The Life of Tasula Petrakis Thoman

In the summer of 1916, while war was raging all over Europe, a 31-year-old Greek Orthodox priest -- Reverend Mark Petrakis -- and his 26-year-old wife Stella, said good bye to family and friends in Rethymnon, Crete and traveled with their four children --ages 7,6,5 and 3 — to the port of Piraeus to begin their journey to America. The five-year-old, who vaguely remembers a donkey ride down a mountain and running wildly over stone steps on some ancient monument, was a dark-haired pixie with big green eyes. Her name was Tasula.

For six weeks, frightened and often sick, the family endured the boat ride across the Atlantic, finally landing at Ellis Island in New York harbor. After some bewildering delays and a night of separation from one another, they were met by a representative of the Greek miners in Price, Utah to whom Reverend Petrakis had been sent to be their first priest.

Soon the family was on yet another journey — a weeklong train ride across the United States over vast plains and deep gorges. Tasula remembers her mother being even more frightened on that journey as they looked out the windows of the train to see nothing but rocks thousands of feet below. And, of course, the children were once again sick. At one point, Mrs. Petrakis asked the conductor to stop the train so her children could settle their stomachs. Of course, he could not refuse.

Finally the family arrived to great fanfare in Utah and Father Petrakis began his ministry. In Price, the two older children began school and Tasula, as yet too young for classroom instruction, was given a hand-crank coffee grinder to play with, and placed in the back of the room so that she could begin to absorb the language of their new home.

Two years later, Father Petrakis was assigned to a new church in Savannah, Georgia and two years after that, he was assigned to a church in St. Louis, Missouri. By that time, Tasula was nearly ten years old and some of her fondest childhood memories are of the time in St. Louis where she made some lifelong friends. But that period also produced some frightening memories, including the time when Tasula was knocked out by a rock thrown by a gang of young ruffians who didn’t like those "foreigners" next door.

In 1923, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois — the city they would call their permanent home. Fearing for their fate in the Chicago public schools, in 1927 Father Petrakis sent his two daughters to an Episcopal boarding school in Knoxville, IL.

Though she missed her family terribly, it was at that school — St. Mary’s -- that Tasula came into her own. Driven in her own right, she was particularly motivated by an incident that happened a few days after she arrived at the school.

Another Greek girl, Helen, called Tasula and her sister Barbara into her room. Expecting a warm welcome, Tasula got something else. A year older than Tasula and the same age as Barbara, Helen looked at them coldly and said, "Don’t you do anything to disgrace me." Incensed, Tasula shot Helen back her characteristic steely-eyed glance. "Helen," she said, "when I’m through here, they won’t even remember who you are!"

And she was true to her word. In the next three years, Tasula was President of the Sophomore, Junior and Senior classes, President of the Athletic Association, President of the Student Body, won the school tennis champion (beating out, she liked to brag, the tall, blonde granddaughter of the founder of the school) and she won the Dean’s Cup -- an award from the faculty.

In 1930, Tasula graduated from St. Mary’s and then returned home to Chicago to live with her family. That fall, she began her studies at the University of Chicago — a place, she described later as "hard to get into and harder to get out of." While working full-time as a cashier in a theater, she studied journalism and philosophy, and her sharp and willing mind was stimulated by teachers such as Thornton Wilder and James Webber Lynn.

In the summer of 1933, like many other young people in Chicago, Tasula went to work at the Chicago World’s Fair. There, a few weeks after she started, she met a tall, blond 29-year-old artist named John Thoman.

Immediately taken with each other, John and Tasula began their romance with long moonlit walks around the fairgrounds after the Fair closed at night, talking about ideas, life, love and the world.

But eventually their talks turned to the difficulty of their situation. As the daughter of the Priest, who frequently warned the children of his congregation of the perils of marrying outside their faith (and admonished parents not to allow them to do so), Tasula was the last person who was expected to go against her father’s exhortations. But John, head over heels in love with the small but mighty Greek girl, would not be denied. No matter what the circumstances, no matter what the obstacles, they were meant to be together.

In October 1933, the Fair closed and, unlike so many of the Fair romances, John and Tasula’s continued and flourished. John would walk Tasula to her classes at the university, would meet her after her shift at the theater, and would ride home with her on the streetcar. Tasula got to know John’s parents and sisters, but the situation could not be reciprocal. She told her family about this man she had met, but she was always greeted by her Father’s stern warning of the consequences of getting too serious.

Their romance continued through 1934 when, in December, Tasula received her PhB degree from the University of Chicago. In early 1935, after many tearful nights -- torn between being the dutiful daughter she had always been and following her heart — Tasula agreed to marry John secretly as soon as her sister Barbara was married in February.

So, on March 5, 1935, Tasula and John were married in his parents’ living room by an RLDS minister, attended only by his sisters. That afternoon, before she went to tell her parents, she wrote in her diary: "Oh God up in Heaven, give me courage and let them be as compassionate as I know you are."

That night they went to her parents’ house. But when Tasula and John walked into her father’s bedroom, he took one look at them and had what everyone thought was a stroke. They were quickly ushered out of the house and Tasula spent her wedding night crying on the couch at John’s parents’ home, thinking she had killed her father.

The next morning, Tasula’s mother called and said her father was all right. And by the day after that, the deacon from the Greek church approached her with a plan: it would be announced that John and Tasula were "officially engaged," and a wedding in the Greek church would be held after Easter, on April 29. John agreed, and they had their second wedding 55 days after their first. (Though they always celebrated March 5.)

After they married, John and Tasula lived in one room in his parents’ house. Always strapped for money, they dreamed of moving into their own place, but could not afford the deposit or to buy furniture. Determined, as always, Tasula finally found a place and, although John was not employed full-time, they made their second of many leaps of faith and moved into a small apartment on the south side of Chicago. Three months later, their son Mark was born.

Though she had quit her job at the theatre shortly before Mark was born, Tasula soon began working again as a cashier at another theatre. 2 _ years later, when her second child Barbara was born, she quit working altogether to become what by then she longed to be — a full-time wife and mother.

Tasula remained close to her family who by that time had fully accepted John and her children. But she also became more and more involved in John’s church. She missed the beauty and ceremony of the church of her youth, and she missed the close fellowship of the Greek community, but she had made her decision — her life was to be with John.

In 1942, Leota was born. Two years later, at the same time as her son Mark was baptized, Tasula was baptized into the RLDS church — a fact she never shared with her father who died seven years later in 1951.

During those early years, besides the normal job of wife and mother, Tasula’s most consuming task was as manager, supporter and inspiration to John whose career as an artist, and in a variety of other jobs, was characterized both by many successes and many disappointments. Through it all, Tasula was there — encouraging him to take more art classes (though they could ill afford it), serving as his intermediary with less-than-understanding patrons, and somehow managing to buy both art supplies and groceries on their meager budget.

Most of all, she was the one who figured out how to do those things that John and everyone else thought impossible. John would later call it the "Tasula magic," explaining that it was a mystery how she could always make everything turn out the way she thought it should be. As it had been since those first days in America, her determination to accomplish her dreams, despite huge obstacles, was not to be denied.

Tasula (who was by then called Sue by her non-Greek friends) showed that determination and courage again in 1945, when she left her family behind and moved with John and the children to Independence, Missouri. The war plant where he worked was closing and John again found himself without steady work. His parents by then had moved to Independence and they offered John help in finding a job and a place to stay for he and his family.

When they arrived in the sweltering summer of 1945, the "place to stay" turned out to be one room on a stifling third floor of John’s parents’ house where there were five army cots and no privacy.

Having escaped once from her in-laws’ house, Sue decided they would not, and could not, live that way, so she started looking for a house they could afford. One day, while walking in the neighborhood, she spotted a bungalow on West Maple and said to a friend, "That’s where we’re going to live." The house did not even have a "for sale" sign, but by October 1945, John had a job at Western Auto and the Thomans were moving into 1116 West Maple. Two years later, their fourth child Nikki was born.

As the minister’s daughter, Sue had a tradition of being very active in her church, so after they moved to Independence, she threw herself fully into being active in her new denomination. She joined the Stone Church choir, serving as Choir president and eventually singing in the choir for over 40 years. She also became President of the Women’s group, organized housing for conference, organized the fall festival and joined the Messiah Choir. She also became active in the community in such organizations as Music Club and AAUW and held literature discussion groups in the dining room of their home.

But most of her energies were still devoted to her husband and family, raising her children with discipline and love, instilling in them her own values of fairness, empathy, generosity, ambition and persistence.

In the early 1960s, with only one child left at home, Sue decided it was time for her to resume her working career, both for herself and to help her children who were by then in college and starting families of their own. Prodded by a friend to take the real estate exam, she decided that real estate sales might be something she could be good at. It was not the career of her dreams. (In high school she vowed to be a journalist and to never marry.) But real estate would provide, she thought, the independence and flexibility she wanted so that she could still make John and the children her first priority.

Her career in real estate started out slowly but, as usual, Sue — at that point nearly 50 years old -- challenged herself to get up earlier, be more organized, be more motivated and be just plain better at it than anyone else. Soon she was winning prizes and awards. In the early seventies, she won a trip to Hawaii (which she took), and a trip to Las Vegas (which she did not take — deciding instead to have the company pay the cash equivalent to the nursing home where her mother was then residing in Chicago).

After all the children were off to college and married, Sue still had two dreams: to build her own house, and to travel to Greece. Using only her real estate earnings, since John had retired early at the age of 62, in the next ten years, Sue made both these dreams come true.

In 1969, John and Sue built their "dream house" on North Union next to their friends Carl and Kay Mesle. The house had everything Sue had always wanted: a large kitchen with a bay window, more than one bathroom, a big dining room for family dinners, and, most importantly, a large studio for John. For the next 27 years, John and Sue lived in that house and enjoyed every aspect of it together.

In 1972, Sue also made her second dream come true. 56 years after she had left, Sue returned with John to Greece where they spent six memorable weeks -- Sue becoming acquainted with relatives she had never met, and John sketching every beautiful scene.

During most of the seventies and eighties, John and Sue were without family nearby, having encouraged their children to follow their dreams, as they had done. They traveled to see their children and grandchildren in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Massachusetts, Washington State, and Illinois, but none lived in the area until Nikki and her husband George moved to Kansas City in 1986 and Barbara moved from Chicago to Independence in 1989.

While more secure than in any of the years before, John and Sue’s last years together were not without worry and heartache for Sue -- made even more difficult by the fact that she could no longer "fix" everything as she had done in their early life together. Two of their children experienced painful divorces, grandchildren were growing up long distances away, and one of their children was seriously and chronically ill. During this time, John also underwent two successful surgeries for colon cancer and recovered from a heart attack.

Through all of this, Sue doggedly carried on, traveling to be with her children whenever she could, sending them money from her still small savings, and continually supporting and prodding them over the phone and by letter.

As she entered her eighties Sue found herself beginning to slow down despite valiant efforts to deny any diminishment of capabilities or strength. In 1991, at the age of 80, she finally retired from real estate. Three years later, she was forced to stop driving a car, the most traumatic blow yet to her sense of control and independence.

During those years, Sue was, for the first time in her life, depressed and unsure what to do, a situation exacerbated by the memory impairment which had begun to manifest itself. But, true to her character, she began to work through it and to adjust courageously to her new situation.

In March 1996, John, her love of 63 years, died at the age of nearly 92. Unable to understand the seriousness of John’s illness because of her memory impairment, Sue was shocked and angry at his death. His death also meant one more loss of independence: she could no longer live in her home. In December 1996, with the help of friends, Sue’s children moved her to The Groves and they sold her house and distributed most of her furniture to family and friends.

For three years, Sue lived comfortably in The Groves, often commenting how her gregarious husband (who also loved to be waited on), "would have loved it here." During that period, Sue’s children were once again living elsewhere, so good friends, Carl and Kay Mesle and Roy and Marilyn Schaefer, among others, visited and made sure that Sue was well taken care of.

In 1999, when health problems were going to force a move out of The Groves, Sue’s children decided it was time she moved closer to one of them. So, in June 1999, Sue moved to a place called Brighton Gardens, ten minutes from Nikki’s home in Beverly, Massachusetts. At Brighton Gardens, they loved Sue. Her room was filled with portraits of her children that John had painted, as well as photos of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She told them many stories about her life, and her wit and sense of humor became legendary among the staff.

She was also with family more than at any other time since John died. Nikki visited several times a week, Sue ate dinner frequently at Nikki and George’s house, and they took frequent car rides through the beautiful seashore towns north of Boston.

Her other children were also able to spend extended periods of time with her. Last Christmas, all her children and several of her grandchildren and great grandchildren came to Nikki’s house. And in the last few months of her life, grandchildren and great grandchildren visited her from Virginia, Illinois, and Washington State.

In June, after a diagnosis of liver cancer, Sue moved in with Nikki and George. She quickly settled in and enjoyed being once again in a home, eating at a kitchen table, sitting on the couch in the family room, and being in the "middle of things" --while simultaneously, of course, reading her newspaper or People Magazine. There, with the help of Hospice, her siblings and their children, Nikki was able to care for Sue until she died -- in her own sunny room, with a view of trees and a pond, surrounded by John’s pictures, holding the hands of two of her daughters.

To the end, with her magnificent life force, Sue clung tenaciously to the world she had created for herself and her children. Finally, however, she allowed herself to rest and to once again rejoin John who, no doubt, has been waiting impatiently for her.