I have never met Sue Zindros but the words she uttered after her husband’s murder ring true in my heart more than a decade later.
Indeed her courageous words in the summer of 1992 were written on the hearts of many. Everyone expected her husband George to return when he took a rare dining out break from his own restaurant, Mezes of Rhodes in Greektown. George was with friends and his chef when he was stabbed to death for no apparent reason after a fight broke out at a nearby table.
Reporters flooded Mezes just after Mrs. Zindros had placed a telephone call to her children, who had been vacationing in Greece, to prepare them for the tragedy of their father’s untimely death. She told media that she hoped her husband’s death would not prevent others from coming to the help of strangers in danger.
"We live in a city where we avoid eye contact on the subways, and that’s not right," she said.
"Imagine a lady, humane and compassionate, still able to think of others in what must have been the worst moment of her life!" I wrote in my Toronto Free Press column in September 1992. "Many ordinary people in his adopted country of Canada shed private tears about George Zindros; an immigrant engineer named Mahmut, who first met him a few hours before his death, only to return home to the shock of seeing his new friend’s face on the late night news; a teenager to whom George Zindros had been like an adopted father and who won’t be looking forward to next Father’s Day; a struggling newspaper editor who cried when she read his widow’s words about eye contact on the subway."
A world turned upside down in a matter of hours, just another of those evanescent stories we read more and more often in the newspapers.
At the time of George Zindos’ violent death, his daughter Vasha was 12, his son James only 8.
In a single day of her life, Sue Zindros had more than grief to contend with. She was now the owner of a restaurant that was floundering in a time of recession. Yet to come were the heartbreaking meetings with relatives in the old country, and the long painful murder trials in both Toronto and Greece. How many memories brought the tears welling up in Mezes of Rhodes where a husband and father spent his last days? In the onslaught of depression, her children needed her more than ever.
Her family had survived World War II and started over again in a new country. After his arrival in Canada, father George put in long hours as a dishwasher at the Westbury Hotel in Toronto. Like her father, Sue Zindros had to truly start all over again. While her husband was alive, she had never written a cheque, paid a bill or even owned a credit card.
All of the above would have felled most widows. Not Sue Zindros who walked back into the restaurant with the intent of making a success of it for her children, recession or not.
Time has yellowed the press clippings about the death of a young immigrant father. Over the passing years, some may have pondered the fate of his family.
George Zindros would be so proud to know that the widow he left behind who had never written a cheque has written a book, Tasting Diversity, now being sold in all major bookstores.
A proud immigrant herself, Sue Zindros wrote Tasting Diversity as "a celebration of immigrant women".
All profits from the book go to Working Women Community Centre (WWCC), a non-profit group that helps about 7,000 women a year integrate and adapt to life in Canada by offering employment assistance, language skills and other services. WWCC is also there for women who’ve experienced family violence.
In typical fashion, the widow credits others for much of her success. These include "friends, family and neighbours", her sisters Christine and Eleni, who work in the kitchen of Mezes, in particular.
Today Vasha is 23 and James, 19.
Together with their mother, they not only survived a father and husband’s tragic death; they live on and manifest the indomitable spirit of the hard-working immigrant.
And that’s something that lives on forever.
Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com
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