Nicholas John Cassavetes

Nicholas John Cassavetes, came to America with his sister and brother when he was fourteen. He was born in Larissa, Greece, in 1893, and heard about this country when a missionary came through town one day saying there was brotherhood in America, that if you wanted to work and learn, the American people would open their arms and hearts to you. They went first to Bulgaria – where they deposited my aunt with relatives – and then to Constantinople, where they worked until they saved up the boat fare. On 1 January 1908, my dad and his brother Arthur arrived at Ellis Island. When they were asked who they knew in America, my father, who’d heard of Providence, Rhode Island, and liked the name Providence, said he knew someone there. He was asked for written proof of this and he said he didn’t have any because the man, a very wealthy man, had arrived in New York on the boat before theirs. And then my dad pulled out his big line: ‘I want to work and I want to learn.’ An immigration officer gave my father and my uncle five dollars for the bus fare to Providence, and when they arrived, they didn’t know a soul. My dad began looking for Greeks all over town, searching for that familiar dark-olive skin tone, until he found fellow immigrants who gave him work. Shortly after that, he got a job just outside Boston, working in an ice-cream parlor