"On May 1st, 1927, I left my family in Minneapolis and my work
among widely scattered friends in America, to make another trip
to Macedonia, which included the opportunity of meeting our
trustees, secretaries, and friends in Boston on the way out and
back. In Thessaloniki, progress was apparent at every point in
the horizon. There was an increasing number of Greeks in the
city who had made some money in the United States and came back
to invest it where capital was more scanty and life more easy.
One touch of America appeared in a movie picture announcement,
not far from the College, entitled in English, "Jim the Devil".
I was glad that that was not the only kind of influence from
the land of my citizenship in the land of my adoption. It was
encouraging to find four boys in four of our teachers' homes,
born within the year; and while our teachers' salaries were
often so meager as to make one feel very sober, during the ten
years of this period some ten families of our College Staff
each acquired a modest house as a home of their own.
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"The School for Girls" had vacated its old abode on Rue Franque,
where American mission work had been started long before and
carried on for years, and it now occupied a new and far better
site between Allatini Street and the Aegean Seashore. The ground
was limited and the building, while good of its kind, was only
the "konak" or mansion of a Turkish official, who had left with
the rest of his people. There was the inevitable urge of growth
in whatever has vitality. The School had outgrown its permit,
gradually dropping its lower classes and adding classes higher
up, until the permit for a common school had been outgrown and
did not apply to the actual courses of instruction followed.
So, the School was ordered closed, by meticulous officials and
with legal right. A good deal of discussion, planning and
some discouragement was finally terminated when, by a sort of
side door route, it was found that if the College permit could
be stretched so as to cover the Girls' School, it would be
satisfactory to the officials of Greece. Provisional plans
toward this result were agreed upon among us locally, and
within a year when Boston could take unhurried action, this
arrangement was confirmed. As one result, Miss Mabel Emerson
was added to the Board of Trustees, and the Girls' School
and College began to move toward a merger which could not be
stopped half way. When it was announced in manager meeting
that the Government in Athens had revoked the order closing
the Girls' School, our feelings were expressed by our youngest
member, who took a flying leap over the chairs and table with
which the room was furnished.
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As a city, Thessaloniki was struggling forward. Paving of
main streets had begun, although such municipal improvements
proceed slowly unless there are large, capital resources
available for taxation. Parks and parking were taking shape.
There never had been a sewer in the city until these years
following the war, but by this time an urban system was
fully half built. Millions were said to have been expended
in building in the business area, which had been burned
during the war. A "Free Zone" had been established in the
harbor to provide transportation and trade facilities
between Yugoslavia and the Aegean Sea, free from Greek
custom duties or other regulations. Forty-five ten-ton
freight cars each way were reckoned as average normal
daily traffic."