Fronditha Elderly Care Gets $1.8M Gift

Some 1.815 million dollars was donated to Frontida Care in commemoration of doctor Constantine Kiriazopoulos, by his son Mike Krizos in his will.

Fronditha Care – formerly called the Australian Greek Society for Care of the Elderly – is a charitable organization providing services to Australian elderly of Greek speaking background, and was founded in 1976. The generous donation was announced during the inauguration of the new 90 bed facility called Anesi in the suburb Thornbury of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Constantine Kiriazopoulos, whose life certainly looks like a fairytale, was born in Adrianople (known now by its Turkish name Edirne) in 1866. His grandfather along with other rich citizens of Adrianople was hanged by the Ottomans. Constantine went to Athens and studied Medicine at the University of Athens. He worked as a doctor in Paris for ten years. He returned to Bulgaria and Adrianople, but because the Greeks were not welcome there, he left for Melbourne in 1902 and became the first Greek doctor of the city.

Kiriazopoulos was for a while president of the Greek Community of Melbourne as well as honorary consul of Greece. He also helped for the completion of the first Greek Orthodox Church in Melbourne. In addition, he was the first Greek playwright and wrote articles in the first Greek newspaper of Australia, as well as poems and novels in magazines in Greece under the pseudonym Cletos.

His son Michalis Kiriazopoulos or Mike Krizos was born in Melbourne in 1910 and had a successful career as a civil engineer. He died in 2007 at the age of 96 years old and is survived by his son and two daughters.

The radiothon, hosted by 3XY radio station, on April 12 and 13, for the support of Anesi, brought 205 thousand dollars. Sakis Zafiropoulos, president of Fronditha Care underlined that “this generosity proves the trustfulness of the Greek-Australians to the organization.’’