Some people are born to mark human debt with their only path in this life. They remain authentic, unique, and perhaps alone, special but also well-known, heretical and incompatible, quirky and sincere, entirely exclusive and exceptional. This is how Zisis (Jack) Dardalis had been. A man with bottomless anger, inexhaustible strength, unquenchable courage. He possessed a rage that stifled even the rational, and love that was given inexhaustibly in a selfish manner. He cried emotionally as a young child and smiled in transmitting hope. “I offer to others what I was deprived of as a child” was his logos. This was Zisis Dardalis. Unique and highly incomparable human phenomenon, inimitable and inviolable.
Zisis Dardalis came alone as an orphan and leaves as an irreplaceable figure of a man who belongs to all of us. He belongs to his family, to the thousands of students he benefited, to the hundreds of athletes who accepted his generosity, to the dozens of charitable institutions that accepted his grace, to the hundreds of friends of his heart and guests who tasted his generous hospitality; he also belongs to the communal and ecclesiastical bodies that benefited, to the distant Homeland he had within him and to the Greek nation that he served in Australia and Greece.
Zisis Dardalis did not have a broad secular education, he did not have a systemic education. “I am a literate and a villager!” He used to incarnate himself. He grew up without parents, with his aunt and uncle. He was authoritarian, he was irritable. He was compassionate, extremely pitiful, with a child’s heart, writing his anger on the ice. He had his hoyas, too, like all of us. His own hoyas, his own habits. He was so unique and authentic that next to him could not stand his copy, his replica, his effigy. There is no other person to whom one could compare Zisis Dardalis. He spent his life innovating, designing and creating. From a shepherd and a slayer, he managed to achieve riches, power and national and international acknowledgement.
He managed with his actions and now his mythical fame to set up around him hundreds of incidents and unique events with prime ministers, ministers, mayors, politicians and academics. His witty and instinctive comments forced television cameras to stop at the behest of journalists out of surprise and admiration. The inconceivable and peculiar character of his initiatives, resulted in the organisation in Greece of an association of “Greek Pilots Friends Z. Dardalis”. This inventive Zorba of Antipodes, innovated by enrolling his daughters in Arsakeio in Athens, in order to acquire a Greek education. He chartered a plane to Greece to celebrate the triumph of Greek football, as well as buses to his daughters’ weddings. As a benefactor and sponsor, he decided to pay a dividend on the proceeds of his company “Marathon Food”, in order to strengthen and germinate the Hellenic Studies in the universities of Melbourne; to demonstrate absolute confidence in the NCHSR (EKEME) and the University of La Trobe, having as his collaborator, the most prestigious in the world today, Hellenistic Professor of Greek Epigraphy, Professor Michael John Osborne; to cooperate blindly with our eloquent and prudent diplomats Georgios Veis and Georgios Konstantis, and to invest his absolute trust in this writer and his associates since 1992, when the Archives of the Greek Diaspora were founded, to which his name was given, on the proposal of the Director of EKEME.
All those who had the good fortune to know him, each has his own story and adventure with the inimitable Jack Dardalis. Restaurant waiters, shopkeepers, bosses, parking attendants, shop owners, people of night and entertainment, high-ranking merchants and famous industrialists of Australia, dignitaries and men of influence, Australians, Americans, Greek, Cypriots, and other Europeans, all had and have to utter, to tell a story, a snapshot of their lives with Zisis Dardalis, his hoyas, his incredible proposals that shocked and stunned them all. Archy, straight, cynical. He caught the swindlers with his eyes; with the nose he arrested the sophisticates. He had his own “dardalian” rating of assessment. He almost never fell out. We all used to affirm: “Dardalis said it”, or “Dardalis smelled it”. His words were a law and his promise a contract.
Zisis Dardalis lived in a competitive business environment. The internal sensory that instructed him not to fall out with the people he collaborated with, was his main compass. He knew the enemy before they got to know him. He spotted the vicious, the fake. However, he decently kept them away. He kindly held them off. He adored his hometown, the heroic and noble Siatista. He adorned his native city with his wealth; he established cultural events and contributed to the economic welfare of this small city. He restored his mansion, created special stables for his horses, endowed the local Metropolis. On Sundays, when he lived in his village, he begged the rectors of the nearby Cathedral to install loudspeakers “so that the chants could caress my ears”. He liked to go out into the spacious garden-yard of his mansion to take care of his pots, to listen to Sunday mass. He avoided churches, but always stood generously towards them, with rich donations.
Above all, Zisis loved Greece. He was a genuine patriot. Her son. It couldn’t have been otherwise. On her altar his father was sacrificed. He and his sisters grew up in her orphanages. His ancestors had all lived there and were buried there. Greece as a way of life was the umbilical cord that kept him alive. He breathed her. He rebelled, moaned, shouted if the leaders of the place did wrong things. He often telephoned ministers and officials of state to express his praise or dissatisfaction. The Fatherland honored him. The Greek Government offered him a glorious medal of honour and then at the consular residence in Melbourne glorious ceremonies were held and the Australian leaders came to congratulate him as well as great Australian businessmen. During his many “service” trips to Greece, he visited their offices, confessed to them practically and in a “commercial” way, as he said, what they did not do, what they broke, what they avoided. Zisis had a cynicism that frightened, but also healed.
In Australia he had no party or specific ideological affiliation. He stopped hating the traitors, the conspirators who squealed on his resistance father to the Germans in Kozani. He had never forgotten it either; he always had in his mind the narrative of betrayal, that when his father came down from the mountains to visit his sick wife and take her to Kozani, he was arrested and executed by the Germans. Zisis supported with rich gifts the election campaigns of almost all the candidates, regardless of the party ideology they represented. From 1975 to 2010, for thirty-five years, Dardalis was present in all national struggles. For Cyprus, Macedonia, Northern Epirus (his ancestors had come from Epirus), for the Romioi of Asia Minor, the struggle of diasporic, ecumenical Hellenism. He had given support to all without limitations. He lived the agony of the Australian diaspora. Every day on his desk were all the Greek-language newspapers. From his office were often paraded representatives of sports clubs, ladies of charitable fraternities, tyrannized and abandoned spouses and deserted women. Hundreds of letters and phone calls had discovered his generosity. Often most of these calamities were the products of misfortune and tragedy, however also of gambling. Dardalis showed a complete aversion to gambling, hated betting, card playing, manila, baccarat. He never came close to those machines of destruction, the poker machines.
Since he was a child, Zisis had in him the inner vital flame, the sense of revelry, the filter of human affection. For hours he listened to the sound of wind instruments, the clarinet near his ears, until the instrumentalist fainted from the tension and effort. For several days he organised horseback races from Siatista to the monastery of Panagia in neighboring Makrynitsa. He was well-recognized by the instrumentalists in the bouzoukia and tavernas, in restaurants and nightclubs; he was the first to drag the dance, to pay for a “special order” song and dance; to spin flying, breezy on the dance floor, to generously reward with gratuities the musicians and often to cover the dance floor with his money. What value can money have? “You shouldn’t love money. You only must respect it!!” he used to proclaim. He was critical of the frugality of those money-makers whom “even if you turn them upside down, not a single cent will fall out of their pockets”! He also used to advise: “Do not be upset by any damage or catastrophe, if they can be corrected by money” Just work and get up in the morning: “Whoever gets up in the morning, finds a golden pound,” he used to advise, sipping his coffee, sucking his tsipouro. Vital strength and inner life flame were given to him by the echoes of the Greek traditional instruments of Macedonia, their gallant dances and their divine music. He wept when he heard the Greek National Anthem and the local musical rhythm of Kozani “My Red Apple”. Zisis was undoubtedly The Zorba of the Antipodes. He liked drinking ouzo, tsipouro, hard drinks, but always with ice. He wanted to enjoy his life. He wouldn’t let his life revel in him. “I could buy half of Melbourne with the money I spent on the bouzoukia!,” he said and said again, without any remorse. On the contrary, he felt pride, that he did not fall into the trap of greed, of the “still little more” that the avaricious cheapskate shouts just before death takes him over.
He used to start his day early. At 5.00 at dawn, he was sitting at his desk in the office at the factory or was preparing his coffee in the nearby kitchen. He slept few hours. Three or four at most. His negotiations with the industrialists who supplied him with the raw materials, the meat, the flour, were inconceivably intelligent, almost masterful, impeccably surgical. The orphan child, the immigrant with little English, set up documented proposals, organised terms and his successes were almost always accepted. He went so far as to export his Chinese products to China. He was the citizen of Greece, Cyprus and Australia. The priceless patriot, the man in whose psyche the entirety of Hellas bled.