‘Periodiko’ – our Greek edition’s weekly magazine, which is offered for free (for now) every weekend along with the main section of the newspaper, covers very interesting topics, and as the reader will agree, keeps getting better and better in every way.

However, I do not think that there is a more important edition of Periodiko each year than the current one: the publication that pays tribute to our fellow Hellenes – our brothers and sisters – who ‘departed’ in the past year.

This publication is the minimum tribute that we could pay to them as individuals and as a newspaper of the Diaspora.

In order to fully realize this, one must see, and indeed feel, those who left us as members of our wider family.

Because this is exactly what we are talking about: The Greek American community, this relatively small part of the broader Hellenic world that lives in the USA is a family. Because we are deeply and broadly connected: We have the same origin. The same religion. The common struggle and common experiences of settling and progressing professionally in this great and hospitable country. The common struggle to preserve our identity as an ethnic drop in a vast ocean of hundreds of millions of assimilated people.

And because we are connected spiritually, by love and a mutual understanding for each other.
So there are many things that connect us. And they are the same elements that unite members of a family.

That is why for many of us the first thing we look at when opening the newspaper every day is the section that reports on the funerals and memorials. This is because we want to know which people left us. Because notice of their passing is a tribute to them when it is published in the newspaper and becomes known to the wider Greek-American community.

And now, with the possibility of publishing the information on the newspaper’s websites, the passing of a Hellene becomes immediately known in his/her particular homeland, the places where their roots are.

It is this very fact that the death of a single Hellene in the diaspora is a blow and concern to us all. It is in the spirit of unity that we dedicated this edition of the Periodiko to them and their memory.

May their memories be eternal!