In 2013, Seattle鈥檚 U District neighborhood lost one of its most cherished businesses. The Continental Greek Restaurant and Pastry Shop sat on University Way, two blocks from the 91探花鈥檚 Seattle campus, for nearly 40 years before closing its doors that June. News of the closure was met with from customers, many of whom first started patronizing the business as students, faculty or staff and returned year after year.

The restaurant was owned and operated by the family of , a lecturer at the 91探花鈥檚 Jackson School of International Studies. He鈥檚 now looking back on his family鈥檚 business 鈥� as well as sharing recipes 鈥� in his memoir 鈥�,鈥� due to be published this fall by McFarland.

Lagos鈥� father and mother emigrated from Greece in 1967 and became part owners of the Continental in 1974, gaining full ownership two years later. His brother Demetre began managing it after college. They worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week, with days off only when the restaurant was closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year鈥檚 Day. When they were approached about selling the business, Lagos鈥� father and mother, aged 82 and 75, respectively, decided it was time to retire.

In his book, Lagos shares how the Continental, which he affectionately calls 鈥渢he Conti,鈥� was more than just a business to his family.

鈥淭his book is a testament to the power of the community we found and how it changed our family,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he Conti helped my family become Americans. It introduced us to American society and culture, and as a result, we changed and adapted to our new society in ways that otherwise might not have taken place.鈥�

91探花Notebook asked Lagos to share more about what the Continental meant to his family.

Your past books include a biography of theater mogul Alexander Pantages and a look at the rivalry between two early 20^th-century preachers. Why did you decide to follow those up with a memoir about your family鈥檚 restaurant?

I stumbled onto this book. I鈥檇 just finished my first book on Pantages, and my creative juices were flowing, so I decided to put them to use by writing a memoir. I had no idea it would be turned into a book. In fact, this was one book that I didn’t want published, because the closing of the beloved Conti was too painful for me. Writing the memoir manuscript was meant to be a cleansing or closure exercise for me 鈥� as a way to clear my soul and not for others to read. So after I wrote it, I hid it in a file on my desktop, intending to forget about it.

Meanwhile, I was under contract with McFarland for a historical survey of Greek restaurants in the United States, which was to include personal reflections on my family’s operation. COVID-19 hit, and it was not possible to do the research for the survey book, so I asked the publisher if they would be interested in the memoir manuscript. They were so that’s how it got published.

What made the Conti such a special gathering space for the community?

It was very much like a typical Greek village, a “kafeneion,” where everybody gathers, and it functions as a social glue for the community. That’s what my family did at the Conti 鈥� they brought a bit of the village to the U District. And our customers became friends. That鈥檚 why it was so sad for us when my parents decided to retire and close shop; it was the ending of not one friendship, but literally hundreds.

What can people learn about the immigration experience by reading your book?

There are places like the Conti spread across the country that help inculcate immigrants into American culture. In fact, I cannot think of a more powerful institution that helps them do that than restaurants.聽 This is the importance of the Conti and ethnic restaurants in general; not only do they introduce new cuisines into American society, from which all of us benefit, but their owners themselves are introduced to and interact with Americans in profound and authentic ways.

It’s social contact, the kind that changes lives. A customer could walk into the Conti and my mom knew immediately what he or she wanted to eat. She was a “borrowed” mom to everybody from grunge band musicians to other renowned people like Bill Russell, Gloria Steinem and Mary Gates, mother of Bill, who once told my father that her son would grow up to become a famous electrical engineer. Immigrant restaurant owners provide a service to the community, but in return they become part of the American fabric.

It’s complicated because immigrants are constantly negotiating their identity. There is not a moment in the decades we’ve been here when we didn’t ask ourselves: When and where do we stop being Greek and become American? It’s not easy, even though the Conti helped us become American by osmosis. Friendships with customers made us feel at home in the U.S., but it took a long time. I don’t think we realized this until after the restaurant closed.

What place do family-run and community spaces like the Conti still have in the U District, Seattle and other areas that are changing rapidly due to development and a rising cost of living?

I hope community spaces still have a place in our lives. If such spaces die out completely, both new immigrants and the community at large are poorer for it. It’s not easy owning and operating a small business. But the friendships and interactions 鈥� watching our customers grow, have kids, their kids have their own kids and so on 鈥� over 40 years are priceless. When that stops, we are no longer a community. Neighborhoods become an airport, with people just passing through.

was a popular fire-and-brimstone radio evangelist of that time who later ran for office twice and lost. A Southern Methodist family man, Shuler too sought the betterment of society but disapproved of the upstart McPherson, who so captivated congregations across America and beyond.

In a new book, of the 91探花 Jackson School studies the rivalry between these two California-based performer-preachers who had the country’s rapt attention for a time, and asks about the role of charisma itself in leadership. “” was published in November by Cambridge Scholars.

“Two rock-star preachers may have been one too many in a city even as big and growing as Los Angeles,” Lagos writes. “One saw the potential a clean, well-run, fairer city could do to improve the lives for its citizens, while the other saw in the corruption around her an opportunity not to condemn but to help save souls under the eternal love and guidance of Christ.

“And these two starkly different visions could not be reconciled, no matter how bountiful the love, compassion, and forgiveness in their Jesus-inspired hearts.”

91探花Notebook caught up with Lagos for a few questions about the book and these two outsized personalities of the past century.

You write that it’s hard for you to imagine McPherson and Shuler operating in a historical period other than the early 20^th century. Why is that?

Taso Lagos: Both McPherson and Shuler were products of their time; I cannot see them operating in another time, or place for that matter. McPherson was a Canadian immigrant who found her chief mission in life initially as an itinerant minister, but eventually founded her own church 鈥� 鈥� which today is in 146 countries.

At the time American Protestantism was in the throes of deep soul-searching, with a modernizing wing versus the more traditional wing caught in internecine battles. McPherson represented the new wing while Rev. Shuler tried to keep the old and true (what we today call “masculine Christianity”) alive. McPherson brought a feminizing element to her ministry 鈥� not the first, but certainly one of the most impactful. And they met in Los Angeles, which was a hotbed of religious innovation.

Are there 21^st century counterparts to personalities like Sister Aimee and “Fighting Bob” in evangelistic or even entertainment circles?

T.L.: No, so far as I know. Part of it is that female ministers are more accepted today than in the early 1900s, so the gender issue simply is no longer an issue, so far as I can see. Also, I am not aware of new religious sects being founded, like what Sister Aimee did with . It was possible at the time because 1920s Los Angeles was a fervent place of innovation and entrepreneurship (for example, the emerging Hollywood studios).

The book seems in part a mediation on the effect of charisma on leadership. What, if any, were your conclusions?

T.L.: Charisma plays a huge role in leadership and garnering public attention. I knew that charisma was important, but after the book, I realize it is critical to some forms of leadership and public adulation. Not always for the best. President Trump has brought charisma back to discussion about leadership, for good or ill, and he reminds us that it remains a potent force in American life today. So much so that I want to explore this concept with the creation of a “Journal of Charisma Studies” to bring this element more to the attention of academic and popular circles. We need to be more aware of the profound effects, positive or negative, of charisma and its impact on our social and political development.

Toward the end of the book you write, “Strangely, I believe (McPherson) was closer to spiritual maturity than Shuler.” Why?

T.L.: She understood human beings better than Shuler, which Shuler acknowledged long after their rivalry ceased to matter. He confessed that she was more in touch with human beings and moved them more profoundly that he ever did, simply because she chose to bring people to love of Jesus, not to damn them with hellfire as he preached.

McPherson was closer to the everyday people and their problems, in other words, whereas Shuler always seemed to battle and hobnob with elites and was more interested in eliminating corruption in Los Angeles than in saving human souls. So in that sense, she left a longer lasting legacy than he did; in fact, at the end, he became a political reactionary more or less on the fringe of society. Sister Aimee lives in the hearts of millions today. That says everything.

For more information, contact Lagos at taso@uw.edu.

It’s a challenge to write a biography of a man who was functionally illiterate and whose papers were mostly destroyed, but 91探花 lecturer has achieved it with his new book, “.” The book was published early this year by .

was a vastly successful early 20^th century theater owner and entrepreneur in the days of vaudeville and early motion pictures. At one point he owned 78 theaters across the United States and Canada 鈥� despite being virtually unable to read or write English.

Lagos, a lecturer in Hellenic Studies in the Jackson School’s European Studies Program, said he became intrigued by the movie mogul years ago when completing his master’s thesis at the 91探花on early Seattle motion picture history.

“I share Pantages’ Greek heritage,” Lagos said. “He was born on the island adjacent to mine in the Aegean, and he left home when he was nine, just like I did with my family. That was the initial draw.”

Pantages rose during an era 鈥� about 1902 to 1929 鈥� “that required tough, ruthless, hard working but visionary business types” to thrive, Lagos said. There were few movie theaters in the country, and few mainstream investors willing to finance the fledgling art of moviemaking.

“Films were considered pornographic art, which left the door open for immigrants who saw movie theaters as an opportunity to start their own businesses,” Lagos said. Pantages opened his first theater in Seattle in 1902.

“No one in 1902 ever could聽imagine that films one day would become a聽dominant art form, with the rise of huge Hollywood studios and enormous profits. So in that sense, he was lucky 鈥� he entered the business when few others dared and he rode the wave of growing popularity of films.

“When he started聽building movie palaces, with ornate bathrooms, foyers, chandeliers and white-gloved ushers, for working-class聽audiences it felt like being in a 鈥� which was precisely the point,” Lagos said. “He never booked an act or a movie in his theaters unless he saw it first, with a paying聽audience;聽never, absolutely never relying on the word of agents or salespeople.”

The many theaters Pantages built “were meant to last,” Lagos said. To this day, still stand, and Seattle just lost its last one in 2011. Tacoma’s Pantages Theater , but was refurbished and reopened under the Pantages name in 1983.

Pantages’ life, however, was never the same after a widely publicized 1929 conviction for rape 鈥� though he was exonerated in a subsequent trial. Because of the scandal, his name has been omitted from many theater histories of the era. “Even in Greek-American circles,” Lagos said, “he remains a pariah.”

Lagos researched the case deeply for his book, reading all available testimony (some had mysteriously disappeared) and even visiting the room where the assault is said to have taken place. He said as he began his research he was convinced that the rape took place; when his research was done he had “strong doubts” 鈥� but is still uncertain.

Primary sources for the research were scarce, Lagos said. Pantages being illiterate, he left few papers behind and corporate papers relating to the theater chain were destroyed over the years. Lagos used newspaper accounts to piece together Pantages’ biography, which strives “to showcase the life, both the triumphs and the tragedies,” he said.

“Besides his name, there are few traces of his life,” Lagos added. “Although the at his famous theater in Hollywood seem to have a striking resemblance to his face.”

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For more information, contact Lagos at 206-351-7495 or taso@uw.edu