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They came, those early Greeks, beginning in the 1890s and through the 1920s, to work in the industrial giant that Pueblo and the surrounding area was becoming. They came from the old country to the New World, a land of promise that often meant backbreaking work, often in dangerous conditions. They joined others, from Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Hungary, and even Japan and Mexico. They - the parents, grandparents, great- and great-great-grandparents - will be as much a part of the centenary celebration next weekend as current members at the Hellenic Orthodox Community of St. John the Baptist, 1000 Spruce St., a parish steeped in Greek history. The names of the century’s worth of parishioners are uncomfortably awkward, for pronunciation’s sake, to other members of the community, but they are the tongue-tripping stuff of legend, or at least history: Zaharias, Rougas, Vetoyanis, Apostolides, Zavichas, Papadeas, Lymberopoulos, Lepetsos, Kalandros and Kochiovelos, to mention a very few. They were part of a tide of immigrants who came to work, establish businesses, raise families and eventually become a part of a larger community while maintaining ties to their ethnic origin. They were at the mill for all its steelmaking labor; they were at Ludlow for the strike and massacre; they were in Bessemer selling hamburgers and groceries; they endured their share of grief in the Flood of 1921 and fought in two world wars and other battles. But the church - in both the larger, worldwide sense and the community building where they were taught their prayers and worshipped - remained at the heart of their sociocultural identification. The St. John parish church building sits on a 3-acre site in the Bessemer neighborhood, built in handsome fashion - for the then-formidable sum of $8,000 - in 1907, largely by the labors of the original congregation. It was erected of 18-inch-thick brick in the so-called "Classical Revival" style, its portico supported by four stately Ionic columns. The parish has been served by almost half-a-hundred priests since it was founded, and they, like the men, women and children who have passed through the parish, are all part of the rich scrapbook of memories the current congregation will honor as much as themselves and those yet to come. The church building itself, rich both inside and out with the symbolism of the Orthodox Church, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in February 2002, and it’s being spiffed up and buffed to receive the many visitors the congregation hopes will come to visit during a 4-hour open house that will kick off a two-day celebration Oct. 8 and 9. Tours of the church will be given from 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Oct. 8, with refreshments served in the next-door social hall, at 1010 Spruce St.
The parishioners and guests will gather at 7 p.m. that same day at the Pueblo Convention Center for a dinner, at which Metropolitan Isaiah of the Denver Diocese will offer opening remarks and lifetime parish member Vasilki Limberis will speak. A Haverford, Pa., resident now, Limberis holds a doctorate in theology. She is an associate professor of ancient Christianity at Philadelphia’s Temple University. After Sunday morning prayers and liturgy, the St. John community again will convene at the convention center, at 1:30 p.m. for a social hour before a 2:30 p.m., traditional Greek dinner and entertainment. The keynote address after dinner will be given by Harry Mark Petrakis, well-known teacher, lecturer and author, whose book, “A Dream of Kings,” was made into a major motion picture in 1969, starring Anthony Quinn. Dancing will follow. Pueblo's most visible Greek and descendant of longtime parish members, TV news personality Georgiann Lymberopoulos, will host both dinners. The church building is the oldest Greek Orthodox church west of the Mississippi in continual use, its parishioners boast. Despite its age, it’s in beautiful condition, substantially unchanged in 98 years of use, scrupulously and lovingly maintained with the same sort of pride that went into its construction. The parish itself is unique in its size - not actual Sunday-worship population (maybe 35 people at most Sunday liturgies and run on a $35,000-a-year budget) - but in the extent of its boundaries. From the beginning, 10 decades ago, the parish was the only Greek Orthodox community around. Worshippers, seeking ethnic togetherness and their own style of prayer and liturgy, would come from points as distant as Alamosa and Aspen, Canon City and Colorado Springs, La Junta and Lamar, Walsenburg and Trinidad, western Kansas and northern New Mexico. It was hardly just a Pueblo parish. Parishioners today boast, rightly, that the parish had a “feeder area” of about 87,000 square miles and constituted, geographically, the largest parish in the United States. To serve the de facto small attendance, a Greek priest, Father Constantine Balomenos, flies in from Sioux City, Iowa, twice monthly for the liturgy. The parish is administered by a council, presided over by Penny Zavichas, who, with her sister, Connie Zavichas Wells, did the lion’s share of the work it took to get the church placed on the National Register.
To this day, St. John the Baptist counts among its supporting members Christians from all around the state and neighboring ones, with additional membership scattered across the nation. A mailing list includes many Pueblo addresses, of course, but also the mailboxes of transplanted members and supporters in Colorado Springs, several other Colorado cities and in at least 20 states. Among the boons relevant to the parish’s centennial observation is the presence and assistance given by Steve Frangos, a historian and writer for a Greek weekly newspaper, the 90-year-old National Herald. The New Yorker has been in and out of Pueblo since 2003, researching and helping to compile a history of the congregation, and has been key in producing a handsome volume, rich in text and photos commemorating the anniversary. The historical awareness and compilation will continue, parish spokesmen agree, as congregants, mindful and proud of their past and their present, look toward the next 100 years. |
