Today he is 82 years old, his name is Thodoris Lagoudakis and he comes from the region Pirouniana, Agia Varvara of Heraklion. He is the first child of his family, followed by 11 more. Four of them died, as they didn’t survive the hunger during World War II.
In 1961, he became the first resident of Pirouniana to leave for Munich. The war closed the schools and he had only finished the 4th grade of elementary school. “When I left, there were 86 people in Pirouniana. When I came back after 37 years, I found eight and today we are only three people who live here permanently and a family that arrived recently.”
According to madeincreta.gr, Thodoris Lagoudakis got a job at Bayer in the rubber chemicals sector. The particularity was that he worked in the raw material sector which no one wanted to approach. In the smudge you could only see his eyes. He needed two hours to be washed and cleaned, for which he was paid.
For 30 years, every morning his new protective suit, shoes and mask awaited him and all the safety rules were respected, but the company didn’t have a way to limit the smudge, so Bayer took care of him so that they wouldn’t lose him. The company even sent him to school. When he completed 30 years in the company and it was time for his retirement, Bayer asked him to stay if he wanted.
“I was getting more money than the staff manager. I started with the basic salary and I got to be paid 13,000 marks per month. My post was difficult and unhealthy. Perhaps I was saved and I didn’t even buy an aspirin, because I drank two to three liters of milk every day. I don’t know how things are today, but when I worked there, the company had five million employees worldwide.
In the sector I used to work I was alone, no one else came near. I walked in and there was invisible dust and when I would go out, after 10-12 hours of work, you could only see my eyes. This is why I was paid so much money- even more than the staff manager. I needed two hours to clean myself and I was paid for these two hours. My colleagues had never seen my face clean, during the breaks and at lunch.”
Lagoudakis retired in 1991 and for seven years he did all the things he was deprived of and then he returned back to his base. He stayed at the same job for 30 years and in the same house for 27 years. When he said that he was returning to Crete, his landlady gave him 50 cows and a house to stay!
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