Eleni Athanasopoulos

Eleni Athanasopoulos was born in Fourne, Chania, Crete, Greece in 1942.  In her early life during the occupation of Crete during WWII and subsequent national turmoil, she endured hunger, poverty and struggle.  She did not finish elementary school as she had to work as a young girl picking olives and oranges to help support the family.  She had a talent for sewing and as a teenager, honed the skill of seamstress from a local lady in the village.  She picked olives and oranges during the day and apprenticed in the evenings.

In 1969, she immigrated to the United States in search of a better life, settling in Denver, Colorado where her aunt and uncle had previously settled when they immigrated in the late 1800’s.  She put her seamstress skills to work in a downtown textile factory, knowing only one word in English – “No”.

At a dinner dance hosted by the Assumption Cathedral, she met her husband, Christos Athanasopoulos, in March of 1971, and they married in July of the same year.  They had 2 children, Maria and Arist.  Together, they raised their family, involved in the church and community life.  Eleni taught Sunday School, was President of the Daughters of Crete, and worked at the festival making Greek coffee.

While she never learned how to drive, she was fiercely independent.  She learned the English language and ran her own home-based business which she started by placing a sign in the front window of her home.  Her business grew from hemming pants of her neighbors to designing and sewing the dresses of entire wedding parties, proms, debutantes and suits for businesswomen.

When she lost her husband in 2002, she was determined to remain independent.  She loved to walk to the nearby mall to do her shopping and insisted on living on her own after Chris died.  When she decided to finally became a US citizen in 2006, her grandsons helped quiz her on the questions.  And she continued to sew, but refocused on making Cretan dance costumes for the PanCretan Youth Association dancers in Denver.

In 2016, she was diagnosed with lung cancer, despite never having smoked. She had initially been told that she had 6 months to live.  She fought and survived for 6 years.  She lived for her 6 grandchildren, Evan, Chris, John, Christina, Evangelia and Nikoletta.  Her determination was fueled by the goal to witness as many of their life’s milestones as possible.  She fought cancer with all her might, and with grace and poise. She endured over 50 rounds of chemo, and 2 separate clinical trials, the second of which, she was the first human to have been given the medicine.  She was a strong proponent of participating in medical research.  In addition to the clinical trials, she donated her blood and scan samples for cancer research, acknowledging that the research would not benefit her, but would help treatments develop in the future.

Her legacy is her fortitude, willpower, dignity, independence, her family and her friends, but more exemplary than all is her powerful faith in God, to whom she attributed her survival daily.  She told stories of her early days alone in a foreign country with no knowledge of the language and only $47 in her pocket…working to help raise her family and helping her husband fight his cancer battle…and then living more than 20 years without him and fighting her own cancer battle, all endured, survived and thrived because of her faith, her constant focus and prayer to Christ our God and for the intercessions of the Panagia.

Eleni is preceded in death by her husband, Christos Athanasopoulos.  She is survived by her children, Maria (George) Andretsos, Arist (Pam) Athanasopoulos, her grandchildren, Evan, Chris and John Andretsos, Christina, Evangelia and Nikoletta Athanasopoulos, and her siblings in Greece, Marika Dimitroulaki, Manoli (Tula) Paterakis, Andriana (Yani) Christodoulaki, Tasia (Eftihi) Tsiarki and many nieces and nephews in the US and Greece.

Services will be held at The Assumption of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 4610 East Alameda Avenue, Denver, CO 80246 on Monday, March 14, 2022, at 10 am.  The funeral will be livestreamed on Facebook and YouTube.  The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Assumption of the Theotokos Greek Orthodox Cathedral.