| Alex Vavoulis, professor emeritus of chemistry at
California
State University, Fresno, and champion of things Hellenistic, will make his 17th
odyssey to Greece this summer.
It isn't simply that retirement has left him with
time on his hands.
"I guess I'm pursuing my roots," says Vavoulis, son
of immigrants from Peloponessa. His wife, Vasiliky, is a native of Samos, an
island in the Aegean Sea.
 |
Alex Vavoulis is given credit for
sustaining radio station KFCF, which a colleague says is "the only voice left of far-right in the
Valley."
(Photo by John Walker / The Fresno Bee) |
"With Greeks, family is tight," Vavoulis says.
At age 77, Vavoulis feels comfortable reflecting upon
the sociopolitical achievements of his nearly 40 years in Fresno.
He professes pride even in the historic, though
unsuccessful, campaign 30 years ago at Fresno State in which Vavoulis and a band
of politically liberal colleagues attempted to establish a school of arts and
sciences as the "academic center" of the university.
He is prouder still of his leadership of the Fresno
Free College Foundation, the organization professors mounted originally to
support poet Robert Mezey, who contended he was fired for advocating the use of
marijuana.
"We all thought we were fighting the good fight,
preserving the academic freedom and due process," says Dale Bush, retired
economics professor. "Alex was there, but where he became very important was in
his role as president of the foundation.
"It languished after the Mezey case, and Alex stepped
in and whipped it into shape. He made it a vital force, not just on the campus
but in the community itself."
Under Vavoulis' leadership -- including 20 years as
president of the board -- the foundation provided seed money to launch the
Philip Lorenz Keyboard Concert Series and its Youth Performance Awards
Competition, Orpheus Chamber Ensemble and listener-supported radio station KFCF, FM 88.1.
The foundation has supported free-speech events,
which include a recent Fresno antiwar demonstration, scholarships for
impoverished students and publication of books, including one that reflected
upon reverberations of the failed school of arts and sciences, "The Slow Death
of Fresno State College."
Vavoulis doesn't claim to have founded KFCF, which began broadcasting in
1975, but Dr. Dale Burtner, a fellow "radical" in Fresno State's liberal
movement of the 1960s and 1970s, gives him a large measure of the credit for the
station's survival.
"It was -- and still is -- the only voice left of far
right in the Valley," Burtner says. Through KFCF's mother station in Berkeley, KPFA, he adds, "people in this
isolated place were able to get an alternative view of what was happening in the
Bay Area and the East. I think if anyone deserves the credit, it's Alex."
Apart from the station's 500-plus paying members,
Vavoulis concedes it's difficult to measure the influence of the
volunteer-driven alternative radio station.
"Those kinds of voices have to be out there," he
says. "You can't worry whether you institute change. Sometimes you have to make
the effort, otherwise you can't live with yourself."
On the whole, Vavoulis has enjoyed his years in
Fresno. "In its own way, Fresno is an exciting place culturally," he says. "I've
never understood people who criticize it as a city where there is nothing to do.
I have a lot of friends here; though it is still a conservative city, Fresno is
not without its progressive people.
"I've enjoyed the work I was able to do. We did a lot
of things about a lot of things."
Vavoulis expects to continue his sojourns to Greece
with his wife, who owns a skin-care salon. They're remodeling a
residence on her native Samos, aiming to settle there one day.
Meanwhile, Vavoulis won't be giving up his longtime
avocation of educating North Americans in the joys of Hellenistic life, a
project in which his Greek-educated wife has become his musically sophisticated
partner.
"I don't sing; Vasiliky does, beautifully. She knows
at least 500 Greek songs from memory. She helps me pick out the music for my
program."
"Mousikes Notes," a two-hour show, airs
one Sunday a month on KFCF.
The program taps into what Vavoulis describes as "a
rich legacy of Greek music and poetry that is pretty much unknown to most
Americans, including Greek-Americans."
His latest project: Mikis Theodorakis's "Zorba the
Greek" as a ballet, produced in Verona, Italy. "I'm really excited about this,"
Vavoulis says. "I have the soundtrack CD, which I've broadcast. I'm trying to
get the rights to show the video on television. The music is wonderful. So is
the dancing."
Vavoulis says, "It's a natural for
Channel 18,"
Fresno's public TV station. | 
