ARISTOTLE S. ONASSIS

The Founder

Aristotle Onassis, son of Socrates and Penelope, was born in Smyrna in 1906. In 1922 he arrived in Greece as a refugee, and shortly thereafter emigrated to Argentina. In 1932 he bought his first ship, which he named Calliroe after his sister. In 1946 he married the daughter of the shipowner Stavros Livanos, Athina (known as Tina) with whom he had two children: Alexander, who was born in Athens in 1948, and Christina, born in Athens in 1950. About ten years later, Onassis and Tina Livanos divorced. Onassis, thanks to his genius for business, very rapidly rose to be one of the world’s biggest shipping magnates, owning mainly oil tankers. He became a legendary figure, not only in worldwide financial circles but also in the eyes of ordinary people.

Paint by Michalis Vafiadis

In 1956 he acquired from the Greek State the concession to operate an air transport company and founded. Olympic Airways. The Company started to operate on the 6th April 1957, with a standard of service for the passengers, which would be inconceivable nowadays, for cost reasons. Olympic Airways was soon fl ying to destinations all over the world, and won a name for itself as one of the safest airline companies. At the end of 1974, Onassis rescinded the contract with the Greek State and on the 4th August 1975, after his death, Olympic Airways was transferred to it. In 1963, Aristotle Onassis bought Scorpios, a small, barren, waterless island in the Ionian Sea, which he transformed into a small earthly paradise by planting thousands of trees and building small guesthouses. It was his custom to spend a few days of his vacation there, in the company of the famous people who were his friends - one result of which was that Greece became ever more widely known. In 1968 he married Jacqueline Bouvier, widow of the assassinated US president J. F. Kennedy. On January 24th 1973, his son Alexander, then just 25 years old, was killed in an aircrash. His son’s sudden and untimely death dealt Onassis a shattering blow, from which he never recovered. He died two years later, on the 15th March 1975, in Paris. In accordance with his wishes he was buried by in the chapel of the Virgin Mary on Scorpios, beside his son and his sister Artemis. His daughter Christina was likewise buried there, when she died in Argentina on the 19th November 1988.