Manoli Savvenas, the jeweler of Glenstone once known as professional wrestler Mike Pappas the Flying Greek, died Dec. 31 at his Springfield home at 81. He had been battling colon cancer.
Visitation will be from 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4, to 10 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 5, at Theotokos Unexpected Joy Orthodox Church, 810 W. Woodbine Road, Ash Grove.
Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Jan. 5 at the church, with burial to follow at Holy Resurrection Cemetery, Ash Grove.
Savvenas' life was profiled in a Dec. 9, 2021, Pokin Around column in the Hauxeda.
A local movie was made about his life
On Dec. 10, a 40-minute documentary film on Savvenas premiered at the Historic Fox Theatre, 157 Park Central Square in Springfield.
The film was made by Flintlock Syndicate Productions and directed and produced by Jason Brasier. Carbon Trace Productions is co-producer.
Moxie Cinema showed it in July.
Savvenas was the most unlikely pro-wrestler specimen. He was 5 foot 4 and never weighed more than 170 pounds.
Nevertheless, he once tag-teamed with Andre The Giant, who was 7-foot-4 and 520 pounds.
He grew up in poverty on island of Rhodes
Savvenas was born on the Greek island of Rhodes, in the Aegean Sea, a mere 28 miles from Turkey.
“When you woke up in the morning, you could see the mountains of Asia Minor,” he told the Hauxeda.
His parents grew grapes and olives. His mother had 11 children. The family had no running water and no electricity. He did homework by the light of a kerosene lamp and was not a particularly good student, he said.
He and his siblings spent their days swimming in the sea and soaking up sun on the beach.
“Sometimes it was happy,” he said. “A lot of times, it was not very happy. A lot of times, we did not have enough to eat. I used to go to school in the morning, and I did not have breakfast.
“There was not much to eat. We would come back to the house after playing and have a slice of bread. We’d put some water on it and some sugar.”
Transfusion made him a ‘hilly-billy'
He married Valerie Barnes in 1973 in New Jersey. She was 18 and he was 32.
Eight years later, they would marry again in the Greek Orthodox Church in Rhodes.
They own Manoli’s Jewelers at 2700 S. Glenstone Ave., Springfield.
He joked that after he was given a blood transfusion as part of his cancer treatment here in the Ozarks, he was “for sure a Greek hilly-billy.”
He and his wife have three children: Paraskevas, Maria and Konstantinos. Savennas has a daughter, Constandina, from a prior relationship. That daughter had a twin sister, Konstantina, who died shortly after birth, before he met Valerie.
