YiaYia was born on August 14, 1920, in the small port city of Gytheio, Greece. Of course, she wasn’t called YiaYia back then. Her name was Andromahi Varouni. She had a mole above her right lip, and she was beautiful. Her father, Sophocles, worked in a flour mill. Her mother, Irini, was a housewife. They would have five children total — three boys and two girls. Their small town was part of Greece’s famous Peloponnese district. Like YiaYia, this district is very special. It’s where Hercules fought, and where Helen of Troy fell in love. The mountains are covered in white snow, the beaches in beautiful sand. They say the waters are bluer than you can imagine.
But, more than all that, the people who live here are known around the world for two things: their food and their hospitality. If you ever sat in YiaYia’s kitchen, talking, laughing, and sneaking bites of food before she was finished cooking, that should come as no surprise. YiaYia knew how to make you feel at home, no matter where you came from, and you were guaranteed to leave her house five pounds heavier than when you arrived. She herself would fall in love with a man whose family was from the same place, but not until she was halfway across the world.
In the 1940s, her first move would be across the peninsula to Piraeus, a city near Athens, where her brother John lived. She was a beautiful young woman who wanted to study dentistry, but it was her mother’s dying wish that she leave Greece and meet her brother George in America. He had built a new life there, running his own laundry business.
So in December of 1947, she boarded a plane in Rome, Italy, bound for Detroit. She would later tell us how funny she thought it was that they served corn on board -- in Greece, corn was only fed to animals. “What is this?!” she would look down and say, in her classic YiaYia voice, as she re-enacted the story. YiaYia arrived in the United States on Christmas Day. She was cleared through immigration, and from there she travelled to Chicago, her new home. George would become less of a brother to YiaYia now, and more like a father. He took care of his sister, helping her learn English, showing her around Chicago, and eventually, introducing her to a handsome Greek man he worked with, named James Kordares. At first, she rejected his advances, allegedly throwing ink on him. But he quickly won her over and they fell in love.
The two were married in 1952. YiaYia wore a silk dress, a long white veil, and looked almost royal. Only a year later, they had their first son. He would be named George, after the brother who took care of her in a new country. Two years after that, Sam would arrive, named for YiaYia’s father. Having left most of her family in Greece, these two boys would become the loves of her life.
The four of them moved to Georgia in 1974, and YiaYia’s family would grow even bigger. YiaYia’s sons would have their own children: Molly, Kyle, and Alexa. They would cook and eat and swim and sing their way through wonderful years together. We’d crack red eggs on Easter. She’d sneak money into our pockets on Thanksgiving. And every year on Christmas, she’d cross herself after we read the story of Mary and Joseph, who also left their country for a new one.
Family would become even more important to YiaYia in 1992, when her husband died in a car accident. While she lived happily for decades after that day, watching her family grow even bigger with the arrival of two great-grandchildren, it was clear that a part of YiaYia also died the day she lost James. Those of us left miss them both so much, but we take comfort knowing that they are finally together again, this time forever.
Andromahi Varouni Kordares is survived by her two sons (George Kordares and Sam Kordares), her two daughter-in-laws (Trabue Kordares and Elaine Kordares), her three grandchildren (Molly Kordares, Kyle Kordares and Alexa Brannen), her two great-grandchildren (Brooks Brannen and Bailey Brannen), and her niece (Elaine Varney).
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