Yes, The American Dream Does Sometimes Come True

The Ann Arbor News, Sunday, July 1,1973

Yes, The American Dream Does Sometimes Come True

NOAY JUL 1 1973

By Adaline Huszczo

(News Staff Reporter)

“Celebrating 50 Years in America.”

That was the heading on a little article submitted to The News a while ago by Andrew Heise. It was a story he had written himself, about himself, and how, over a period of 50 years, the American dream had unfolded for a young Dutch immigrant.

What “Andy” Heise wrote down in his own hand on a half sheet of paper was not so much a personal history as it was a statement of values and a philosophy of life. Now, as philosophies go, it was not what you’d call original. It's been around for a long time, and you’ve surely heard it before.

It’s the one about “all things come to him who is willing to work for it.” And you also probably know that the theory has fallen into disrepute of late, that it has become almost “de rigeur" in some circles to point out the flaws and the exceptions, to demythologize the American dream.

But “Andy" Heise knows that the theory is right. It worked. And people at The News were intrigued enough by what he wrote to think that maybe we ought to talk with him further about it, perhaps do a bigger story.

So we called him. But we were too late. In the space of time after he sent his article and our call to him, Mr. Heise’s wife passed away, and the spirit of celebration had gone.

No. He really didn’t feel like talking about it anymore, he said. But he said to go ahead and use his letter, if that would be enough. “I wrote it for the good of other people — if they want to take it,” he said. “There are a lot of things I don’t like going on now. There are so doggone many who don’t want to work. But it’s still the best country there is.”

So here is what Mr. Heise wrote:

“Andrew G. Heise of Oakdale Drive, Ann Arbor, is celebrating his 50th year in America. He came from Holland in March, 1923, as an 18 year old boy, without trade, language or money. He worked two years on a large estate in Grosse Pointe, and then came to Ann Arbor in 1925. He married Agnes M. Cornell of Ann Arbor in 1932 who made him a very good wife. They have two children, Doris and Bill, whom both went through the University in Ypsilanti and U of M.

“Mr. Heise says: I learned to work hard and to be thrifty in Holland and that helped me a lot in America. One has to save when unmarried and save one-third, spend one-third and one-third for board and room. It soon adds up.

“Mr. Heise’s first job paid him only $35 per month and board and he saved on it. It is much better now than it was when I arrived in America in 1923. I believe I could have a comfortable home in half of the time today, if I had to do it over again.

“I am very glad that we were blessed with good health and were never dependent on our government. We made our own way and did it well. When one can’t make it in America, then where else?

“One has to make a good beginning when single, either work and save, or go to school and learn a trade or profession and learn it well.

“Mr. Heise and Agnes (his wife) celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary Nov. 22, 1972.

“Money is not everything, but when one has not got any, - then life can be very hard. Often it is one’s own fault.”

Signed, Andrew Heise.

But Andrew Heise is not the only one in Ann Arbor who is qualified to talk about the American dream. Over the years, the city has harbored a good share of those who made up the long stream of immigrants from other parts of the world — not only the early German settlers who have left their mark on street names and other landmarks ; throughout the older parts of town, but Greeks, Arabs, Jews, Poles, Irish and many others.

Trying to look some of them up, we found, as perhaps was to be expected, that the years have taken their toll of that generation that made up the biggest wave of immigration in the early 1900's.

But Tom and Marike Kussurelis are more than survivors. They are winners. Their daughter, Betty Ellis, also wrote a letter to The News once, in 1963 when her father retired and sold the Main Street grocery store that he had opened in the depths of the Great Depression and in which he had worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, with no vacation.

"His life has been successful to him," Miss Ellis wrote, "because he raised three children, sent them to college and bought a lovely home for his wife."

We found lovely to be, indeed, the only appropriate word to describe the Kussurelises' home. The house was set back at the top of the hill, and we approached through a garden that sloped downward to the street.

It was alive with spring flowers and fresh greenery, the kind of natural setting achieved only with great skill. Mrs. Kussurelis tends the garden herself. And inside, in front of a large floor-to-ceiling window, there was a veritable greenhouse set about on the floor--plants which she had brought in for the winter and had not yet set out again.

Ten years after Tom Kussurelis' retirement, the success is still sweet. One of the major topics of discussion was whether an upcoming trip to their native Greece should be taken during the summer or postponed till later, so they could enjoy the special beauties of their neighborhood in the warm months.

They are proud of their three children, all graduates of the University of Michigan, and proud of the work they do. There are two daughters, both of whom have done amateur and professional work in the theater. Betty, who lives at home, is well known to Ann Arbor Civic Theater audiences. She teaches at Forsythe Junior High. Another daughter, Eris, lives with her husband in California and teaches gifted children. Their son, Peter, is comptroller of Miracol, Inc.

Kussurelis was 16 when his father told him to follow his older brother to America to make some money to send back home. Greece was a very poor ocuntry then, he says, and though his father was a doctor, the payments for the medical care he gave to the people of the town usually came in the form of votes (he was also mayor of the town) rather than money.

But there were four sisters and three brothers, and sisters had to have dowries in those days. His father told him that going to America was better than going to school.

So he came and he worked. He made $1 for hours work a day in a Chicago confectionary. He tried to go to school three nights a week after work, but it was too much.

He served with the Rainbow Division in the Argonne Forest in the First World War and lost most of his hearing as the result of a gas attack. When he got back to the States, he and his brother opened the Rainbow Inn in Frankfort, Ind.

Then, in 1923, he went back to Greece for a year and a half. He married Marike Hinopulou and brought her back with him, first to Indiana, and then later to Ann Arbor.

The stories of Tom and Marike, of course, are closely intertwined. But in an interesting way, they are separate, too; for if Marike has been a good wife, she has also been very much her own person.

Her lovely garden, her warm and tastefully decorated home, and the delicious assortment of Greek Easter pastries she served us were ample evidence of her mastery of the wifely arts. But her conversation, filled with unexpected and clearly stated ideas, references to important literature, light banter and gently made, but firmly argued disagreements with her husband, all showed a searching, independent and disciplined mind.

Along with her Greek Orthodox faith, Mrs. Kussurelis has studied and held to another philosophical system, one which includes a belief in reincarnation and considers it a gradual working toward perfection. “It explains so many things to me,” she says. “The afflictions we suffer in this life are the punishment we bear for the wrongs of a past life and they help us to a better life.”

This belief is not a part of Greek Orthodox theology, she says, but she believes it is not contradictory to it.

She came from a larger town in Greece, where her father and brothers ran a dry goods store (her brothers still run it) and were quite well off. All her brothers went to college, but she and her sisters were not expected to do such things.

“But I was always a very studious girl," Mrs. Kussurelis says. And it showed up as soon as she came to America. When they arrived in Indiana, she immediately began taking lessons in reading and writing English from her landlady.

After they came to Ann Arbor, she took many, many courses in night school. “I noticed that when a German girl arrived in this country, she went to school the very next week. I always asked, ‘Where are the Greek girls?’ It bothered me that we didn't have enough to show off.”

But, she understood, too. “They had to work. I never had to. The Greeks are very courageous. They make sacrifices for their families. I admire them for their progressive spirit.

“In those years, many who came from Greece had very little education,” she said. “Maybe 50 per cent had finished the sixth grade, only 30 per cent the equivalent of junior high school. The people who wanted to go to the university stayed in Greece."

“When we came," said Tom Kussurelis, “We began by learning a trade so that eventually we could start a business of our own. The Germans were trained in technology and could get work in the factories. The Poles were often experienced in mining. But the Greeks came without such skills and took what was available. Many of them ended up in food business — confectionaries, restaurants and grocery stores.”

That was the pattern he followed — all of it. After the Rainbow Inn in Indiana, there was the Sweetland confectionary that he owned and operated on South Main Street from 1926 to 1932. It was a popular gathering place for students, but he was forced out of business by the Depression.

He worked cataloging books and took care of snakes and reptiles at the University Museum before he got enough together to open up Tom’s Grocery Store, which he operated until his retirement.

Their life in Ann Arbor has been deeply intermingled with the Greek community. They recalled for us with pride the struggles to build St. Nicholas, Greek Orthodox Church here. In 1926 there were 30 Greek families here and no church. On Christmas and Easter they traveled to Detroit for services.

Then they discovered that a priest had come to Ann Arbor from the old country and was living with his son. So they started having services upstairs from the old Main Street Restaurant. As the Greek community grew, the services had to be moved into a hall. And finally, in 1934, two Greek organizations got together to build a church.

“They were hard times,” Kussurelis remembered, "we couldn’t afford materials, so we bought the bricks from the old Presbyterian Church that had just been torn down. We did the digging, had picnics. Everybody who could gave loans. Every month, each family gave a dollar. We built the church ourselves. It cost $18,000.”

Mrs. Kussurelis taught Greek to children at the church in the afternoons, and notes with pride that the classes are still taught.

But Mrs. Kussurelis thinks times are changing. She sympathizes with the black man in his struggle for equality, but she thinks time — and place — are on his side. “America is where it will happen, where all our brothers will learn to love each other and live together. It has started here. This is where it will happen. I am grateful that I have lived in America to see it begin. Yes, I will say it again. I am grateful to be an American.”