Conrad Pavellas & ODCPA, a photobiography

Conrad H. Pavellas (1913-2000) was involved in many community efforts in his lifetime, the most
satisfying and productive being his building and leading, with others, the Original Daly Protective
Association (ODCPA). Here are some pictures, first, of his early days in Daly City, then some
photos of him politicking for ODCPA. These are the first seven pictures.

Following these are photos from his beginning as a sort of “wild child, ” nurtured as such by his
mother Clara Lucille Harpending. His family had money in the teens and early 1920s, but it was
all gone by the depression and when I was born (January 1937), dad was employed in the
Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), established by President F.D.
Roosevelt to help combat the anomie of the American people when 25% were unemployed. Dad
hated to be “on the dole” and finally got a job in San Francisco in a movie photo lab at $25 per
week.

His early days were in Mill Valley, and you can see how he was raised until age 9, when the Marin
County authorities insisted he go to regular school. This was the end of him dressing as if he
were living in Ancient Greece. His mother, Lucille, was enamored of the revival of ancient Greek
arts, lead by the dancer Isadora Duncan. Lucille and her sister Genevieve were instructed by
Raymond Duncan, Isadora'’s brother. Raymond's quondam business manager was George
Demetrious Papageorge, and he connected with Genevieve. His pal, Alexander Konstantinos
Pavellas, a lawyer, diplomat and one time Acting Consul General of Greece in San Francisco,
connected with Lucille. The couples married, lived in the house of their then wealthy father-in-
law (Asbury Harpending, Jr.— Read his autobiography re-published by the University of
Oklahoma Press: “The Great Diamond Hoax and Other Stirring Episodes in the Life of Asbury
Harpending”).

Papageorge added a hyphenated “-Palladius’ to his name to give his son a more American
sounding name(!), and also to give his own name a classier sound. He was a promoter, and a
Svengali to the whole family. Our family has a redwood bust of Papageorge-Palladius, a white
elephant now in the possession of my son Greg Pavellas, in Anchorage, Alaska.

Despite this unusual beginning in which his mother (and, I believe tutors) taught him classic
literature and history, Greek, Latin and the arts, he eventually took a more conventional path. He
was in his senior year at Berkeley (in political science and was in the R.O.T.C.) when his mother,
father and uncle George D. Papageorge-Palladius all died within a year. He dropped out at age 21
and took over the family business, a Greek-American newspaper, “The Prometheus. ” Dad was no
businessman. He was a socialist (eventually the Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Socialist
Labor Party), and later an ardent Democrat. The business failed, but not before he met Artemis
Pagonis when he was traveling the west coast to collect subscription money. They married within
two weeks, quickly had a child (my humble self) and eventually got into the war effort by
working at the Kaiser Richmond shipyards building Victory Ships.

He moved the family to Brooklyn just after the War to enter into a promised partnership in a
printing company owned, in Manhattan, by his cousin George Pavellas. It was a ruse, and dad
became a slave. It was an awful time for him and our small family, away from all friends and
relatives, trapped in a seedy part of Brooklyn with dad enslaved by his cousin. Dad ’s only hope
for escape was to get a Printer’s Union card, which he finally was able to do and we escaped
back to San Francisco 5-1/2 years after our arrival (January 1946-Summer, 1951).

Dad started working for the San Francisco Examiner as a linotypist and eventually became the
typographical union’'s chairman for the “chapel” of The Examiner. We lived first in San Francisco,
then in Berkeley so I could go to Berkeley High School as he did. After I graduated High school
and eventually joined the US Navy, Dad, Mom & Diane moved back to San Francisco in the
Richmond District. After mustering out of the Navy at age 21, I moved back with the family to
attend San Francisco City College. A year later I married a local girl, who also joined us in the
Richmond district flat. Dad decided to buy his first house to accommodate us all, and it was to be
the fateful move to 62 Theta Avenue, Daly City.

After many years in Daly City, dad ultimately retired to San Jose and tended his garden so well,
that others asked him to do theirs and he was in business again —at no profit. Once a socialist,
always a socialist, it seems, at least for dad. He had just turned 87 when he died at home, in the
bosom of his small nuclear family. All three of us were there with him at the end.

Please see the text accompanying most of the pictures, which will add content to this biograph