Yiaya's Stories

These are stories Yiaya has told.

• She had a twin brother named Theodore and an older brother named Michael. They both died of polio. They think she had a minor case of polio, but she had few ill effects from it.
• Yiaya Katina was placed in an arranged marriage with Yiaya's birth father, ??? Benglas on her home island. She was in love with another man. After she left the island and came to America, she received word that the young man had committed suicide due to his grief over his lost love.
• In 1929, ??? Benglas was going to go into business with another man. Benglas was a baker by trade. Then the depression hit. Katina told him to go get his money from the bank, but he refused. They lost $800. This was the last straw, after having lost two children and having a tough relationship with Katina. When Yiaya was 3, he ran away.
• Katina married merchant marine Nick Andross. He worked on oil takers, eventually becoming captain. He was away for months at a time, particularly during WW2. He was Yiaya's adoptive father.
• At some point, Yiaya was in a wedding as a bridesmaid or maid of honor. ??? Benglas read this in the paper. Through mutual friends from before he ran off, he contacted Yiaya and asked her to visit him. At this point, he was in the VA hospital because he had been exposed to mustard gas (used by the Germans) during WW1. He was in a VA hospital in Kerrville. Yiaya had mixed feelings because she did not know this man and did not want to drive a wedge between her and Big Papou Nick. She asked her mother who left the decision up to her. She visited him in the hospital. They had a nice conversation, but she could not call him 'dad' or have a father-daughter relationship. Later her started sending threatening letters to the woman who had introduced Katina to Nick, and they had to get an order of no-contact against him. He had a sister in Marseille France, and he went to go live with her there. The doctors told him he would not survive long if he ended his treatments at the VA hospital. He died not long after in Marseille.
• Nick was a merchant marine. His true last name was not Andross. He stowed away on a ship from Greece. He was caught and left on some island. He worked at a restaurant on that island until he could earn enough money to get passage to Brittain. There he joined the British navy. The British navy was in the habit of putting Greeks on its ships because they are seafaring people. He was only 16, but he was so tall that he could pass for being old enough. The other Greek men teased him about his height, calling him 'Andrass' which means something like 'tall man'. The kept that, using it as his last name. He later jumped ship and joined the Spanish navy, after some sort of skirmish.
• Somehow he made it to the US and became a merchange marine, eventually making it up to the rank of captain. He had one month vacation per year, and he would spend that time repainting the house each year. The house had many coats of paint.
• One time he was operating a ship in the Gulf of Mexico when a German U-boat torpedoed the ships in front and behind him. He could not stop to save anybody and had to leave them to their fate. This made him sad.
• One time, Katina received a phone call informing her that Nick's ship had been sunk and that he was dead. She told the caller it was a lie because they would have told her in person. It was a German spy trying to get her to reveal information about the position of his ship which would, in turn, reveal information about the position of a US naval fleet.