My American Journey

Keeping Love, Faith and Family at the Center of Everything

BY NICK POULOS

As our journey begins, I must pay tribute and honor to the countless men and women whom unselfishly laid their lives, down so we could be and remain free. For if not for those heroes, my American experience would not exist. I will share with you the riches and blessings my family has received, by being allowed by our Creator, to live in the greatest country in the history of the world.

My grandfather, Nick Poulos, for which I share his name, was born in Peramos, Greece in 1888. He arrived in America in 1909, where he worked on a ship as a dishwasher and lived in Norfolk, Virginia. Nick moved to Galveston, Texas in 1913 to live with his uncle. Prior to World War I, Nick was in the auxiliary Navy. In Galveston, Nick became a business owner with a one-third interest in a fruit stand and a one-half interest in a soda fountain on Murdock’s Pier. After about five years in Galveston, Nick was naturalized and became a citizen of the United States of America. Nick left Galveston in 1921 on his way to Greece to find a bride. He traveled through Alexandria, Louisiana, because he had friends there from his home in Greece. My grandmother, Emily Limneou, was born in Moschonissi, Greece in 1903. When Emily was a teenager, a war between Greece and Turkey escalated to the point that her dad feared for the lives of this only children, two daughters.

In 1919, my grandmother and her sister, Maria, boarded a ship bound for the USA. After the seventeen day voyage, the ship arrived in Ellis Island, which served as the largest immigration center in the United States. Unable to speak any English, Emily and Maria, headed for Alexandria, Louisiana, where they had aunts that lived. My grandparents met in Alexandria, Louisiana in 1921, and my grandfather canceled his plans to return to Greece to get a bride. Nick and Emily married in February, 1922 in Alexandria. Both were strong in their faith, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church from childhood. They moved to Haynesville, Louisiana, where he ran a café. They lived there for a brief amount of time before returning to Galveston, Texas to begin their family. While in Galveston, Emily became a citizen and gave birth to a girl, Katherine, and a son, Tommy. Around 1925, Nick’s uncle, who lived in Ruston, Louisiana, told him that Ruston didn’t have any good cafés. Nick moved his wife and two young children to Ruston and opened the White House Café.

My dad, Frank, was born in 1926, and my aunt Caliope was born in 1932. In Ruston, the café business was good to my family, and my grandfather expanded to Jonesboro with another café. Nick ran the café in Jonesboro, Emily ran the café in Ruston, and Nick would travel back to Ruston two or three times a week to see his family. My grandparents made many sacrifices for the family, but always placed God first in their lives. The restaurants were opened from five in the morning until ten at night, seven days a week. On Thanksgiving Day, all proceeds from the restaurants went to the Methodist Children’s Home in Ruston.

Nick loved to fish and was told about Lake Louie in Catahoula Parish. He would travel there and fish when he could. On one trip, he stopped in Winnsboro to eat. He couldn’t find a café and decided that Winnsboro would be a great place to open another location. He needed someone to run it, and he remembered a man he met in Texas that had fallen on some bad times. After talking with him, Nick began securing a building and installing equipment and furniture. When almost complete, he got the man from Texas to come over and see the restaurant that he would be managing. Upon arrival, the man told Nick, “I’ve never ran anything more than a hotdog stand, and I cannot run something like this.”

So what to do… Nick discussed this with Emily, and they decided to sell the Jonesboro café. Emily, along with Katherine and Frank, would run Ruston café, and Nick and Tommy would run the Winnsboro café. Nick named it the Post Office Café, because he opened the restaurant within weeks of when the post office opened.

After about a year, Emily told Nick that the family will live together in Ruston or Winnsboro, but no longer be separated. In 1933, Nick and Emily decide to sell the café in Ruston and moved to Winnsboro. The family first lived in an apartment above the café, and eventually rented a home on Pine Street. In 1936, the family purchased a home on West Street.

Another daughter, Nike, was born in Winnsboro, and the children attended Winnsboro Elementary and then Winnsboro High School. Nick and Emily continued the tradition of giving to the Methodist’s Children Home in Ruston and attending Greek Church in Shreveport. Nick and Emily purchased forty acres outside of Winnsboro and built a small farm and a chicken coop to support the café.

As the war began to rage in Europe, Tommy and Frank enlist in the US Navy. Tommy entered the US Navy after graduating from Tulane University in 1942. He trained in Ashbury Park, New Jersey and Chicago, Illinois. Tommy served in Pearl Harbor, Guam, Marshalls, Gilberts, Carolines, Okinawa and Palaus on the USS Armadella.

My dad, Frank, graduated from Winnsboro High School in 1944 and entered the US Navy. He trained in San Diego and served at the Okanawa Seaplane Base. When the opportunity arrived that Tommy’s ship was in the harbor in Okanawa, Tommy and Frank, along with many other men from Franklin Parish met up. I can only imagine the young men talked about high school football games, girlfriends at home and, of course, the war experiences and places each had been in the Pacific.

After the war in 1946, Tommy and Frank returned to Winnsboro. Tommy had an architecture degree and worked for himself until accepting a job with J.A. Harper in Crowville. Frank attended Louisiana Tech and worked for T.J. Owen building houses. Nick and Emily sold the café in Winnsboro in 1948, while continuing to work on the farm and fish. My dad came to Crowville to work for Mr. Harper and in 1956, he and Tommy purchased Crowville Mercantile. Tommy continued his work with building roads, bridges and building with Mr. Harper, while Frank ran Crowville Mercantile, a general grocery and hardware store.

In 1960, Frank and Tommy purchased Pack-A-Sack Grocery and constructed a new building to house both businesses. Here comes the red-headed Baptist…

My mom, Janice Emmons, and dad met on a blind date arranged by Travis and Janette Hernandez. After dating for six years, they married in the Greek Church in Monroe and lived in Crowville.

Janice accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior in 1950 at Ridge Avenue Baptist Church in West Monroe during Vacation Bible School. She was a member of the first graduating class of West Monroe High School and a telephone operator until her marriage. She then worked alongside my dad in the store until my brother and I were born. Our dad also farmed about two hundred acres of cotton with a couple of John Deere 4020 tractors, and we picked cotton with a used two row cotton picker.

Our dad passed away in 1988, two weeks before my high school graduation. Our mom took the sole responsibility of rearing two teenage boys and operating a grocery and hardware store to put us through college.

Prior to our Uncle Tommy’s death in 2014, he reminded us that he and our dad had never received medals from their service in WWII. I asked if he wanted to get the medals and he would say, “We will do that one day.” So after his death, our family contacted Congressman Ralph Abraham, and we participated in a most humbling ceremony, along with other families, to receive the medals. What an honor to be awarded our dad’s medals some seventy-three years after he earned them.

Our mom passed away in 2018, after a twenty-six year battle with cancer, much stronger in her faith, her devotion to her family and her firm belief in God is what supported her struggle and ultimately gave her peace.

The true blessing is having had loving grandparents that made so many sacrifices, and taught us about the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus made for all, and how we should serve Him and love our neighbors as we love ourselves, so their two sons could be first generation college graduates.

There are so many blessings. The blessing that our dad and uncle, first generation Americans, along with countless other men and women who enlisted into the US Armed Forces so that aggression in Europe and Asia would not be the end of the freedoms we hold so dear. The blessing that our grandparents, leaving a country they both loved, to seek the American dream, found their way to a little town in northeast Louisiana without a café, which became our home some ninety years ago.

My challenge for you is to search yourself and identify those people in your past that helped with your journey. If they are still with us, thank them. We are not alone in this American experience. Find ways that you can pay it forward. Volunteer, serve, help, teach and share… as my family’s American journey began 130 years ago, what an awesome experience it’s been.

But 100 years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in or the kind of car I drove… but the world may be a different and better place, because I was important in the life of a child.

Nick and Frank Poulos reside in Crowville, Louisiana with their families; both first generation college graduates and second generation American citizens. While trying to decide a lasting way to honor their parents, the overwhelming theme throughout their family generations was always love.  Love for God, family and country.

The Crowville Love Park was dedicated in November, 2019 and is located at 5400 Louisiana State Highway 17, Winnsboro. People are welcome to visit the park in Crowville and take family photos.  The sculpture’s height is ten feet and was constructed from stainless steel. You can check in on Facebook  www.facebook.com/crowvillelovepark and link your picture to the page.  Thanks for your visit and for liking the page.   

I believe that Benjamin Franklin summed it up best, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

So as I look forward, I am reminded that it’s always been about God, family and country.