On Aug. 2, surrounded by family and friends, Fay Cromas of Weston, formerly of Brooklyn, celebrated her 100th birthday.

“That’s no mean feat in today’s environment,” said Barbara Gross, one of Ms. Cromas’s friends.

“Yia Yia,” as she is affectionately known, is of Greek descent, and was raised in Asia Minor before it became part of Turkey. As a refugee, her parents brought her to Brooklyn in 1922, where she eventually met and married Basil Cromas — he was from Ms. Cromas’s hometown in Asia Minor, but they did not meet until she traveled to America.

Ms. Cromas is well known for her expertise as a cook (including the old world cuisine specialty of lamb’s brains), as a seamstress (she worked at Bergdorf Goodman creating one-of-a-kind evening dresses), and as a pastry chef in her husband’s restaurant.

Ms. Gross pointed out that in her lifetime, Ms. Cromas has literally come from donkey and cart, to the Model T, to the moon landing, to personal computers, to cell phones, to Twitter (not that she Twitters, said Ms. Gross).

For the 100th birthday celebration, grandchildren Fay and Michael Tritchonis put together a PowerPoint presentation of Ms. Cromas’s life – not a dry eye in the house, Ms. Gross reported.

Although Ms. Cromas has recently started to slow down a tad, her sense of humor is in full force and she continues to make herself breakfast every morning.

She has lived in Weston with her daughter Christine Tritchonis of Stonehenge Road since 2002.

“You and I can only hope to live such a full and eventful life as Yia Yia has, and come out as centenarians with such an ongoing zest for life,” Ms. Gross said.

(Source: www.acorn-online.com)

“No one paid us, a four man team to uncover Bernard Madoff. We paid out of our pockets. We had to stand up and do this for free, for patriotism,” said Harry Markopolos (in Greek Markopoulos) at the 2009 Sophocles and Louisa Zoullas Memorial Hellenic Lecture on the grounds of the Kimisis Tis Theotokou Greek Orthodox Church of the Hamptons. He is known as the whistleblower of the securities fraud by Bernard Madoff. The unique event was held on Saturday evening, August 8th. Over four hundred persons attended from the tri-state area, including former Senator Alphonse D’Amato, Judge Nicholas Garaufis, Margo and John Catsimatidis and other prominent persons. A reception followed the event. A lavish buffet cocktail hour preceded the lecture. Program moderator was Dr. Peter Michalos. Mr. Dimitrios Hatgistavrou is the Parish Council president. Rev. Alexander Karloutsos is the protopresbyter
Dr. Peter Michalos introduced the Zoullas Lecture series. “It is always an academic and religious event held twice a year,” said Dr. Michalos, Program Moderator. “We have heard from prominent speakers such as: Supreme Court Justice Kennedy; leading space scientist Prof. Krimigis, who sent spaceships to Mars and Saturn and Dr. Col. Neimyer who spoke of America’s foreign war in 1805 with the Barbary pirates and the major role that Greeks played as the first Marines for the United States.”
“Tonight, this event is about Democracy and Justice,” said Dr. Michalos. “Mr. Markopoulos, who is of Chian background, is a teacher and educator. He explained to the United States Congress and the entire world what financial transparency is all about. The Ancient Greek Philosopher Isocrates said “the roots of education are often bitter, but the fruit is sweet.”
Bernard Madoff cost thousands of investors $65 billion, according to a recent report by Larry Neumeister. “Many people were negligent in the Madoff fraud, including the government’s watchdog agencies. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Mary Shapiro has said the agency has been revamping itself, buttressing enforcement efforts and taking initiatives to protect investors following the Madoff scandal.” In his lecture, Mr. Markopolos explained that his “documentation was buried in the SEC and ignored. SEC had a negative attitude towards his findings. The Hedge Fund industry must be more diligent to customers, revealing exactly what they are doing, and not in secret. This is a global tragedy. Research, Non-profit Institutions, Endowments are now gone. The banking and security regulators were asleep, destroying the United States’ credibility.” His dry sense of humor kept everyone’s attention during the lecture. He described complex events in simple terms understandable to the average person.
“I know I am not a hero,” said Markopolos. “Nor am I brave. We were four men of four faiths who worked against an Army of Bernard Madoff. We tried going to the Press. The Press thought we were crazy and did not print our findings. One may ask where did the Ponzi money go? Twelve percent went to victims and individual investments. Feeder funds and marketing agencies received four percent. Madoff received one percent.” A Ponzi scheme uses money from new clients to pay off old ones. According to a recent interview with Bernard Madoff in Neumeister’s article, “it might be in many different venues …because money was paid out to Feeders.”
Markopoulos believes the Feeder Agencies helped Madoff to succeed. “Greeks are tactless. I tell it like it is. Madoff did not allow outside audits, taking money from organized crime and nations. Forty-nine nations were affected by this Ponzi scheme. We are now less trusting of financial institutions. What frightened our team of four persons was that the Press could not take Madoff down. He was the President of Nasdag. We were really worried about ourselves. I believed that if Madoff found out I turned him in, I would not be long for this world.”
Mr. Harry Markopoulos was born in Erie, Pennsylvania in a tight knit Greek-American family. Mrs. Mary Karas, who attended the lecture, was the goddaughter of his grandmother, Mrs. Pappas. “We were good friends with his parents. Harry has a great personality, like the rest of his family.” His seventeen year military background in the Army National Guard and Reserve, where he served as a lieutenant to major, was revealed in his lecture by describing his strategy against Madoff in military terms. His brilliance as a mathematician is legendary.

(Source: hellenicnews.com / Catherine Tsounis)

The 4th Anthology of Expatriate Greek Writers from Five Continents, funded by the Alexander Onassis Public Benefit Foundation has been published. It contains works by 42 Greek authors from all over the world, including numerous writers from the United States. The foundation’s president, Antonis Papadimitriou, noted that the funding was approved for the project without any hesitation.
He said the effort was a worthy one, as it was the only way works could be promoted, which would otherwise not be available to the average reader. In addition, the recognition of the anthology’s national importance constituted yet another bond among Hellenes throughout the globe.
source: voice of greece

The Greek government announced that a new bill is in creation which will allow individuals from the Greek diaspora to become members of the Greek parliament. The new bill calls to increase the number of appointed Members of Parliment from the current 12 to 15. There will be a requirement that the three new spots are filled by members of the Greek diaspora.

The Minister of Interior Mr. Prokopis Pavlopoulos clarified in «To Vima» that the bill would require political parties to agree to increase the number of the appointed Members of Parliment from 12 to 15 so that the three additional seats be allocated to representatives of the diaspora. Therefore, as stated, the new bill will brought to the House would require the parties to place expatriates in positions in the candidate list of State. Mr. Pavlopoulos also made clear that it will maintain the main lines of the Bill presented before the European Parliament and which follows the requirements of Article 51 Paragraph 4 of the Constitution.

The right to vote will be extended to Greek nationals, people who qualify for citizenship but have not yet activated the process. Greek nationals are registered within the poplulation of Greece and therefore on the electoral roll. The elections will be conducted on a rolling basis in all countries that Greeks vote in, but the counting and announcement of results will be simultaneously released. Greek nationals will vote for combinations of parties and coalitions of parties which have been divided into lists of State and Territory. Each ballot will include three candidates who have demonstrated that they have lived abroad for a decade or more before the announcement and have the right to stand before the legislation’s elected Members.

The government has again rejected the proposals of opposition parties for the introduction of absentee voting for external constituencies. The rationale, as Mr. Pavlopoulos told «To Vima», is that the absentee vote cannot guarantee the secrecy and validity of the vote.

Technology continues to improve the voting system. The transmission of telgrams between the departments of the Ministry of Interior can now be conducted with mobile phones, this will allow a complete tally of percentages for each political party just two hours after the closure of the ballot boxes.

(Translated by Rachel Portele, source: ana/mpa)