. As we
walked through the church courtyard, we saw the priest. We greeted him
politely, thinking how odd it was that at 9:00 AM on Sunday morning, the priest
was in the courtyard and not inside the church. As if reading our minds, he
replied, “No one came to church this morning. Something was going on in the taverna last night and everyone was there till very late.”
We ran to our car, laughing hysterically.
Melya
Dear Dear man. we talked about radical
politics, mystery novels, food, the students, the students, and everything
really. He was here when I started teaching. I think of him as my Core group
(Tracey, Morgan, Marissa, Robert) who supported me when I first started and
couldn't figure anything out. His presence in the world is OFF the world. I
will miss him and though I never knew or said it--loved him deeply. He always
wore the most beautiful shirts and ties to formal events. We chaperoned the
last 7th grade dance years ago. He danced !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
that he lived.
was much.
Todd
I have known Evris for more than 40 years.
When I was a kid, he used to come home and help my brother with his Latin and
Ancient Greek classes; they were both classmates in High School. I remember he
wanted to become a Theater director.
Our lives crossed again back in 1980 when I went to graduate school in LA. Both
he and Melya welcomed me to their home as if we never separated. He loved to
write and he loved to teach. He could make learning the phone book fun! It was
pleasure and joy to have him as a friend. He deserves his peace.
Kostas
He actually held me
when I was around a month old. I've known this giving man my whole life, and
always was mystified by his none stop kindness. Until I realized he's just a
gem out the billions, that actually cares about
animals, others, and everyone's well being. I will always love and miss you Evris.
Aurora
Euripides Tsakirides was born in Thessalonike,
the Symbasilevousa (second capital of the 1200 year
old Greek Empire, right second to Constantinople) and the only Greek city worth
visiting today. Although he grew up there and
thus inhaled the first scents of life, he quickly crossed the Atlantic to
settle in Venice, and experienced whatever life had to offer him. He never got
over those odors of musk, blooming lemon trees, jasmine, thyme and oregano that
only Greek nature can offer in such abundance, the year round practically.
Although he smiled
at spirituality in his careless youth that lasted until the end, his faith in
the Almighty resounded in his poignant voice when he sang songs of his country
of origin. Nothing could move him more than his mother’s tongue either. He was
gifted with logical, pedagogical and intellectual aptitudes that were just as
sweeping as his personal life was chaotic!
He had something,
un je ne sais quoi, that made him pleasant to everybody, all the time, as he
was the only person I have ever met that was fundamentally and irretrievably
incapable of being either bad or negative. He always did what he liked best,
with a little help from a friend because he inspired goodness.
Here is a prayer in
the form of a quatrain of my favorite poet, Omar Khayyam:
I resolve daily
that at dusk I shall repent
For a night with a cup full of wine spent.
In the presence of flowers, my resolve simply went
In such company, I only regret that I ever resolved to
repent.
Safe journey, Evri! I know you must be smiling at us now!
Micky M.C.D. Anastasiades
Evris and I were classmates throughout middle school and high school at
Anatolia College in Thessaloniki. We resumed contact when I moved to Los
Angeles in 1980 and also met his beloved Melya. From childhood, everyone knew
that Evris was gifted, special, a real genius. It was
mentioned as a simple fact. Evris practically owned
the drama club in both middle and high school. At age 14 he WROTE, PRODUCED and
STAGED his own plays. I don't know where he learned everything he knew, because
he was certainly a teacher and mentor to all of us. Like all great pedagogues, he was a great
student as well, always interested in what people said and thought. Thirty
years ago he told me for the first time of all the new terminology and new
methods for teaching foreign languages, and often, as he loved to do, he would
act out some demonstration linking vocabulary to body language, or making funny
sounds and connections to aid in mnemonics.
Reading the memorial page by his Crossroads students I
see that he did that to the very end! What a legacy... I will
always remember his intelligence, originality and empathy for others,
both people and animals.
I feel that part of my past is gone. Rest in
peace, Evri....
Annetta
Once upon
what now seems like a very long time ago, there was a pub in Los Angeles called
Fran O’Brien’s. It was an unlikely Irish place for Greek music and dancing, but
there it was, and once a week on Tuesdays Greeks, Greek-Americans, Grecophiles and “Super Greeks” (as my friend Evris used to call them) would gather, drink, eat, and
dance hora till they closed the bar at 1:30 in the
morning. I first showed up there with a group of translators from the LA
Olympic Committee. Thanks to my job in the Graphics Department I met just about
everyone there – the guys in the multinational Language Department and I took
an almost immediate shine to each other. They made the weekly pub trek to drink
and dance and feel a little less like they were in LA.
The invite
was generous and I was touched and it sounded like fun – maybe a little cheesy
but fun all the same – so I figured what the hell.
That first
night at Fran O’Brien’s I met Evripides and Melya.
They sat at a table with a group of friends: they were those people you see in
a public place that somehow you just really wanted to know. He was incredibly
bright eyed, even gamine (if you can say that about a man) in a Charles Aznavour kind of a way: he radiated intelligence and good
humor and you could tell that underneath all that handsome sparkle a
good-natured and slightly sarcastic wit sat coiled. Melya was gorgeous with an
amazing mane of thick curly black hair, a radiant smile, and boundless energy.
She danced all night.
They
obviously loved the music; loved the dancing crowd; and especially loved the
odd and slightly ridiculous link to Greece they found in this odd place on Pico
Boulevard.
After all
this time I’m not exactly sure how the introduction came to happen, but it did.
They were a
little wary of me – and who wouldn’t be – I didn’t have a Greek drop of blood
in my body, I wasn’t really from LA and I wasn’t one of Evri’s
UCLA Greek language students. Which would have put me firmly in the camp of the
“Super Greeks” except for the fact that I had lived alone for a winter in a
little village in southern Crete and I had learned the language on my own so
that put me in some other category, but no one had a clue what exactly that
was. I was sincere; I loved the culture; I had no earthly reason for a
connection to it. We became friends.
A hundred
evenings followed: phone calls, walks on the beach, coffees, cocktails, dances.
And advice,
too: I was a struggling grad student; no money, no time to work, no clear
solutions – Evris in his wisdom suggested I put on
shorts and pumps and head down to the Marina with a bottle of champagne.
Surely, he reasoned, I’d be able to find someone to help solve my financial
woes. He promised to be my pimp and that he wouldn’t take too much money and
would try to refrain from beating me too often. Re paidi
mou, he’d say with that smile, yiati
oxi? Why not, indeed. He was
always good for the absurdist solution to an intractable problem: the belly
laugh. I could not have afforded the champagne.
A friend
with a hot tub in the back yard of her Echo Park rental invited us for an
evening of cocktails and Jacuzzi. In bathing suits with champagne in hand we
climbed into the luxury of the stars and the water, laughing at the
ridiculousness of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous touching the Tapped-Out and
Obscure. It was a glorious evening.
I remember
them organizing music nights after Fran O’Brien’s closed: they’d bring in their
favorite clarino player and sometimes Evris would sing. Pote Tha Kanei Xasteria.
Old Rebetika songs. His
voice was clear and soulful, with a melancholy underneath it, like the pang you
get in your heart at seeing a picture of an old lover in a photo album – full
of memory, sweet, sad, and maybe a little funny around the edges. Things that
make you laugh and cry at the same time; he carried all that in his voice. Once
in a while they’d throw a huge party at someone’s house up in the Hollywood
Hills or in Brentwood and invite hundreds of people, bring in musicians and
we’d dance till morning. And if I was in the right mood, sometimes I couldn’t
help but get up and dance with the Turkish professor who loved to dance with
me. It took enough to drink and really good music to get my American guard
down, but when it did we would dance tsifteteli and
I’d see them grinning in my direction.
I hadn’t
heard from Mel and Evris for a few years, and when I
got the call from her that he was sick and probably wouldn’t make it through
the month I just wanted to reach out and hold her but I was thousands of miles
away. He died less than a week later. He was a light; a brilliant soul; a one
of a kind radiant spark. I remember seeing E.T. at the Chinese Theater in
Hollywood with them the week it opened; Evris sat
next to me in the dark theater and cried without embarrassment as E.T. left for
home. Now it’s my turn: I can’t believe he’s gone.
Jo Walker
I came to the US January
1982. One afternoon in early February
Kostas took me to a play reception. The
play was about Greek Gods in a modern version.
It was a real funny and unique play.
There I met Evris and Melya for the first
time. Kostas knew Evris
since he was a boy; Evris was the same age with
Kostas’ brother. Evris
and Melya offered their friendship to Kostas when he came to LA and soon enough
they became my friends too – Actually they became more than friends – they
became my LA extended family.
Evris was the Best Teacher. That was his passion. He had an amazing talent to simplify complex
concepts, and he was SINCERELY happy when his students care and learnt! He was beaming while talking about his
students who really cared in learning Greek or Latin and he would have a
sadness for those he had thought didn’t care. We worked together teaching Greek
as a second language for a while –and he taught me all the latest techniques
and methods – which I used later in life teaching computer related topics, in
Silicon Valley.
Evris was a thinker - He would be always thinking
about his next project, play, book, illustration. Evris was an
amazing friend who had
the intuition to know what to say to make you feel better in a
difficult time.
Evris was a real genius – teacher, writer, artist. But some of
you may don’t know that he was also blessed with this amazing voice.
While singing Rebetika or Byzantine hymns, he would take you to another
world – far away – his hometown Thessaloniki (that happens to be my home town
too) or to the beaches of Santorini.
Evris had an inquire mind- he was NOT afraid of
death as he was so curious about it. We talked a lot during the last months –
and I am certain he accepted the end as it is a New Beginning -- and he
transitioned peacefully to the other side.
I came down for a day visit
on March/24 – He was surrounded by Melya and a lot of close friends –and the
cards from his beloved students- Later that night – literally as soon as I
drove home from the airport in North California – Melya called – Evris was gone-
He was gone surrounded by love
– and support – what a way to GO!
I am sure we will all MISS
him terrible – but he will always live within us …
Natassa (Evri’s memorial, 5/31/09)
The originality of his thinking, the
compassion which drove all his work, the fierceness of his intent – this is
what I knew of Evri – what were always present and
what makes us honor him today.
Love,
Olympia
Evris was my
teacher and friend, friend and teacher for nearly 25 years. I was never able to figure out which role
predominated. I first met Evri when a friend and I decided that before we went to
Set aside
language and culture. Evris also taught me much about my own profession,
teaching. Listening to, watching, and
learning from him made me a better teacher, and grappling with Modern Greek
made me a more compassionate one toward my own students who were grappling with
Latin. Evris
was one of the most giving, talented, dynamic, interesting, and interested
teachers I have ever met. Students whom
I inherited from him still remembered his jokes and mnemonic devices. They all loved him as I did.
Though I had
always thought of myself as an animal lover, Evris
opened my eyes to much that is wrong in the relationship between humans and
animals. Because of him, I became a
vegetarian and stopped buying leather goods.
We had many discussions about spirituality, the soul, god(s), and
death. He called me a card-carrying
atheist, but always listened and never tried to impose his own beliefs on me,
even though he was wont to ask some searching and (sometimes) uncomfortable
questions. The world has lost one of its
brightest lights.
With my
apologies to Quintus Horatius Flaccus
for changing two words (the meter remains the same):
Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus What restraint or limit can be placed upon
tam cari capitis? Praecipe lugubres our
mourning for so dear a soul?
Teach me sad
cantus, Melpomene, cui liquidam
pater songs,
Melpomene, to whom your Father has granted
vocem
cum cithara dedit. a melodious voice
along with the lyre.
Ergo Evripidi perpetuus sopor So, everlasting sleep now weighs down upon
urget?
Cui Pudor et Iustitiae soror, Evripidi? When will Honor and the sister of Justice,
incorrupta Fides, nudaque
Veritas incorruptible
Faith, and unadorned Truth
quando
ullum inveniet parem? find any equal to
him?
Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit, He has fallen
mourned by many good people,
nulli flebilior
quam mihi… but
by no one more than me…
(Horace,
Odes, I.XXIV)
Euripidh mou, requiescas in pace,
Katerina