Califa Videos

Mini-Movie by Marta Ibarra & Oakland Public Library (Spanish with English Subtitles)

Jen creates her first digital story remembering a humorous and harrowing personal story from her childhood.

Koroni, Messinia, Greece, where my Dad was born, is located in southern Greece and is a popular port where fishing boats are harbored. It was in this town of Koroni that the Stamatopoulos family originated. My grandparents George and Ellen had only one son, Dimitri Stamatopoulos born in 1888. Tragedy struck this family when someone raped a girl and my grandfather George caught the rapist in the barn and killed him. The family of the dead rapist avenged his death by killing George. Then one of the Stamatopoulos brothers retaliated by killing the man who killed George. One brother, Costa Stamatopoulos, who was unmarried took the blame for the killing was sentenced to eighteen years in prison. He served nine years of this sentence and escaped to America and settled in San Francisco. In the meantime, it was impossible for my father s mother, now a widow, to support herself. So she remarried and her new husband refused to raise a son that was not his own. So she gave her son to her mother to raise. My father s earliest recollections of living with his grandmother was that they would walk down a dirt road and beg for flour to make bread. When she became too old to take care of him, my father s uncle, Stamati who had five girls, took him home to live with him. Since his uncle had no sons, he changed his name from Dimitri to Stamati so he could carry on his name. In 1907, Uncle Costa in San Francisco sent passage money and my dad came to America through Ellis Island and they shortened his name from Stamati Stamatopoulos to Sam Stamas. My Dad worked and saved his money and brought three of his five cousins to America and married them off. The other two did not want to leave Greece. Then he asked his uncle in Greece to send him a bride as he was ready to get married. His uncle said Anna Rombakis would be a suitable wife. My Dad agreed to the arrangement as he remembered seeing her in Greece in the grape vineyards when he worked for her father. No words were spoken between them as this would be highly improper behavior in Greece between two young people. The engagement was sealed and pictures were exchanged. My mother prepared for her trip to America, but war broke out in Europe in the Balkans in 1914 and Greece was involved. The United States got into it in 1917 and World War I had started. A blockade was in effect and no one could cross the ocean during the war years and the war lasted until 1918. For the next seven years my dad and mother waited for each other. World War I ended in November 1918, however, passage across the ocean was not possible for seven more months until peace terms between Germany and the Allies were signed reducing Germany s sea power to a minor one. My mother was not able to come to America until December 1919. She arrived in Ellis Island and they were married in January 1920. After my parents were married they moved to Roseville where my dad went to work for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He bought property at 437 Riverside and this was where his seven children were born. Roseville was a small town with a population of approximately 8,000 people consisting largely of Greek, German, Italian and Mexican immigrants. The Southern Pacific Railroad switchyard moved from Rocklin to Roseville and it was the largest railroad center west of Chicago. The SP trains ran from Roseville to Sparks, Nevada and back again. It required an overnight stay. My Dad saw the opportunity and need for laundering clothes for these bachelor men. Therefore, in the evenings after a full day s work at the SP yard, he would ride around on his bicycle and collect dirty clothes and overalls from the men and wash them in an old fashion washing machine with a roller type wringer. On their return to Roseville from Sparks these mean had clean clothes. This brought in additional funds and eventually this laundering business became lucrative and full time. My dad started the Roseville Laundry business on Riverside Avenue. He could not afford to hire help so he had no recourse but to put his kids to work in the laundry. His kids therefore were laundry workers at a very early age. Someone noticed underage children working in the laundry and reported this to the police. My dad was arrested and jailed for violation of the Child Labor Law. My mother took her children to the jail house and left them there for the police to feed. She said since they jailed the bread winner she could not feed the kids. My father was released immediately and we all went home. In 1941 the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and World War II started. It was during the war that our laundry business flourished and by 1943 my dad felt he had enough money saved to retire so he leased the laundry. Later, after the war, my brother Peter bought the laundry from my dad and it is still there and run by someone else. My parents were privileged to live during the fascinating period of tremendous growth for our nation. They went from riding on donkeys to riding in an automobiles; the change from no toilets to indoor plumbing and running water; the use of electricity in private homes; the phenomena of television; and a human actually landing on the moon. Also, there were two major world wars and several smaller ones around the globe. They worked together all their lives, shared their "for better or worse" together, and when my mother died on September 30, 1970, my died died four months later of a broken heart on February 8, 1971. Now they sleep "in the dust of the earth" side by side, together again waiting until Jesus takes them home.

Greeks have been an element of the Roseville population for many decades, however, during that time they did not have an Orthodox Church in Roseville. The area s religious needs were met by the Orthodox Church of the Annunciation in Sacramento and the Roseville residents would travel there to attend church on Alhambra and F Streets. Sometimes, they would invite the clergy to come to Roseville for weddings, baptisms or funerals. It was such an invitation which led to the recent establishment of the first Greek Orthodox Parish in Placer County. It was in March 1989 that I called Father Dogias and asked him to conduct a 10-year memorial service at the Roseville cemetery for Danny Moustris and Shirley Stamas. At this service Father Dogias noticed a large number of Roseville Greeks who were not attending church in Sacramento and he suggested that we start a church in Roseville. Roula Karren and Paul Stamas rounded up seven of us Greeks and we met weekly at Roula Karren s kitchen table and talked about how to start a church. We called every Greek we knew and didn t know, we researched all Greek names in the telephone directory and talked to anyone resembling a Greek. Father Dogias came to Roseville once a month on Saturday mornings and conducted liturgy in our various homes and even in our back yards. What a blessing to see your dining room table transformed into an alter. The services in our back yards were especially memorable as we sang the liturgy, the birds joined in. Later, Saint John s Episcopal Church offered their facility and we held church services there once a month on Saturday mornings. Father Dogias was our priest for nine years. He conducted monthly bible studies and orthodox study classes. He was our mentor, our priest, and our friend. He steadfastly led us down the long rocky road that we were destined to walk. We will always be grateful for what he did for us. If you ask Father Dogias about Roseville he will say I am their mother, I gave them birth. During this time our little Roseville mission had so few parishioners that when they did not attend church we went after them and asked We didn t see you in church, were you sick or do you have another problem that perhaps we can help you with? The reasons they gave were that church on Saturday mornings did not work for them because they had, soccer, baseball and other activities that took priority. They said if we had church on Sunday mornings like other normal denominations, they would attend. The time had come! In May, 1998, Paul Stamas called Bishop Anthony and asked him if he could send us a priest so we can have services on Sunday morning. The Bishop, concerned if we could support a priest, replied that if we had $50,000 in the bank and thirty pledged families he would send us a priest. Paul stated we had over $50,000 in the bank but only twenty pledged families. The Bishop replied, That s close enough , and on May 6, 1998 the Bishop declared the Roseville Mission an official Parish and assigned our first priest, Father Cosmas Halekakis. We rented an office space and transformed it to resemble an Orthodox Church and it was beautifully done. On Sunday morning, July 12, 1998, Father Cosmas conducted our first liturgy at 114 N. Sunrise, Suite A-1. In December 2000, Angelo Tsakopoulos donated 4.5 acres of land for our church and we broke ground in Spring of 2002. Our church is located at the corner of East Roseville Parkway and Stone Canyon Road. Today we are holding services in Founders Hall, our multi-purpose building which has been transformed into a beautiful Orthodox Church setting. Founders Hall has been dedicated to Father Dogias and his wife. We have increased from 20 families to 200 families. These families consist of Greeks, Americans, Armenians, Serbians, Russians, Arabic and Ethiopians. A variety of ethnic Orthodox people and 70% of our service is in English. We also have an active pre-school and day care. Roseville has the distinction of being the only Orthodox Church in America named Saint Anna. Saint Anna is the mother of the Virgin Mary and the grandmother of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. On June 2001, Father Cosmas was transferred and we had the good fortune to get Father Christopher Flesores from Belmont for our priest. He is definitiely the right man for our growing community and he is moving us forward in a positive way. With the establishment of our Orthodox parish in Roseville, we are now able to leave a legacy to our own children left to us by our parents a legacy of religion, tradition and culture, and their values will enrich their lives as they did ours.

My name is Celerino Estrada. I am an immigrant. I moved to the U.S. when I was sixteen years old. I am from a town in Michoacan, Mexico. What I really like about Mexico are the traditions. And here we combined them with the ones from the U.S. One of the traditions in Mexico that my mom used to tell us was that during religious holidays we shouldn't shower in Saturday before Easter because we would turn into fish. Here in the U.S. there is a different tradition. Here people go and hide the Easter eggs. I am father of four children. I live in the city of Oakland. So on the Easter topic I'd like to talk about a tradition we have here at Chabot Park in Oakland. On Easter Saturday all my family gets together in the park. Cousins, brothers, uncles everyone. We go to the park and have a party, a picnic. We cook carne asada, beans, rice, everything that we eat in Mexico. And once the food is over we go and hide the eggs. The women are the ones who fill the eggs with candy while the men take care of the food. After we eat all the kids go and look for the eggs. There are many people who go there, Latinos, White people, Black people. And everyone searches for the eggs. The families have a good time. We get together and reminisce about the traditions in the U.S. and Mexico. It is a very nice event because all my family who lives in the U.S. gets together to celebrate. We enjoy ourselves, we eat, and at the end everyone wins. And the children are happy with life. Even though is not the same as is back home, this is one tradition we found here that we like. We have adapted to what is here. So this was the story I wanted to tell from the traditions Mexico and U.S. These are some of the really nice things that I have learned from here. I will continue living here. And I think my children are going to follow the same traditions we have taught them.