Vassilis Karydis

                                                                                                                                             Vassilis Karydis, eldest    son of my father’s eldest sister Eleni Nicolopoulos,  who, along with her husband Theodore Karydis, inherited the family notary public office and remained in Karytaina as the standard-bearers of our family interests in Arcadia from the 1920’s to the 1950’s.  Beside Vassilis, my aunt Eleni had three children: the twins Yannis and Lambis (Charalampos), and Frosso,  who married Thodoros Kontopoulos, head of Karytaina’s post and telegraph office.    When Mussolini invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, all three Karydis brothers were mobilized and sent to the front.  At the end of the so-called Albanian campaign,the first Allied victory in World War II, the twins returned home, but not Vassilis.  His bones remained for ever on a nameless Albanian mountaintop.