George Stephanopoulos, co-anchor of ABC’s “Good Morning America,” reflected on his family’s immigration story and his dual Greek-American identity as the United States marked its 250th anniversary.
Stephanopoulos traced his family’s roots to Greece, where some of his mother’s relatives were imprisoned for protesting the Nazi occupation during World War II.
Named after his paternal grandfather, Stephanopoulos said his grandfather left the Peloponnesian village of Neochori in 1938 after being sent to the United States as a missionary priest.
“He was sent by the church to minister to basically the entire West,” Stephanopoulos said. “He ended up in Montana, and he served all the Greek populations that had migrated over to the western part of the United States.”
His maternal grandfather arrived in America from the western Greek port city of Patra in 1912. After working on the railroads and taking on cooking and cleaning jobs, he settled in Rochester, Minnesota, where he opened a shoe repair business.
