Their desire to give back to the community and have their legacy upheld in the absence of descendants materialised in a generous donation for the aged care home where they spent their final years.
Highlights
- A Greek migrant couple who donated $850,000 to the nursing home they spent their final years in, will have a building of the care provider’s new facility named after them.
- A spokesperson for the organisation says the generous contribution was their way of helping other community elderly and seeing their legacy live on.
- Donations from elderly residents are not uncommon for the non-profit aged care provider that recently received another $80,000 bequest.
Born in 1924 in Kotyli, a village in the northern Greek region of Kastoria, Mr Ioannou grew up in a home with seven siblings.
After WWII, the family decided to move to the nearby town of Argos, where he met his wife, Elli.
“She became the love of his life. Together they made the big trip to Australia in the mid-50s,” says Odysseas Kripotos, a spokesperson for Fronditha Care.
Typical working-class migrants
The Melbourne-based nursing homes is where the couple found help in the final years of their life.
In their will, they pledged $850,000, a large part of their Armadale home sale to the non-profit aged care provider.
"Their donation is one of the biggest bequests received in the organisation’s history,” Mr Kripotos tells SBS Greek.
“We are truly grateful for this generous initiative of the couple.”
But the donation did not come from a big fortune. The Ioannou story is rather typical of many migrants' transition from a farming life in Greece to building a new life in Australia through hard labour.
“They were simple people, working-class people as we say”, says Mr Kripotos.
Ms Elli and Mr Evangelos Ioannou. Source: Supplied
“Evangelos was a welder and Elli a seamstress. They enjoyed being in the company of friends[…]Evangelos was passionate about his garden. I was shown photos of the orchids he had planted and they looked amazing. Elli was known for having a singer’s voice.”
“Their biggest sorrow was they couldn’t have children, but they loved each other dearly and had many friends in the community.”
Their ties with the Greek community were further strengthened in their later years when Ms Ioannou started exhibiting signs of dementia.
Her husband was by her side for 14 years while she lived with the disorder, receiving much-needed help at home from the aged-care provider and later Ms Ioannou eventually entering one of their facilities where she passed away.
Mr Ioannou also spent the final days of life at the same facility in Clayton, in Melbourne's southeast.
“He stayed with us for about three years,” Mr Kripotos says adding that Mr Ioannou was remembered for saying “I want our names to live on”.
Mr Kripotos says the reason the Ioannous left the bequest was to help other elderly people with his contribution to the aged care home and to make sure their legacy continues.
To honour the couple’s wish, the care provider has decided to name a 30-bed dementia unit in a new residential facility in St Albans, in Melbourne's west, after them.
While the $850,000 donation amount marks the biggest single contribution to the organisation, this is not the first time that former residents decide to include the community they aged in their will.
Another Melbourne Greek, Antonis Vitou recently left $80,000 to the care home after spending his final years there.
The funds donated by Mr Vitou will also be channelled to the new facility under construction in St Albans.
“If there’s one to thing to say about these two very significant bequests is that they were by ordinary people who didn’t have much but decided to offer a lot to our community," says Mr Kripotos.
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