An American immigrant success story: Bessie Koutroulis, 99
An American immigrant success story: Bessie Koutroulis, 99
By: Jon Hammond
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Posted by editor Tue Sep 5, 2006 16:27:35 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments Last week’s column introduced newer Tehachapi residents to Bessie Koutroulis, 99, the matriarch of an early Tehachapi family. Mrs. Koutroulis emigrated to the United States from Greece in 1929 with her new husband Konstantin “Gus” Koutroulis, who had emigrated earlier and opened a restaurant in Tehachapi in 1919, and then returned to his native village of Pallantion to find a bride. Bessie has lived here since 1929 and is still doing well even as she nears 100 years of age.
As a long-time downtown business owner and a civic-minded man, Gus Koutroulis cared a great deal about Tehachapi and he was the mayor on July 21, 1952 when this sleepy mountain town was shaken to pieces by an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale.
Many downtown businesses were heavily damaged or destroyed by the violent shaking of the 4:52 a.m. quake, but Koutroulis’s Economy Mercantile store at 112 East Tehachapi Boulevard (current location of Cottage Carpets) experienced an additional destructive force: the Earth’s movement had started to agitate water inside the 100,000-gallon railroad water tank located across the street from Economy Mercantile.
The sloshing water caused the tank to topple and when it hit the ground, the tank unwrapped like a roll of store-bought biscuits, sending a six-foot high wall of water south across Tehachapi Boulevard. The wave crashed through the plate glass display windows of Economy Mercantile, soaking all the clothes with water and mud.
The quake wreaked havoc and broke dishes inside the Koutroulis home and both terrified and worried Bessie.
“I was screaming but my husband was calm,” Bessie remembers. Gus reassured her, “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll bring everything back.” Minutes after the quake stop rolling and Gus was already promising to repair the damage and restore their lives.
The quake killed 12 people in the Tehachapi area, with the bulk of the fatalities being children in the Martin family who were sleeping in a basement of a second-hand store on Tehachapi Boulevard. Portions of upper floor collapsed into the basement, trapping and killing the sleeping children.
For many people the Martin children were simply tragic statistics, but they lived just down the street from Economy Mercantile and the Koutroulis family knew them.
“They were the most adorable kids,” Helen recalls. “They all had big eyes and they were beautiful children who would come in the store. They were sweet and well-behaved. We were just sick about what happened to those poor babies.”
Helen herself was supposed to be on top of Wells School at the time the quake struck. A 19-year-old, she was a volunteer for the Air Watch program, which scanned Tehachapi skies nightly for signs of enemy aircraft. This was during the Korean War, and locals helped the war effort by monitoring Tehachapi airspace, though no foreign aircraft were ever detected.
Helen was scheduled to begin her watch at 4 a.m. but her father said he didn’t want her up there alone at that hour. The Air Watch program’s coordinator, Anita Cowan, was on duty instead and she was battered and bruised by the ordeal.
“My Dad probably saved me by making me stay home,” Helen says. “I wouldn’t have known what to do up there on the roof when the earthquake started.”
The earthquake left Tehachapi mayor Gus Koutroulis and his family with a ruined store full of mud and damaged inventory, so they rolled up their sleeves and went to work. The muddy clothes were taken to the Koutroulis house where Bessie washed them all — hundreds of garments were cleaned and hung outside to dry. The clothes were then taken back to the store and sold for 25¢ to 50¢ each, a fraction of their original value.
“I cleaned up mud with my bare hands and I washed all those damaged clothes,” Bessie told me. “Very sad.”
Economy Mercantile (and the rest of the town) was repaired and rebuilt with months of hard work.
In 1954, Helen Koutroulis married a fellow Greek American, a Korean War veteran named Gus Huntalas who was a nephew of close family friends. The following day beloved Tehachapi mayor Gus Koutroulis suffered a massive heart attack and died. The loss was hard on many people, none more so than his widow Bessie.
“My husband was a very sweet man,” she told me when I spoke with her two weeks ago. “He would hold me like a baby,” she said, wiping away tears. “I don’t know why I cry now. . . .”
Love that can still bring tears 50 years after a couple’s last embrace is true love indeed.
Upon his father’s unexpected death, George Koutroulis left college at Fresno State and returned to help his mother and to run the family business. Some friends and family members encouraged George to stay and finish college, but he felt it was his duty to help his family.
Helen and Gus Huntalas had intended to move to Northern California but changed their plans and stayed in Tehachapi. Helen was the city clerk and tax collector until 1960, when she went to work at the California Correctional Institution in Cummings Valley. Gus also made a career at CCI.
In 1956 George also married a fellow first-generation American of Greek descent named Loula Simitzes, whom he met at a Greek dance in San Diego. She had been raised in Montana but was living with an aunt in San Diego and had been working for the FBI as a stenographer for five years.
George and Lou were married in Montana but settled in Tehachapi. George changed the name of the business from Economy Mercantile to Koutroulis Department Store, which is the name with which us younger locals are most familiar. Like his father before him, George also became a popular and well-respected mayor of Tehachapi.
George and Lou had three kids — Suzanne, Dino and Anthea — and I started kindergarten with Anthea in 1969 at Wells Elementary School. We both graduated 12 years later from Tehachapi High, having endured some tough teachers together, including Chuck Kraft for sixth grade and four years of Kathryn Errecart’s grueling but exceptionally good honors English program at THS.
Anthea and I even went to the prom together as juniors, though I had a cast from breaking my leg jumping off the school roof (a story for another time). Anthea was (and still is!) smart and honest and hard-working like her grandmother Bessie and the rest of her family.
Bessie had to endure the painful loss of her well-loved son when George Koutroulis died of scleroderma in 1987. She speaks of him often, usually referring to him as “My George” with pride tinged with sorrow.
Despite the hardships she has survived and the changes she has lived through, Bessie has a good outlook on life and she is fiercely loyal to her family and country. “America is the best country anywhere,” she says. “I’m very happy that I am American.”
She also has the support and companionship of her family, and she can be seen around town daily having lunch with Helen and Gus, and she is close to George’s widow Lou. “I have the best daughter-in-law,” Bessie told me. “She is very very good to me.”
I look forward to helping Bessie celebrate her birthday in ten months when this lovely Tehachapi lady turns 100.
Have a good week.
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