The Ahepan Summer 2021 - 19

Opposite Left: An AHEPA-sponsored ambulance donated after the 1999 Athens earthquake. Top Left: Hellas District 25 chapters donated several
cases of supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. Top Center: Medical supplies delivered to the AHEPA Hospital in Thessaloniki as a result
of AHEPA's collaboration with IOCC. Top Right: In 2015, an AHEPA family leadership delegation reviewed the restoration efforts conducted at
Apostolos Andreas Monastery, located in the Karpasia Penisula of Turkish-occupied Cyprus.
Examples of this early assistance include support for the Near
East Relief orphanages from the Milwaukee, Wisc., chapter while
the Waterbury, Conn., chapter gave a benefit dinner for Near East
Relief victims. The Rochester, N.Y., and Kansas City, Mo., chapters
also made contributions to the relief organization.
On April 22, 1928, a catastrophic earthquake devasted the
towns of Corinth and Loutraki, killing 20 people and causing
3,000 houses to collapse, leaving 15,000 inhabitants homeless.
Not a single building remained intact in Loutraki. It would be
the first of a series of earthquakes in Greece with severe consequences
that AHEPA rushed to mitigate providing aid to the
victims and funds for rebuilding the affected cities. Within a few
months, AHEPA's Corinth Relief Fund raised over $43,000.
AHEPA redirected the excess funds raised from the Corinth
Relief Fund towards the establishment of an agricultural college
in the area. The Supreme Lodge turned over $39,618.20 to the
trustees of the Agricultural College and $3,200.05 to the Greek
War Orphans. Located 12 miles (20 kilometers) west of Corinth
at the village of Velo, the college opened its doors in 1933 and
remains in operation to this day. During the annual AHEPA excursion
to Greece in 1924 the excursionists attended the dedication
of the college by Prime Minister Panayotis Tsaladaris in the presence
of members of the Greek government, U.S. Ambassador
Lincoln Mac Veagh and a crowd of 20,000 local inhabitants.
There were two more, but thankfully smaller, earthquakes in
Greece in the 1930s for which AHEPA also mobilized. The first
was in the norther region of Chalkidiki that left 10,000 persons
homeless. AHEPA immediately sent $1,500 for the relief to the
Greek government. The following year, in April, an earthquake
struck the island of Kos causing two deaths and a few injuries,
severe damage to the old buildings in the historic center of Kos
town and to the port's infrastructure. AHEPA sent $1,066 to assist
relief efforts.
In the 1940s, after AHEPA had assisted Greece's war against
the invading Italian and German forces through the Greek
War Relief Association (GWRA), AHEPA chapters throughout
the United States and Canada continued its work by offering
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humanitarian aid after the country eventually fell to the superior
Axis Powers and suffered a brutal enemy occupation from
1941 to 1944. The Axis plunder of resources including foodstuffs
caused a severe famine in Athens during the winter of 1941-42
and hardships throughout the occupation that would cause a total
of 300,000 deaths through starvation by 1944. During this time,
the GWRA managed to overcome a series of obstacles, including
a British wartime blockade of Greek ports. With the help of the
Red Cross and the Medical Surgical Relief Committee of America,
and the use of neutral power shipping, GWRA was able to send
much needed supplies to Greece.
By the end of the war, the AHEPA-supported GWRA had sent
about 600,000 tons of wheat and other foodstuffs, 3,000 tons of
clothing, and 20,000 tons of medicine and other supplies valued
at $100 million. More importantly, the relief supplies saved lives
and prevented a repeat of the horrific famine of the first winter
of the Axis occupation.
AHEPA continued to offer humanitarian aid to devasted
Greece after the war and embarked on two major projects, the
construction of a hospital in the town of Thessaloniki and a hospital
wing attached to the Evanghelismos Hospital in Athens.
The plan and the fundraising were announced in January 1946
symbolically in Atlanta, the city in which AHEPA was founded
in 1922. There followed a nation-wide fundraising effort by
AHEPA and Daughters of Penelope chapters throughout the
United States and Canada. The cornerstones for both hospitals
were laid in 1947 in the presence of a 24-member AHEPA
delegation that had made the first ever airborne excursion to
Greece. In addition to these two major projects, AHEPA also
funded the establishment of Health Centers in the provincial
towns of Chrysoupolis in Eastern Macedonia, Thebes in Viotia,
Kalavryta, Meligala and Molaoi in Peloponnesos, and Ierapetra
in Crete. When the center in Chrysoupolis opened in March
1948, it was the first hospital building to be erected in Greece
since the country's liberation in 1944. The hospital wing in
Athens was dedicated in 1950 and the hospital in Thessaloniki
was dedicated in 1951 in the presence of the Greek royal family,
Summer 2021 · THE AHEPAN | 19

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The Ahepan Summer 2021

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