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George Seferis wrote that “memory hurts where you touch it». A verse inextricably linked to her for years Koulouvatos family. The last son who led her Hotel chain “Amalia” founded by Christos’s father came out last Tuesday having been admitted for heart valve surgery.
Konstantinos was only 62 years old and he was the only one alive of the three children of Christos and Aliki Koulouvatou, after she lost her two brothers in tragic games of fate. His loss closes the cycle of a family tragedy that unfolded in three decades, directed at the three children of an exceptional bourgeois family in Athens.
A family with principles, whose patriarch with hard work and diligence set up a hotel group that still exists and works. In the early 90’s, Christos Koulouvatos’s family was one of the most beloved in Athens and their house at the end of Herodotou street became many times … a center for passing friends of the three Koulouvatos brothers. The first-born Konstantinos did not differ much in character from the second Theodore and the young Alexis. who had just returned from his studies in Boston. The three of them loved hanging out with friends, the impromptu parties they used to organize at home, Easter in Spetses and summers in Mykonos. At one of those parties, one night in 1990 in Ekali, the web of the tragedy of the Koulouvatos brothers began to be woven, when the night had removed its veils forever.
The beginning of the drama and the cautious Theodore
As Christina Politi pointed out in an article, she was a very close friend of the three brothers, Athens in the 90s was a big group, so big that some nights 40 people had fun together. Born in 1965, Alexis was a charming 25-year-old with a sharp mind, educated, with a permanent smile on his lips. His close friend was the owner Giannis Pateras, two years older than the little Koulouvatos, with whom they used to give the “present” in the frequented of the time.
Alexis already had several conquests in the female sex, while his friends remember him leading the Green Mercedes family on the beach in the direction of the “pacific” full of friends and acquaintances. Trapped like those who had fun with him at the last party of his short life at a villa in Ekali the night time stood still for the Koulouvatos family. When he saw a friend who was driving a motorcycle, he was drunk, he told him to take his car to go home, after getting to know him a bit. He told him that he would take his motorcycle and that the next day the vehicles would be changed when they went for coffee somewhere in Athens. Something that never happened. Alexis Koulouvatos left Ekali but never made it to Herodotus’ family home, after somewhere along the way and under unclear circumstances he lost control of the motorcycle he was driving.
When he fell, he hit just one point behind his head and died instantly at just 25 years old. A short time later, the cries of Aliki’s mother and the sobs of Christos’s father reflected the pain of the parents who were mourning their sternopoul. The news froze secular Athens and at her funeral scenes many have not yet forgotten unfolded, with her parents and siblings experiencing the despair that loss brings.
Konstantinos and Thodoris were slow to return to the normality that life imposes when you lose your brother, while their mother and father would never be the same again. Brain death from one bite! Virtually no one in the family would ever be the same again, much less the cautious Theodore. A tall boy who loved dishes, beautiful life and nights in a very different Athens, where he would return until dawn leaving “Bora-Bora” to go to bouzouki.
Christina Politi remembers in a very tender text that she wrote five years ago that Theodoris was the one who broke the books of the 3rd Lyceum. He was the one DJing at the teen parties held at the family home, suddenly putting Rory Gallagher where they danced. Easter in Spetses, where the family kept an excellent home, was the best, while many still remember a night of the Resurrection. Theodoris and his friends lit and threw so much dynamite that it almost “blew” a platform and a priest, who survived a mine of small explosions. He honked her several times to go out and take her to clubs like the legendary “9 Muses” or Le-Pa with Angela Dimitriou, then the first names in the night. Minas Goumas, a close friend of the family, tells of a lively man who loved a good drink and was passionate about bridge. He was also passionate about women. She was even married twice, once to a member of the Onassis dynasty, but at the last moment she backed down. The loss of his beloved mother Aliki cost him a lot, but until 2001 he continued working in the family business passing through the Zappeion to “Amalia” where he had his office. On August 16, 2001, Theodoris was eating at his parents’ house when his fate played the worst game, as what happened in a few minutes sounds unthinkable.
A swallowed bite blocked his throat so he couldn’t breathe, while unfortunately for him the maid had left without taking the keys. When he returned to find that his boss was not opening the door for him, he called the locksmith urgently, feeling that something had happened, but it was too late. Thodoris Koulouvatos was alive, but his brain was not oxygenated for several minutes, as a result of which he suffered brain death, a man who no longer had any contact with the environment. His brother Costas did everything in the hope that at some point Theodoris would wake up from his coma, but such a thing never happened. Family friends and relatives are shocked by the news and rush to support the boy who scratched his nose and screamed “Years and years of experience.” He is visited very frequently, first at “Salud” and then at the “Philoktiti” special rehabilitation center. They talk to him, show him photos, but Theodoris is no longer with them.
He will finally leave after fourteen years of hospitalization in April 2015, leaving only his older brother Kostas, now married and the father of two children. The smiling boy his father had left a few years before Theodore and Costas were left alone to keep up the hotel group created by Christos Koulouvatos. A man who started as a travel agent gaining experience before leaving to start Chat Tours, which specializes in coach travel, a new trend starting in the late 1970s. Things turned out very well and the next step for the The family’s patriarch were the hotels, the first being “Amalia” in Syntagma, which paved the way for the following in Nafplio, Delphi, Kalambaka, Olympia and Preveza.
His son Costas was going to be the only survivor and the one who continued the work with passion, taking care to always keep a low profile. He lived in Psychiko, in a house somewhere behind Athens College, while he had a beautiful estate in Peania, where he sometimes threw beautiful parties, at least once a year until recently. When asked why he didn’t do it this year, Costas said the priority was not the party but the employee payments at his hotels. “Throwing a party and not paying my staff is something I never thought about,” he told a friend over a meal. Like his unfortunate brothers, he was disgusted with the public for no reason, but he remained the lifeblood of the company, having married Mina Moraitis, the woman of his life, with whom they had two children, Christos and Aliki.
Spetses was his sanctuary, but also the island where he saw his friends and had a good time, enjoying the food, the beautiful stories and the starry summer nights. Admitting him to the hospital for a routine operation, such as valve placement, wasn’t something that scared him, but fate had again chosen to make an appearance. The scattered information about what happened speaks of complications that occurred during the operation, which were fatal for the last brother of the Koulouvatos family. He went out leaving behind a woman he adored and two children whom he loved very much and went to look, as his friends said, for Alexis and Theodoris up there, to mix this time forever.
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