It doesn’t mean that they’re the most generous, or giving (certainly to their family and often to the church they are), and anybody who’s ever tried to start something in the community—to start a scholarship fund, to help a school, to help a senior citizen center, let alone go far afield in the consciousness of most practical self-made people and do something creative like start a magazine such as this to bridge our generation gap—anybody who’s ever tried knows firsthand how we Greeks eternally pay lip service to the glory that was Greece and to her culture, and with notable exceptions (such as George Behrakis in our cover story), do very little to foster that culture or her spirit of intellectual freedom.

My father was a principal in Greek parochial schools and I speak firsthand—where are the Greeks who made their millions and want the obeisance of the community (all power to them) and who talk endlessly in endless tribute dinners about the glory that was Greece and their worship of her heritage and of paidea—where are they when Greek parochial schools throughout the United Stares are withering and closing because the church can no longer afford to keep them open or maintain them as Greek parochial schools alone? Where are they to supplement the salary of teachers at these schools, experienced teachers who barely make $15,000 a year?

Where are they to provide scholarships to the bright Greek kids who need a hand and can make us all proud? Where do these bright kids turn to apply for such scholarships—real scholarships to top schools? The top-tier organizations like AHEPA and annual efforts like the Hellenic Times Gala provide some recognition and aid to our most promising kids, but with all the millions, if not billions in the room at some of these galas, the most that we can spare for our brightest kids is $2,500 and $5,000 scholarships—when tuition at top colleges can average close to $50,000 a year?

Where are the annual trips to Greece for our kids sponsored by the foundations of our very rich? Some kids go to Greece and summer camps through the patchwork of programs funded by a patchwork of groups, and through the summer pilgrimage of their families, but where is that formal introduction to their culture and their heritage and to their responsibilities that Jewish kids get, paid for in full by the very rich and their foundations? These kids come back with a newfound bond to their mother country and to their people—why can’t our own kids get that same introduction to their people in the country that started the civilization we all tout? We don’t have the money to provide for the education of our kids in their heritage, but we eternally have the voice to complain that our kids are getting into mixed marriages and losing their identity?

I interviewed a billionaire once in the offices of his foundation soaring over Fifth Avenue. He was a kind man with an illustrious career who talked movingly about his roots growing up as an immigrant kid in the heartland of America and with a fond smile about the Greek school he attended and the hardscrabble work ethic of his parents. But his foundation, endowed with his billions, was planning to give nothing to the community or to any of the new generation of Greek kids who were trying to make it in America, just as he did once.

Where is our philanthropy and where is our filotimo? They’re all Greek words that we use so well, and so rarely practice.

Dimitri C. Michalakis