American
Foundation for
Greek
Language and
Culture
* AFGLC *
AFGLC ANNOUNCES PETROS
TSANTES COMPLETES STOCKTON PENTAGON WITH DONATION
Tampa, Florida. The American Foundation for Greek Language and Culture (AFGLC) is delighted to announce that the five named endowed professorships that make up the Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey are now complete. The final piece of the “pentagon” of Greek studies is the Katerina Batuyios Professorship of Greek Philosophy, to be filled by Associate Professor Lucio Privitello, a graduate of Villanova University.
The donor of the new professorship, Mr. Petros Tsantes, a resident of Long Island, New York, is an exceptional example of the immigrant who has lived the American dream and shared his success with the community.
But the story of the professorship begins even before Mr. Tsantes arrived in America. As a boy on the island of Icaria during World War II, Mr. Tsantes was cared for by a woman named Katerina Batuyios. After the War, Ms. Batuyios emigrated to the United States, and once her young charge had completed gymnasio, she arranged for him to follow her to this country. It is in her name that Mr. Tsantes and his wife Despoina wanted to endow the philosophy position at Stockton through their donation of $100,000. “I wanted to honor her,” he explains. “She was the one who brought me here to the United States.”
As a new immigrant arriving in 1951, Petros Tsantes attended high school again in Wilmington, NC, in order to learn English. Thereafter he enrolled in the Academy of Aeronautics in Devonsburg, PA, where he acquired the skills of an airplane mechanic. He worked for some years for TWA and Northeastern Airlines. In 1961 he met and married a fellow Icariotissa, Despoina Alatsite, who became his partner in business and in life. The following year they purchased a food distribution business from a friend, which they proceeded to operate successfully. Eventually they sold the distributing business and opened a series of three “Blue Dawn Diners,” which they ran in the New York area for thirty-five years, until retiring in 2000.
Mr. Tsantes has been active in civic causes, belonging to a number of local and national associations, including the Pan-Icarian Brotherhood. He has also been an active Mason.
Of course, it is concern for the future that motivates the gift of education. Mr. and Mrs. Tsantes have a daughter, Sophia, who is in the hospitality business in Clearwater, Florida, and a son Vasilios and his wife Colleen, whose three daughters are the pride of their pappou and yiayia’s life. The Tsantes’ endowment was especially made with the couple’s grandchildren in mind. «ÄéáêáÞ ðüèï ïíïìÜæåé!”, as Mr. Tsantes describes his passion for Hellenic education: his “burning desire calls” him to see Hellenic education become again the core of American education. He never stops dreaming about what can be done if that “giant called Hellenism” wakes up from its recent slumber.
On May 16, 2005, Dr. Herman Saatkamp, president of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, joined with the five professors holding endowed professorships in the Interdisciplinary Center for Hellenic Studies at Stockton, with Stockton provost, Dr. David Carr, and with officers of the Tri-State center of AFGLC in honoring Mr. and Mrs. Tsantes for their benefaction. Tri-State president Dr. Peter Yiannos introduced the philanthropists, who then signed the contract creating the philosophy professorship. The long-ago kindness of Katerina Batuyios will be remembered in perpetuity by generations of young Americans who come to Stockton College to study classical philosophy, thanks to the long memory of an Icarian schoolboy. And that is a philosophy of living gratitude and generosity that would make the ancient Greeks proud.
Stockton
president Herman Saatkamp receives check for $100,000 from Petros Tsantes,
whil;e his daughter Sophia Tsantes and AFGLC Tri-State president Peter
Yiannos look on.
Katerina Batuyios, the woman whose kindness to a schoolboy on Icaria made it all possible…and the Tsantes grandchildren, who make the future of the Hellenic heritage so important to their grandparents.
