NICHOLAS GAGE, DAUGHTER ELENI LEAD L100 FORUM ON HELLENISM
Key Biscayne, Florida- Nicholas Gage, former New York Time journalist and author, and his daughter Eleni led the Forum on Hellenism at the 15th Annual Leadership 100 Conference here. Gage, the author of the widely popular ELENI, the more recent GREEK FIRE, and many other books addressed the topic: “Can Orthodoxy and Hellenism Survive in the American Melting Pot?”
He pointed to the unique identity of Greeks and Greek Americans who carried the values paramount in an enlightened world, and gave Western Civilization not only the gift of democracy, but the gift of the love of life or “pursuit of happiness”. He cited the disappearance of the Greeks of Southern Italy who lived in a similar and friendly culture and were assimilated as a lesson for the Greeks in America, who, he felt, must decide whether to struggle mightily to preserve their culture through monumental achievements, education and religion or face the same fate.
Eleni Gage gave the perspective of women and youth, saying that mothers preserved and perpetuated Orthodoxy and Hellenism by passing on the language, values and culture of their faith and heritage. The author of a new book, North of Ithaka, she spoke of her experience, recounted in the book, of returning to her father’s native village, Lia, in Epirus, Greece, to restore the ancestral home. Now living in New York and an editor at People Magazine, she said she learned that “you can go home again”, but that the essence of Hellenism was to be neither Greek nor American, but as Socrates said, “A citizen of the world”
The day ended with the customary Leadership 100 Glendi or “Greek Night”, where the guests of honor were Dimitris Avramopoulos, Greece’s Minister of Tourism and former Mayor of Athens, who received the Leadership 100 Award for Excellence, and Congressman Michael Bilirakis of Florida who is retiring from the U.S. Congress and who has served for decades representing the interests of the Greek Community in America along with his own constituents.
