Πέμπτη 8 Ιανουαρίου 2026

Ida Thallon Hill

Ida Thallon Hill

Born August 11, 1875, New York Died December 14, 1954, Athens

About ten rows up on the left, up the lane leading from the entrance to the Protestant Cemetery

If Ida Thallon had never left her teaching post at Vassar, she would have had a great career. Adept in Greek, Latin, and History, she taught them all until her relationship with fellow teacher Elizabeth ‘Libbie” Pierce brought her permanently to Athens, to marriage at 49, and to a second career focused on archaeology. Ida had spent two years as a Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 1901-1903 and it was her happy experience there that prompted her to bring her partner, Elizabeth Pierce, to Greece - so she could experience the School for herself.

If the school’s assistant director Carl Blegen had not fallen in love with Elizabeth, if Elizabeth had not reciprocated, and if school director Bert Hill Hodge had not been willing, Ida may have spent a rather lonely old age in the United States. But, Fate, with a little help from Carl, determined a happier ending. This is a love story with a difference.

Her Life

Ida Thallon was born on August 11, 1875, one of the two daughters of John and Grace Thallon. She attended high school at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn New York, one of the high schools exclusively for girls which had begun to operate in the United States after 1850.

The school Ida attended is still operating. Today it is coeducational.

During the first part of the 19^th century, the secondary education of males in America was deemed far more important than that of females. The general belief was that primary school was good enough for girls who, after all, were destined to marry, have children, and remain in the home. Even Emma Willard (1787–1870), a woman who championed high school education for women in the United States saw female secondary education as the best means for women to ‘find their place in society.’ By that she meant the woman as homemaker and mother. She considered the notion of women receiving a college education ‘absurd’. (1)

Things moved along fairly quickly after 1860 when several women’s colleges were founded: Vassar in 1865, Wellesley and Smith in 1875, Bryn Mawr in 1885, Radcliffe in 1879, and Barnard in 1889. The idea of men and women being educated together would have been altogether too radical a departure from accepted norms. It was from Vassar that Ida obtained her AB in 1897. While not quite a pioneer, she was fortunate to have ridden the wave of educational opportunities for women in the United States.

Ida (left) at Vassar in 1897

Upon graduating, she would still face a society which may have been ready for female nurses, librarians or teachers but not much else. Back then, a woman with scholarly ambitions needed to have supportive parents (which I suspect Ida had) and be so clever that her ambitions could not be denied (which I suspect she was).

In 1899, Ida set out with fellow Vassar graduate, Lida Shaw King (2) on a European tour and to attend the 1901-2 session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She attended lectures and met archaeologists, including the American adventurer/archaeologist Harriet Boyd. (3) Ida, became smitten enough with archaeology to want to stay on an extra year.

The School in 1902

Although the ASCSA had accepted women from the get go, and accepted its first female student in 1885, Ida soon saw that women were not being treated equally with the male students. The school was reluctant to allow women to take part in excavations – too rough and tough apparently. Ida pushed against this prejudice. She managed to wangle a place for herself and Lida on the team excavating a cave dedicated to Pan near Vari in Attica. They were the first women to excavate in an archaeological site in Greece. (4)

In the cave they found inscription lamps, coins, and 7 marble reliefs of Pan, Hermes and the Nymphs.

Pan caves with marble votives like the one above were common in ancient Greece. At Vari, 50 fragments of 7 votives were unearthed and are now in the National Archaeology Museum of Athens

Ida was chosen to prepare a paper on these marble reliefs. It was published in The American Journal of Archaeology in 1903. The reliefs were not earth shattering discoveries, but her report was excellent: clear, meticulous, and scholarly and can be read on line today.(5) The School offered Ida and Lida the publication of terra cottas from their prime site at the time: Corinth.

During her two years at the ASCSA Ida visited many archaeological sites and met fellow student Bert Hodge Hill, one of the 16 students in her class. She liked him but never dreamed they would eventually marry. At the same time, she completed her Master’s thesis on Geometric vases.

Back to Vassar

An offer to teach Greek at her alma mater, Vassar, took her back to the United States. Ida taught there for two years before enrolling in New York’s Columbia University from which she earned her PhD in 1905 with a dissertation on the dating of the sculptor Damophon in Arkadia’s Lycosoura.

Damophon’s handiwork

Lycosoura is on Mount Lykaion, one of the most mysterious mountains in the Peloponnese with werewolves, rain making rituals, and theriomorphic figures on the Maiden’s cloak. (6)

From 1906 until 1924, Ida would teach Latin for two years and then history. In 1914 she published her first book, Readings in Greek History. It was very well received.

In 1916, she published an article arguing that interdisciplinary approaches to history and archaeology would benefit both fields. Here she was very much ahead of her time. 1919 saw her publish an article on Troy, probably never imagining she would ever do any digging there. She became an associate professor in 1916.

Ida Meets Elizabeth Pierce

Ida might have continued teaching at Vassar until retirement if a strange chain of events had not brought her back to live permanently in Greece. It all began in 1906 although Ida did not know it at the time. In that year, 19 year old Elizabeth “Libbie” Pierce had attended Ida’s freshman course in Latin. Ida who was 31 at the time, became her friend and mentor. Elizabeth would follow in Ida’s footsteps, - an AB from Vassar in 1910, her masters in 1912 , and further studies at Columbia before returning to Vassar in 1915 to an assistant curatorship at the Vassar art gallery and to teach Art History.

Their ‘Boston Marriage’

It was after 1915 that Elizabeth and Ida established the kind of relationship that at the time was called a Boston marriage (7) in which two women who were independent of financial support from a man cohabitated. In a society where being unmarried was a stigma and an unmarried woman living alone was treated with a certain amount of suspicion, it made sense. These women could pursue their careers in congenial and supportive company. The very fact that colleges like Vassar were female only would have encouraged such friendships to form. Trading an interesting and fulfilling career for a wedding ring and the home was not every educated woman’s dream, yet that is exactly what society expected women like Ida to do if they did marry.

It was sometime after 1915, that Ida and Elizabeth decided to share their lives in this way. It was a loving relationship; to what degree it was sexual is their own business.

Greece

In 1921 they decided to travel to Greece together. Ida would renew her acquaintance with the ASCSA and Elizabeth would enrol in the school for the 1922-3 school year.

Ida and Elizabeth in 1920

Ida, Elizabeth, Carl, and Bert

The ASCSA was the backdrop for the crisis and the resolution of the drama which unfolded that year. Assistant Director Carl Blegen, then in his mid thirties, fell head over heels in love with Elizabeth. She reciprocated at first and accepted his proposal of marriage. She then withdrew it because she did not want to give up her relationship with Ida. Apparently, Ida had (perhaps reluctantly?) given her blessing. It must have been a very difficult time for Ida. She was well into middle age and the love of her life was about to disappear.

It was Carl who found a solution - if only his friend Bert Hodge Hill, then director of the ASCSA, could be persuaded…

Bert was unmarried and just one year older than Ida; they knew each other; they had shared interests. What if Carl married Elizabeth and Bert married Ida and they all lived together?

Carl (left) and Bert (right) both dapper in 1915

In our age of polyamory, many might not blink at such an arrangement, but this was 1924 and social norms had to be observed. There were details to be worked out. Ida and Elizabeth were to have their time alone and time to travel alone together, as were Bert and Carl.

It was a solution which worked although there may have been one or two rough patches on the way to harmony at 9 Ploutarchou Street in Kolonaki, the house where all four were to live happily together from 1929 until Ida’s death in 1954.

9 Ploutarchou Street is today the seat of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation which promotes Greek Culture and Arts within and outside of Greece .Elizabeth had willed it to the ASCSA.

I suspect that their shared interest in archaeology, that most collaborative of sciences, provided some of the ‘glue’ that kept the ‘Athenian Quartet’ (Carl’s term) together. For the rest of their lives each was in an excellent position to assist the other in their many archaeological endeavours and they all did. The fact that they called themselves the pro pars (for professional partnership) hints at the role their shared interests in archaeology must have played in their lives.

Married Life and Bert’s Dismissal from the ASCSA

Ida’s marriage did not result in her giving up her career. Instead, it enhanced it.

As the wife of the director of the ASCSA, she was now surrounded by archaeologists. By helping Bert in Corinth and Carl in his excavations at Prosymna in 1925, she could add field archaeology to her other talents.

Prosymna, in the Argolid, began in the Neolithic period existed well into the Mycenean. Carl excated 53 Mycenean chamber tombs there. The site is famous for its Sanctuary of Hera, Argos’ most important goddess.

Ida resumed the task of publishing the terracottas of Corinth which she and Lida had begun so many years before. Elizabeth became her helper in the renewed project because Lida had died in 1922.

It was published in 1929

Ida was less successful in her effort to help Bert complete his reports on his Corinth finds. Even she could not bring poor Bert to the finish line and, to the shock and dismay of the ‘Quartet’, Bert’s contract as director of the ASCSA was not renewed in 1926. Ida was furious; she believed that the ASCSA’s management committee were overlooking many of Bert’s other sterling qualities, which indeed they were.

Ida ‘at home’

Still, life went on and Ida herself participated in digs at Prosymna in 1927-8, at Troy (for Carl) from 1932-8 and finally (for Carl) at Pylos. Bert would conduct excavations in Cyprus for the University of Pennsylvania in 1932 and from 1932 to 38. Ida helped there as well.

She and Elizabeth did have their time together when needed. In 1937 and 8 they took two extensive tours of the Balkans together with their Greek driver, visiting Northern Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia at one go, quite an adventure, especially for Ida who was well into her sixties.

During World War II, Ida, Carl and Elizabeth went to the United States while Bert remained in Greece. Ida worked on a book during that period which she never finished but, after the war, she did complete her excellent The Ancient City of Athens which you can read on line. It reminds me of Pausanias updated: full of the latest archaeological discoveries and rather less speculation on arcane rites.

Published in 1954

Ida died on a return voyage to Greece, after a visit to the United States. Elizabeth was at her side. She was 74. That same year she had assisted Carl at Pylos. What a life!

The Grave

Ida and Bert are just a few rows west of Elizabeth and Carl

The Map

Footnotes

(1) In 1840, Catherine Elizabeth Brewer Benson became the first woman in America to receive a tertiary degree. It was from Wesleyan, the first college in the world chartered to grant degrees to women.

(2) Lida Shaw King, another Vassar graduate, was 7 years older than Ida and attended the ASCSA as the Agnes Hoppin Memorial Fellow. This was a fellowship established in 1898 intended to “lift the restrictions on women in the study of archaeology". She would later become the dean of Pembroke college, the female co-ordinate of Brown University.

(3) Harriet Boyd, a Smith College graduate in classics, was an amazing woman who, because of the lack of opportunity to excavate in Greece, went to Crete, then under Ottoman control, to try her luck. She began at Kavousi and years later discovered the Minoan site of Gourna.

(4) Harriet Boyd excavated before Ida but Crete was not yet part of Greece.

(5) See https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/496691.pdf) .

(6) I once sat on the tiered seating arrangement outside of the Lykosoura temple’s unusual side door - waiting for “something”. Nothing happened. But the site is so evocative, I may try again.

(7) The term “Boston marriage” resulted from a relationship described by Henry James in The Bostonians. The term ‘Wellesleyan marriage’ was sometimes used because so many female graduates of that college entered into the arrangement.

Sources

nataliavogeikoff.com From the Archivist's Notebook

https://nataliavogeikoff.com/2018/09/02/touring-the-balkans-with-the-ladies-of-ploutarchou-9/

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Hill_Ida%20Thallon.pdf

Παρασκευή 5 Δεκεμβρίου 2025

Bert Hodge Hill

BERT HODGE HILL

Born March 7 1874, Vermont Died December 2 1958, Athens

The Protestant Cemetery, ten rows up from the entrance

Bert Hodge Hill was director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) for twenty years during the early period of the development of the school which is today an archaeological and research powerhouse. His name will be forever linked to ancient Corinth where his own meticulous methodology led to the adoption of the rigorous documentation of excavations that has become the hallmark of American excavations in Greece. Bert chose to live in Greece until his death in 1958, distinguishing himself during two world wars as well as during the relief effort for refugees after the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922. He was well liked and hard working. It was his reluctance (or inability) to finalise and publish his Corinth excavation findings that led to his dismissal as director of ASCSA in 1926. Aside from that failure, Bert Hodge Hill proved to be adept in every other endeavour during his long life. If his marriage to fellow archaeologist Ida Thallon was an unusual one, it proved to be happy and, if he never became a super star like his friend and fellow archaeologist, Carl Blegen, his life was nonetheless full of adventure. His story offers a fascinating glimpse into ASCSA’s early years and into the complex Corinth excavations where Bert found himself deeply mired in mud and local politics.

His Life

Bert Hodge Hill was born in Bristol Vermont on March 7, 1874. He received his AB degree from the University of Vermont and his MA from New York’s Columbia University in 1900. From 1901 to 1903, Bert became a Fellow at the American School of Classic Studies in Athens, an institution which had opened its doors for the first time only nine years before his arrival. His sojourn, first as a Columbia Drisler Fellow, then as a Fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America, would change his life in ways he could never have imagined.

Foreign Archaeological Schools in Athens – a Little Background…

When the ASCSA was founded n 1881, it had only two rivals, the French School founded in 1846 and the German School founded in 1872. Until such schools became established, most Greek archaeological sites had been magnets for thieves, visiting dilettantes, and amateur archaeologists /collectors like Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans. The Greek Archaeological Service (founded in 1834) and the Greek Archaeological Society (created in 1837) made up of Greek archaeologists and interested citizens had done their best and had even sponsored some digs but the number of potential sites was vast and the government lacked the means to either excavate intensively or to stem the steady flow of stolen antiquities. Allowing foreign schools to operate offered a solution – especially since the citizens of the nations establishing such institutions considered themselves Greece’s cultural inheritors. Enthusiasm was high.

Today there are 19 archaeological schools or institutes in Athens(1), all under the aegis of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, all sometime collaborators but also rivals because all have been dependent on the ministry for assignments to ‘plum’ sites. The government’s choice of who excavates and where has often hinged on who could pay the most, so the funding of these schools was important, as was ensuring a constant flow of publications both to inform and attract donors. The Greek government has always restricted what finds could be taken abroad but there always seems to have been a way to ensure that donor institutions acquired an adequate number of antiquities to display. (2)

When Bert attended the American School, it was in a smallish neoclassical building in a very rural landscape:

The School in 1902 when 15 students attended

It had been the brainchild of Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton(3) and founded in 1881 by a consortium of 9 American Universities who would then send their graduate students to Greece either as attendees or as Fellows with grants for research. The Greek government, under Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis ceded them land in today’s Kolonaki. At that time it was considered a dubious gift because it was deemed too far from the acropolis and the city centre.

Athenian public transport in 1882 did not pass by the school.

In 1882, the first group of students arrived; 1885 saw its first woman student; 1896 saw its first site excavation at Thorikos and at Corinth. Students who came to study or work would form friendships and professional networks which would last their entire lives. Most became professors at American universities or institutions so as time passed the ASCSA was also creating a network of experts and backers. (4) Little did Bert realize that one of the young students also attending the 1901-1902 year would become his wife.

He returned to America in 1903 to become the Assistant Curator of Classical Antiquities at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a Lecturer at Wellesley College.

If the sudden death of Theodore Heermance, the director at the ASCSA had not occurred in 1905, Bert might have remained in Boston. But the death had left the school scrambling for a suitable replacement and Bert’s name was put forward by the chair of the schools’ managing committee. He had received a glowing recommendation from his alma mater, the University of Vermont, but it did mention his inability to hand in written work in a ‘timely manner’. In those early days, this was not deemed the flaw it would eventually become. Bert was well liked. ‘Agreeable’ is a word that would always be included any conversation about Bert. ‘Inventive’ was another.

Bert had to give up his connection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because, as director of ASCSA he had, like Caesar’s wife, to be above suspicion in the eyes of the Greek Director General of Antiquities with whom he would have to deal. No foreign museum with a significant collection of Greek antiquities was above suspicion when it came to how they had or would acquire their Greek artifacts.

The role of director included attending Greek social events, remaining in good standing with the Greek Director of Antiquities and, of course, supporting the students’ endeavours. In those typhoid and malarial prone years, attending to the sick and even arranging for a body to be shipped home was part of the director’s job. It even fell to Bert to personally arrange for screens to be placed on all of the windows in the school, not to mention overseeing the School’s expansion.

1922: still isolated but growing. The two buildings on the left belong to the American School. The British School, founded in 1886, became its neighbour on the right.

If he ever found his duties onerous, there was always the dig at Corinth to which the School had been given exclusive rights in 1896. It was then the jewel in the crown of the school’s excavations and Bert’s great love during his directorship.

Corinth

Ancient Corinth’s layout was a bit of a mystery in the 1890s. Pausanias had barely mentioned it partly because, for him, it was just another Roman city and his interest was ancient Greece. When he was there, Corinth was still being well watered by an 85 kilometre aqueduct from Mount Kyllini, a marvel of Roman engineering, but the venerable ancient Greek Peirene fountain was still doing its stuff and had been enhanced by an imposing facade in Hellenistic and later in Roman times. Pausanias mentions its ‘sweet waters’.

The Peirene Fountain after Excavation.

The fountain had started out as a grotto with a spring that tapped into an aquifer to the south. The spring was then enhanced by tunnels built deep behind the original cave, tunnels which allowed even more water from the aquifer to accumulate, flow into basins and then into a pool in front of the fountain.

When it was rediscovered in 1898 by the American School, the fountain was buried more than six metres underground and may never have been found at all if Mr Tsellios’ well, on the land above the site, had not been explored. It turned out to be fed, not by the water table itself, but by the ancient tunnels. The School wasted no time in digging down and had laid bare the façade by 1901. Like Pausanias, they were more interested in Greek structures than any overlying structures or finds. In their haste, the documentation of the layers carted away was not quite up to the standards that Bert himself would insist on when he became director of the site.

Here you can see the farm above and just how much dirt and rubble had to be removed.

Tsellios’ well was destroyed in the process and he was given a pump in recompense although, being a conservative villager, he was very suspicious of his new pump. His house was purchased by the School and become the main residence of the archaeologists.

The Peirene fountain find was big news at the time and helped the school to raise funds for more excavations. Its discovery was a starting point for exploring the ruins of Corinth, a palimpsest of eras that has still not been entirely excavated. (5)

Muddy Waters…

What is amazing is that the fountain system, although deeply buried, was still providing water to the town. This was discovered when tunnelers’ boots muddied the waters as they were exploring and the muddy water began to appear in the water used by the townspeople, including the outlet where village women still washed their clothes!(6)

The American School became responsible, not just for farther excavations, but also for ensuring the safety of the town’s water supply. Luckily, Bert was as fascinated as to how the fountain’s tunnels and catchment basins worked as much as he was with the artifacts being unearthed. Bert was a bit of a Renaissance man – everything interested him. Apparently he hoped to return the fountain to its pristine state and working order – quite a task.

Maybe Don’t Drink Deep…

Like the villagers, Bert suffered from both malaria and typhoid during his water explorations and many suspected the fountain’s water supply although this was not conclusively proven until microscopic analysis in 1932. The very uncovering of the fountain had led to more complications with water purity because its environs were now exposed to flooding after rains.

Carl Blegen and Bert Hodge Hill

Bert got some real help when a former Fellow of the School, Carl Blegen became School Secretary. The two became lifelong friends. Carl was made Assistant Director in 1920. Both remained in Greece all during the First World War, guarding the School which, of course, was shut down.

Carl and Bert in 1915

Bert volunteered for the American Red Cross. In the 1920s he also served as an officer on the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission after the Asia Minor catastrophe brought so many Greek refugees to the country.

Bert’s 1918 American Red Cross ID card

1924 and a Marriage

Bert’s marriage came about when he was 50 because Carl Blegen fell in love. A problem arose when Elizabeth Pierce, a fellow classicist and student at the school refused Carl because she felt she could not abandon her relationship with her erstwhile teacher and friend with whom she had already been living for some years. Ida Thallon, thirteen years older than Elizabeth knew Bert from her sojourn at the school in 1901 and they had met again when she visited with Elizabeth. She was a scholar and classicist in her own right.

What to do?

Carl, desperately in love, came up with a plan. He would marry Elizabeth and Bert would marry Ida. Then all four could live together, allowing the ladies their time together without ruffling society’s feathers. Bert and Ida seemed to have adopted the role of indulgent parents, sometimes referring to Carl and Elizabeth as ‘the children’. Bert was fifty to Ida’s 49 when they married in England in 1924. The day after their wedding, Carl wrote to Bert: It is certainly the finest possible solution of the whole problem, best in every way for everybody …. We are going to have a wonderful time together when our Quartet reassembles in Athens.

Ida Thallon Hill

And they did…

1926: Publish or Perish

The first real crisis in the shared lives of the ‘Pro Pars’ as they often referred to themselves (short for in a professional relationship) occurred in 1926 when Bert’s foot dragging on publishing his Corinth notebooks led to his humiliating (for him) dismissal. Bert never felt that he had discovered quite enough to publish. It fell to Edward Capps the chairman of the managing committee to tell Bert his days as director of the ASCSA were over. His procrastination had become inexcusable in the eyes of the man whose job it was to keep the school running smoothly, see to the regular publishing of reports, and to keep it well funded.(7)

This setback for Bert caused the indignant Quartet to distance themselves from the ASCSA, but not entirely. In fact Carl became the director for a year after Bert. They lived the rest of their lives near the American School at 9 Ploutarchou Street, a home Elizabeth purchased in 1931. While they were in residence it became an open house for archaeology students, Greek scholars, and American Embassy staff.

9 Ploutarchou Street is today the seat of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation which promotes Greek Culture and Arts within and outside of Greece. Upon their deaths, it was willed to the ASCSA.

Bert’s interest in Corinth never waned. He was ever ready to offer advice and help out. He championed the building of its onsite museum in 1932, a museum that is well worth a lengthy visit, as is the site itself.

Bert would go on to excavate in Cyprus (1932 and 1934 -1952) under the aegis of the University of Pennsylvania and Carl would excavate for the University of Cincinnati in Troy and in Pylos.

Bert at the sacred spring in the 1930s.

In 1936 Bert travelled to the United States as the Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at the Archaeological Institute of America. He was, by this time completely enmeshed in Greek life. He had been on the board of the Athens College (8) from its inception in 1925, and during the Second World War, he alone remained in Greece, keeping the home fires burning (9) and again helping in the Red Cross. In 1947, Bert was awarded the title of ‘Director Emeritus of the American School’.

Ida would die during a sea voyage with Elizabeth in 1954. Bert followed her in 1958. Like the others in the Quartet he would leave his papers, personal and professional, to the ASCSA.

Afterword

I just can’t help liking Bert. His perfectionism and ability to see the whole picture, I find very sympathetic as was his obvious ability as a teacher. His writer’s block must have caused him a lot of anguish. It might even explain why he is the only one of the Quartet who did not seek or obtain a Phd. He was a doer, a fixer, not a writer. His Corinth papers were finally published in 1964, well after his death. Those who know, say they are pretty much the way he wrote them.

The Grave

The Protestant Cemetery, about ten row up from the entrance

The Map

Footnotes

(1) Austrian, Belgian, British, Danish, French, Finnish, German, Irish, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Italian, Swedish, Swiss, American, Canadian, Australian, and a bit of an outlier, Georgian.

(2) Our article on Dolly Goulandris touches on the issue of stolen antiquities: See https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2025/02/dolly-goulandris-and-cycladic-art.html

(3) Charles Eliot Norton also founded the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, open to archaeologists and all who share a passion for archaeology. For more on the ASCSA, try 54 Souidias: A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils.

(4) 95% of School graduates have taught at American universities at some point in their career.

(5) This year, for example, new excavations are happening north and west of the ancient theatre.

(6) Right up until the mid twentieth century, women like my mother-in-law were still washing clothes in communal wash basins in the village.

(7) Capps had even gone as far in 1923 as to ban Bert from taking part in further excavations at Corinth until he published. It didn’t work.

(8) In 1925, the Founding Committee was granted a charter under the name "Hellenic American Educational Foundation," with an American sister society established in New York. The mission of this School would be to educate and shape the character of Greek boys from Greece and from abroad. It is still going strong and is now co-ed.

(9) In 1940, the Greek government had appointed a commission, including Bert, to protect the Corinth Archaeological museum from harm. This involved covering the floors with 40 cms of sand and attempting to somehow protect the delicate artifacts. America entered the war on December 7, 1941 and Bert was arrested in Corinth on December 12, 1941 but was released and allowed return to Athens where he had to share the house on Ploutarchou Street with four German officers.

Sources