Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
Bill Rusuli married Rose Dimitroff in the late 1920's. Jimmy remembered Rose as a beautiful young bookkeeper who worked for various firms in the Market. She and her brother, Louis J. Dimitroff, claimed Bulgarian and Greek ancestry (Bulgarian father, Greek mother). They arrived in the United States with their mother when Louis was six years old having immigrated to the United States as refugees from Constantinople. They probably had been made refugees by the aftermath of the Turko-Greek War of 1898.
After his arrival in the United States at the age of seven (c.1901), Louis was a dishwasher at a Hell's Kitchen restaurant on Tenth Avenue. He grew, matured, attended night school, and eventually entered the insurance business. Louis developed into a smart, cosmopolitan gentleman who was at ease with the rich, Governors and Senators, hunting Dove at a Maryland retreat, or hosting guests in private rooms at the Waldorf Astoria and Astor Hotels. When he died in 1952 he was a Vice President of The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Louis lived with Rose, and then with Rose and Bill all his life. From 1932 on they shared an elegant twelfth floor, upper West Side apartment on Riverside Drive.
Jimmy and Bill's business prospered in the economic boom of the nineteen twenties. They and their bachelor friends had an active social life. There are many photographs of them at the seashore and beach, hunting north of the city, in wooded surroundings turning a spitted lamb at celebrations, and relaxing in Manhattan's Central Park. They worked hard and knew how to enjoy life.
The young men sent money to their families in Greece. Jimmy forwarded many Western Union Money Orders to his mother. And, he could be counted on to provide additional financial support to his family in difficult times.
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