THOMASVILLE — The Plaza has been continuously running for over 100 years since 1916, a cornerstone of the community since before World War II. 

And Andreas Spiro Papadopoulos, also known as Andrew Poulos, has been working there for over 60 years. 

Born on April 25, 1936, Papadopoulos grew up and went to school in a little town called Korishades in Greece alongside six sisters. 

“As I was growing up, going to school, ithe civil war started in 1947. The civil war started and my father took us from the little town to a bigger city for safety,” he said.

While his father was in the Greek national guard, the communists broke into town in 1949.

Papadopoulos said that his father told his family to get to safety during the fighting.

“After the communists broke into the city he left, he told the landlord of where we were staying to tell my mother, take all of us,” he said, “My mother, she took us all in the middle of the night. It was in February, it was slightly raining and you could hear the bullets over your head.”

His mother carried one of his sisters, who had lost her shoes, and Papadopolous remembered asking his mother where they were going, asking why they were out in the streets.

“We had no beds, we had no shoes, no food to eat, no nothing,” he said, “She asked, ‘What are we supposed to do?’ I said ‘Go back to the house and if they kill us we’ll be in the house and we won’t be out in the streets.’ So that’s what happened, we went back to those and nobody bothered us then.”

Papadopoulos’ father was caught and killed during the fighting. According to Papadopoulos, he was buried in a mass grave alongside 100 other men.

By 1950, the civil war was over. 

“Whatever you see in Ukraine now, I went through that,” Papadopoulos said. “Whatever you see in Ukraine with the refuges, that’s what I had to go through when we had the civil war in Greece between ’47 and ’49.”

Stepping up as the man of his household, Papadopoulos, 19, came to America in 1955 to find work and send back money for his family. Not able to speak English, Papadopoulos came to the Plaza, which, at the time, could be found at 115 N Broad St. and was owned by his first cousins Tom and Louise Mathes, who purchased the Plaza from it’s original owner, Chris Blane, in 1946.

Starting out at the Plaza, Papadopoulos said he worked as a pot washer and off-and-on server during lunch hours for seven days a week, 15 hours a day. Every week, he came home with $14 for his effort. He sent money back to his mother.

“Since my father got killed, I felt like I was in charge of the family,” he said, “I had responsibilities. I was sending money to my mother every month. In those days, in order for your sister to get married, you had to do a dowry, you had to pay the groom. So I bought a house for every one of my sisters. I helped them to buy it so they could get married. They all got married.”

According to Papadopoulos, he sent back $20 every month.

Never having received a formal education in speaking English, he resorted to learning from patrons at the Plaza and reading newspapers. Alongside English, he learned what he could about cooking in the Plaza’s kitchens, until his uncle hired a chef from France to come and teach new recipes to Plaza employees.

“In 1958, my uncle hired a chef from France and he came here and stayed two months and gave us different recipes, showed us how to do different recipes,” he said, “Some of those recipes, we’re still using them today.”

Afterwards, Papadopoulos became a regular chef in the kitchen.

He said that he has seen and gone through a lot of changes over the years. Papadopoulos became a partner of the Plaza in 1958, alongside George and Angelo Mathes, and left for Greece in 1964 to marry and bring back his wife, with whom he had two sons. 

By 1978, the Plaza had moved to its current-day location on 217 S Broad St.

“We needed more parking space, more private rooms, so we decided to purchase this property,” he said, “It used to be a Chevrolet place.” 

When Michael Regina purchased the Plaza from its original owners in 2007, Papadopoulos stayed on with the Plaza full-time. It was only when the COVID-19 pandemic hit America, closing the Plaza for three months, that Papadopoulos became a part-time employee out of concern for his health. 

A member of the Holy Mother of God Greek Orthodox Church and the Evrytanian Association of America Velouchi, Papadopoulos still concerns himself with preparing food in the kitchen and has no plans of retiring anytime soon. 

“I’m still here,” he said, “I have no plans or no date for when I’m going to quit. My health is good so I just keep going till as long as I can.”

He said he is grateful that Regina allowed him to continue working at the Plaza. 

Getting ready to turn 86, Papadopolous said that working in America wasn’t always easy, but he’d never regret his decision.

“Sometimes it was not easy, but I never…I always like it, I’d never make another decision,” he said. “ The United States has been a paradise for me, see, because I help my family, help my sisters, my sons, everything. United States, for me, was a paradise.”

 

Payton Fletcher can be reached at 229-226-2400, ext. 1826