What a difference a century can make. With legalized gambling raking in the bucks now in Ohio, Peter Mavromates would be shaking his head if he were still around.
In 1917, it was more likely that he was resting his head against jail cell bars, wondering how he could be blamed for what customers were doing in his pool hall.
Mavromates is listed as a merchant of cigars and tobacco on his 1917 army draft card, though the Mount Vernon Democratic Banner described the place as a pool hall. The establishment was located on the corner of West High and Mulberry Streets, and was known as the Mecca Hall.
Earlier newspaper reports show Mavromates involved in local business clubs since 1912.
According to the news item which ran in the News on March 20, 1917, Mount Vernon police chief Parker heard that a young man had lost $30 betting on pool games in the hall, and so he arrested the proprietor, a Greek immigrant who had become a naturalized citizen. One hopes the chief’s only motivation was discouraging betting and not targeting a foreigner setting up a business in a small Ohio town.
Who was this arrested man? His given name, when he was born on the Greek island of Cerigo in 1893, was Panayoites Mavromates. Since Panayoites was such an unfamiliar name in the U.S., the young man instead went by the nickname “Peter.”
His birthplace, Cerigo, was known in ancient times as Kythera, and was according to legend the birthplace of Helen of Troy and of the goddess Venus. Botticelli’s famous painting The Birth of Venus is said to picture the coast of Kythera, though whether the painter ever actually visited Cerigo is uncertain. Antiquarian George Wheler, on visiting the island in 1682, opined that the place was so rocky and arid that Helen was probably eager to be kidnapped and taken to the City of Troy.
Whatever the case, the island evidently held little future for Mavromates, for he left for the United States. Panayoites (Peter) was only 24 when he was running the Mecca Hall in Mount Vernon. He may even have been the Peter Mavromates listed in a Zanesville city directory working as a bootblack in 1907. Pete would have been only 13 or 14 at the time.
On the morning of the arrest, Chief Parker summoned Peter to the mayor’s office for questioning. Mavromates said that he had no idea that young men were betting on games at the Mecca.
He was simply trying to operate his business and had no idea that high-stakes gambling was happening. And, for 1917, it was high stakes, considering that $30 then would be worth over $750 in today’s currency.
After the questioning, Parker asked Mavromates if he plead guilty or not guilty. After a stunned moment, Pete pled not guilty. Parker escorted him to a cell. His bond was soon set at $200, which the young businessman paid. He was then released to await trial.
Did Chief Parker think he was doing the right thing in arresting the pool hall proprietor?
Without other proof, I suppose we must give him the benefit of the doubt, but it is startling that when the case came up for trial in the mayor’s court just a few days later, Parker had gathered absolutely no proof to indicate that Mavromates had any idea that people were gambling over games at Mecca. Mayor C. A. Mitchell rightly dismissed the case and ordered Mavromates to be released immediately.
The Greek immigrant joined the army in 1918, after World War I drew the U.S. into the massive conflict. Mavromates was trained at Camp Sherman, the place we talked about in relation to the 1918 flu pandemic, which wrought havoc in the army camp near Chillicothe.
He obviously survived the flu pandemic, for he served in the army and was honorably discharged a year later. Upon his return to civilian life, he got married to a distant cousin, Pepena, also from Greece, and he started a restaurant in Newark.
One wonders if that brush with the pandemic of 1918 impacted his life, though, for Pete Mavromates died in 1938, aged only 44. His wife outlived him by over 50 years, passing away in Mount Vernon in 2000, at the age of 95.
