I met Stephanie Kordas in
Carrboro, North Carolina in the mid eighties. As two Greek-Americans
in a southern town we hit it off and became instant friends.
We lost touch with each other until 2003 when she contacted me through
a travel agency on my website to tell me that she was living in
Greece and had opened a shop in Psiri where she was selling her
art. I went to her shop and she gave me a synopsis of her last 10
years in Greece, working for a newspaper, selling painted rocks
on the islands and paper-mache animals and colorful painted furniture
in Athens, while hanging out with her big German shepherd.
In 2004 she realized the life of an artist in Greece is a hopeless
one and moved back to the states. She got a real job, met a guy
she really liked and was happy. But on May31st Stephanie died in
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I always believed that Stephanie was one of those people I would know for the rest of my life, that she would drift in and out and our talks would pick up wherever we had left them the last time we saw each other. I will miss her. All I have to show for our years of friendship are two terrific articles she wrote for my website and a page I made to advertise her shop in Psiri. (Now I wish I had bought one of her paper-mache cows or pigs which I was worried would not survive the flight. If I had known she would die I would have held it on my lap for 12 hours.) For those of you who knew her, the thought that she is no longer with us is hard to accept because when she was with us she was so alive. For those who did not know her and never got to look at her beautiful face and listen to the animated way she would talk of an experience she had that day or last month or 5 years ago all I can offer you are these photos and the two articles which were to be the first of many but are unfortunately the only ones she got to write for me.
Bye Stephanie
If you knew Stephanie and want to add your comments send an e-mail to me at greecetravel1@aol.com