On Thursday, September 5, 2024, Helen Demetrios Tsintolas, of Rockville, Maryland, passed away peacefully surrounded by her daughter Cassandra (Randel), son Efstratios “Steve” (Suzanne) and her granddaughter, Lauren Eleni. She was 101-3/4. She was predeceased by her loving husband Demetrios “Mimis” Tsintolas, from Arcadia, Greece. She had three beautiful grandchildren, the loves of her life – Lauren Eleni and George Demetrios (Samantha) Johnson and Charles Dimitri Tsintolas.
Helen is also survived by Fotini Economides, Chris Tsintolas, and many nieces and nephews, family and friends.
A "rare" bird, a real Washingtonian, Helen was born on October 29, 1922, in the Nation’s Capital, Washington, D.C., the fifth of seven children born to her immigrant parents from Sparta, Greece, Cassandra Calomiris and Christofilos Kalavritinos. She was named after her two grandmothers. Family history is that Helen’s mother Cassandra was said to be the most beautiful woman in all of Sparta and who rode a stunning white horse to church on her wedding day. Helen was also a real beauty, just like the beautiful Helen of Troy - the face that launched a thousand ships and started the Trojan War.
Though some of her siblings were born in the hospital, Helen was delivered by a mid-wife in her parents’ home on 221 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., where her family lived side by side in an old established neighborhood with other Greek, Italian, and Jewish families.
Helen often told those who would ask how old she was, she would say that she was born the same year that the roof of the old Knickerbocker Theater located at 18th and Columbia Road in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C. collapsed on January 28, 1922, under the weight of snow from a two-day blizzard that was later dubbed the Knickerbocker storm, killing 98 patrons and injuring 133. The Knickerbocker Theater collapse is tied with Florida’s Surfside condominium collapse in 2021 as the third-deadliest structural engineering failure in United States history. The theater’s architect, Reginald Geare, and owner, Harry Crandall, later died by suicide in 1927 and 1937, respectively.
Her immigrant parents landed in Ellis Island, New York, from Sparta, Greece, and made their way to Washington, D.C. As Helen would often say, they arrived with a few pennies in their pockets but with their faith in God, her parents safely travelled to America to better their life and begin their family. With the help of the old horse and buggy method of transportation, her parents established a successful produce business at the old Farmers’ Market located in N.E. Washington, D.C. The Kalavritinos family became a prominent Greek immigrant family.
She was a first generation Greek-American. She often talked about some of her most fondest childhood memories from growing up when life was simple, such as playing with dolls that she made, they had no indoor plumbing and their outhouse was in the back where she would say laughingly they had “free sunshine and plenty of fresh air,” making root beer and beer in their home’s cellar, riding streetcars to get around in, and piling into one of the family’s first cars to be the first to go for a ride in - an old “jalopy” that one of her cousins had bought.
Her parents instilled in her, from a very young age, the importance of an education as a way to get ahead and Helen excelled in school throughout her life. She went to D.C. public schools where she attended Langley Junior High School and graduated from McKinley Tech High School, receiving her Varsity sweater for playing women’s basketball. She was a proud “Tech-ite” She also attended Strayer Business College where she went into business with her father buying row houses and renting out rooms primarily to the new federal workforce that was coming to Washington, D.C. during World War II.
Those were the humble beginnings of her lucrative real estate business that helped to feed her family when four of her five brothers went to war - three brothers joined the Army and one brother joined the Marines. As was often the case during World War 2, the youngest brother was left home to ensure the family name would continue if his brothers became casualties of the war.
In 1942, Helen founded the Kalavritinos Real Estate Company and became one of the first women to receive their real estate brokers license in Washington, D.C. A trailblazer as a businesswoman, Helen continued this broker license until 2018 after 74 years of such service. She built a business and served the Nation’s Capital by providing safe, affordable housing to men and women who were moving to Washington, D.C. to help with the war effort and the New Deal. In 1944, she obtained her insurance broker license and later became a Maryland Real Estate Broker in 1955 maintaining her Maryland license until 2020 after 65 years with that status.
It is noteworthy that when she married in 1950, she and her husband Demetrios “Mimis” expanded her business from rooming houses to apartment buildings from Capitol Hill to all of Washington, D.C. and the Maryland suburbs when they established the successful Tsintolas Realty Company, which continues to this day under the leadership of her son Stratis who has been in that family business for half a century.
In 1948, Demetrios “Mimis” Tsintolas, an executive official from the Agriculture Bank of Greece, was sent to the United States to pursue a college degree in animal husbandry and agriculture and the University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. He lived with his oldest sister, Helen Diacopoulos, her husband, Menas, and their daughter, Mary, while he attended the University of Maryland and gave Greek language lessons to help defray his college costs and living expenses. One of his pupils was Lulu “Lou” Auger, a young woman from Minnesota who came to Washington, D.C. to work for the federal government and met her husband, Ulysses G. Auger, who later became the founder of the Blackie’s House of Beef restaurant empire in Washington, D.C.
Also, Mimis attended the Americanization School in Washington, D.C. and met his future sister-in-law, Anastasia “Tasia” Kalavritinos, recently married to Helen’s older brother Louis. Tasia told Mimis about her beautiful sister-in-law, Helen. Tasia arranged for Mimis to go to Washington, D.C.’s Saint Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church one Sunday to meet Helen. Their eyes met, they fell in love, and were married on June 25, 1950.
Helen was 100% Spartan – a real “Spartiatisa,” and was very proud of her Spartan background – she was “Spartan Strong.” She was very distinctive in her looks. Helen was always a lady, elegant and classic in her look wearing her hair in her famous “French twist” for over 60 years, exuded elegance and grace, and commanded respect, admiration and love from all who knew her. She was a Grand Dame. Helen was everyone’s “Mother” or “Yiayia” (Grandmother) at Church and throughout the Greek community. Helen always had a kind word for all, a beautiful smile on her face, and was well known for her famous “royal wave” as the late Queen Elizabeth of England was not only her contemporary but was also the person she most admired and respected.
Helen celebrated her 100th Birthday in 2022 at a Birthday Celebration held in her honor on October 30, 2022, that her children, Cassandra and Stratis and their spouses as well as her three grandchildren – Lauren Eleni, George Demetrios, and Charles Dimitri - hosted and were joined by over 100 of her closest family and friends to honor this Matriarch of the large and distinguished Greek-American family – the Kalavritinos and Calomiris clans. Helen’s most treasured gift that day was when her niece, Joanne Callas Seward, presented her with a beautiful Swarovski crystal replica of one of the British royal crowns and placed it on her head during Helen’s birthday party.
Other highlights from her 100th Birthday party included a taped video with greeting and well wishes for a longer life from His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, highlights of Helen’s life and beautiful anecdotes by her children and grandchildren, memories from two of her over 20 Godchildren - her first Godchild, Cassandra Kalavritinos Recachinas who she baptized in 1950, and her last Godchild, Kaara Ettesvold, who took her “Nouna’s” Greek name “Eleni” when Kaara was chrismated into the Greek Orthodox faith on September 17, 2019 when Helen was age 96!
Among other wonderful tributes was a presentation by Father Steven Zorzos, Protopresbyter and Presiding Priest for Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, Washington, D.C., who described Helen’s many philanthropic and financial contributions not only to her home Church, Saint Sophia, but also to the other five surrounding parishes in the Washington, D.C. area as well as Winchester, Virginia and Ocean City, Maryland, and to the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople.
Father Steve highlighted her many personal accomplishments at Saint Sophia including her active membership with the Philoptochos Society for over 50 years; her restoring two rare Church Bibles to include their gold covers and the Bibles’ sacred pages; the donation of the Synthronon in the altar in memory of her late husband, Demetrios “Mimis” Tsintolas, and the silver dikera-trikera candles that are used by the Archbishop when he celebrates the Divine Liturgy at Saint Sophia.
However, her crowning glory which was her in-depth research into the past priests who had served at Saint Sophia, the reconstruction of their lineage through the years including tracing their service since the founding of Saint Sophia Cathedral in 1904 and helping to write the history of the Saint Sophia Cathedral that was captured in the History of Saint Sophia book that was published.
There is no question that Helen tapped her organizational and business skills when she began to tackle the Saint Sophia history project during the later part of her retirement years into her ‘90s where her tenacity and perseverance kept her searching and leaving no stone unturned to get to the facts – to identify all of those priestly men and properly honor them who guided the early Saint Sophia community and nurtured it from a small meeting room in the first Jewish Synagogue in Washington, D.C., to its former site within the current the Washington Convention Center on 18th and L Streets, to it final home on Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
One of the missing priests’ names that Helen tracked down was Saint Sophia’s second (first full-time) priest, Father Ioakim Alexopoulos, who was subsequently elevated to the episcopacy as the first bishop of Boston and New England, and then elevated to Metropolitan Archbishop of Volos, Greece, where he helped save over 800 of Volos’s Jewish population from Nazi annihilation during World War II. Owing to Helen’s efforts in connecting the Saint Sophia Greek community to the Jewish community in Washington, D.C, Metropolitan Archbishop Alexopoulos was honored by the Adas Israel Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Washington, D.C. and an honorary plaque was placed in his honor in its Garden of the Righteous after a beautiful ceremony honoring both Metropolitan Archbishop Alexopoulos and Helen. Metropolitan Archbishop Alexopoulos is also honored in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., as well as Jerusalem’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center of Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations (1967).
In furtherance of her research efforts, Helen contacted the Saint Photios Greek Orthodox National Shrine and Museum in Saint Augustine, Florida to learn more about the early Greek immigrants and to help her reconstruct and identify the early priests who had served at Saint Sophia. Helen was honored and recognized in the Saint Photios Fall 2023 Newsletter in a feature article.
Helen and her late husband Mimis had a deep commitment and dedication to the Greek Orthodox faith, to the promotion of Hellenism and Orthodoxy, and together supported many philanthropic works that have helped establish the very foundation of our Greek Orthodox Church in America of today on the local, national, and international levels. With the support and encouragement of Helen, Mimis was able to tirelessly give his time, his energy, his leadership, and his talento. Their financial contributions to the five Washington, D.C. parishes and to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople were reflective of their support for the Greek Orthodox Church.
In 1978, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople bestowed the great title of Archon, Order of Saint Andrew, upon Mimis Tsintolas. Until his death in 2005, he was the senior Archon in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Mimis and Helen visited the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople three times during Mimis and Helen’s life, a rare honor that they were able to enjoy. Additionally, Mimis and Helen became members of the Archbishop Iakovos Leadership 100 and their name is on the Benefactors Plaque in the lobby of the entrance to the Archbishop Iakovos Library in Brookline, Massachusetts.
At every step of Mimis’ journey to help the Greek Orthodox Church flourish in America, Helen stood steadfast by his side and supported his every endeavor by allowing him to devote himself to serving the Church while she successfully ran the family business. She was clearly “the woman behind the man.”
Helen was selfless, and projected confidence, elegance and positivity, always looking on the bright side of things, and as her daughter Cassandra would call her "a real Pollyanna." She just made everybody feel welcomed, loved, and respected. She will also be remembered as a devoted wife and loving mother and Grandmother. She was truly rewarded by our Lord Jesus Christ with a very long, healthy and well-lived life. She was a very lucky woman as were all those who were fortunate enough to have crossed paths with Helen. She truly was a member of the world’s “Greatest Generation.”
A viewing will be held at Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, located at 2815 36th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007 on Monday, September 23, 2024 at 9:00 AM followed by the funeral service at 10:00 AM. Interment will follow at Fort Lincoln Cemetery, 3401 Bladensburg Road, Brentwood, Maryland 20722.
Her funeral service will be livestreamed on Monday, September 23rd, at 10:00 am so that her friends and family may pay their respects remotely.
In lieu of flowers, donations in her memory may be made to the following: Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral Narthex Fund.
Partager l'avis de décèsPARTAGER
v.1.12.1