Bay Area Couple's Epic Courtship Detailed In World War II Letters

BURLINGAME, CA — Anthea Stratigos, a Burlingame resident, was going through items owned by her late mother-in-law, Irene, when she came across a black, ornate chinoiserie box. The contents of the box, which had been in Irene’s possession until she died in 2012, were unknown to Stratigos.

When Stratigos, the CEO of a research and advisory firm in Silicon Valley, finally opened the box, she found a treasure — more than 200 letters spanning five years of communications from her father-in-law, Gus, to Irene between 1942 and 1946.

“I decided to read them from beginning to end and see if there was a 'there there,' and I realized there was a remarkable love story buried in these letters,” Stratigos told Patch recently. “It was really magical.”

The discovery led to Stratigos organizing the letters and presenting them in a book, “My Darling Naki: A Love Story in Letters,” which was published on Valentine’s Day this year.

Gus Chagaris, who was being dispatched from New York to Hawaii to serve during World War II, met Irene Dress of South San Francisco in a coffee shop by chance, during a stop in the Bay Area on his way to his base.

It was “love at first sight,” as Gus described in one of his letters. He wrote to Irene regularly while they were separated, from right after they met to when Gus was discharged and trying to get home for the birth of his son. They only met three times in person before tying the knot, but the letters revealed a blossoming love that turned into 64 years of marriage. After the war, the couple lived in South San Francisco for the rest of their lives.

While Gus didn’t keep the letters that Irene wrote to him, she kept all of his replies. The letters read like a modern-day text exchange, except with only a few messages a week and much lengthier and more formal communications. The waiting for replies, as Gus hinted at in letters to Irene, was agonizing.

To Stratigos, who was born and raised in the Bay Area and would go on to marry Gus and Irene’s son, Greg, the collection of letters espoused a message that “love stories transcend time.” And there are similarities, she said, between how communication was limited during Gus and Irene's courtship in the war and how many people have been robbed of in-person connections during the current pandemic.

The book also represented an ode to The Greatest Generation, many of whom fought in World War II.

“They don’t call it The Greatest Generation for no reason, and I felt if I could memorialize his words, I was doing my bit to memorialize that piece of history,” Stratigos said.

Click here for more information on Stratigos’ book.