Dana Spencer Francis
(aka Dana Danovitch)
My mother, Thalia, was Daphne’s younger sister. For those of you who have read Entering Ephesus, Thalia was the character, “Loco Poco.” In her non-fiction guise, Thalia died in 1962 and I lost touch with the Athas family for nearly 20 years due to misguided family decisions.
In 1981 I met Daphne in Greece. She was on sabbatical there during the 1980-81 academic year. A few years ago, I asked Daphne if she had invited me to come to Greece and she said, “no… you invited yourself to come visit me.” She met me at the ferry in Patras and we retraced the journey she’d taken with her father in the late 1950’s when they visited Hora, Pylos and the crescent beach at Voidokilia, which she recounted in her book Greece by Prejudice.
On that trip, Daphne began to impart my Greek heritage to me — my “Greekery” as she liked to call it.
Daphne spent nearly every summer in Greece for over 50 years. She loved swimming and snorkeling in Pylos. She brought her manual typewriter in the early years and later she brought her laptop so she could write. While in Pylos, she would hitchhike or take a taxi up to Hora to visit her relatives, Martha and Ioannis. During those summers, she’d also visit Miranda Cambanis and her family in Paros. And of course, she always tried to break new ground and explore a part of Greece she hadn’t yet discovered.
I’ve been fortunate to visit Greece six times and five of those trips were with Daphne, including a trip with my sons in the summer of 2005. Daphne had broken her leg a few months earlier back here in Chapel Hill, but she rehabbed the hell out of that leg so she could come to Greece and pass some Greekery along to my boys. I have precious photos of her, resplendent in her mask and snorkel, swimming with my sons in Navarino Bay.
Over the decades, Daphne reintroduced me to my mother’s legacy by providing me with some puzzle pieces that had gone missing. She gave me photos, bits of Thalia’s writing and she graciously helped me locate some of my mom’s friends who welcomed me into their lives and shared stories about Thalia that I’d never heard growing up. To put it simply: Daphne was the most influential person in my adult life, bar none.
Daphne loved Miranda, Stamatis, Alexis and Thanassis Cambanis whom she truly considered “family.” She loved her former students with whom she enjoyed discussing literature, big ideas, movies and current events. She loved teaching at the University, and did so for 40 years, starting at the age of 45. And she loved her little house in the woods in Carrboro.
She could be critical, a trait she probably inherited from her father. Often, after she had ruffled my feathers about something and after I’d licked my wounds for a while, it would dawn on me that her critique of me had merit and had been insightful after all.
I miss our marathon talks, our ”blats” as she liked to call them. We once argued about whether “blat” had one “t” or two. Sometimes, on a Sunday, we’d be on the phone for five hours, jumping from subject to subject, but it was never boring. Never.
The last time I saw her, she had just entered the old Hillhaven Nursing Home. It was toward the end of January 2020 and COVID was beginning to emerge as a news story. I came into her room and she was sitting up in bed wearing her red visor and reading a copy of The New Yorker. MSNBC was blasting at high decibel levels because of her poor hearing.
“Daphne, what’s new in the news?” I yelled over the din.
“I don’t know,” she said. “They’re talking about some kind of world-wide pandemonium!”
Oh, if she’d only known.
On July 28, 2020 I got a call from a hospice worker telling me that Daphne had passed away. I called both of my sons to let them know. I couldn’t reach Eli right away, but I did have a brief conversation with Jamie. I had to cut our call short due to a work commitment that evening. When I was finished with work, I found a thoughtful email from Jamie. I’ve asked him for his permission to share a section of it with you now and he has given it. This is what he wrote:
I just wrapped up watching the finale of “The Newsroom” a few minutes ago and found myself so affected by it and the values the show and the characters stand for. It felt particularly apt in this confusing and often disillusioning landscape we find ourselves in on so many fronts these days. I can’t help but appreciate the overlap between the values that show taps into, the values I am trying to embody as I become an adult in an increasingly volatile world, and the values deeply enshrined on Daphne and Thalia’s side of the family. Decency, good humor, intellectual curiosity, openness and general good faith. I often feel like I’m swimming upstream in a world that values these things less and less, but I am so appreciative that those values were instilled in me by many people through nature and nurture.
This is all to say that even though she wasn’t an active figure in my daily life, I will miss Daphne. I will miss knowing that she’s out there in her hot little shack in the woods, reading everything she can get her hands on, lamenting the state of the world, but always trying to learn more. We desperately need more people like Daphne these days. I’m glad we are all here to do our small part in carrying that legacy forward.”
So am I, Jamie.