Rita Sakellariou

Her mother originated in Kalymnos and her father in Izmir. As a child, her father, a Partisan was killed in the 1946-49 civil war on Crete where she had been born and bred. Her mother moved with her three children to the port of Piraeus to try to make ends meet.

At 12, she left school to help earn a living for her family selling bread and lemons in a cart she pushed around Piraeus's desolate streets. Later, in the poverty-stricken 50s, she worked in factories; and when the going got really tough - after her first marriage foundered - she gathered garbage at the slums' rubbish dump.[1] In the meantime, Rita had already made her second marriage to wrestler Stefanos Sidiropoulos, known in the fight with the nickname "White Angel", whom she met in Thessaloniki in 1969 and married him after a year. Pretty younger than her, at 35 and 22 at the age of 22.[1]

Throughout these years, she continued to sing in the Queen Ann, a nightclub her husband had established on the National Road out of Athens. The 70s saw a series of hits, including Kathe Iliovasilema (Every Sunset) and Oi Andres kai oi Handres (Men and Beads). She remained popular, although her efforts to follow music trends through the 1980s and 1990s failed to match her earlier successes.

She had numerous hits, including "Istoria Mou, Amartia Mou", "An Kano Atakti Zoi", "Aftos O Anthropos", "Paranomi Mou Agapi" and "Ena Tragoudi". On 14 March 2010, Alpha TV ranked Sakellariou the 17th top-certified female artist in the nation's phonographic era (since 1960).[2]

During her last years she lived in Nea Smyrni neighbourhood of Athens.[3]

Death

Sakellariou's gravestone in Athens First Cemetery

In 1998, she and her friend Lakis Kores took a short vacation to Epidaurus. There she felt bad, crouching in bathroom from a terrible pain[4] At Hygeia Hospital (Greek: νοσοκομείο υγεια), medical checks confirmed she was suffering from lung cancer which metastasized to her bones.

The doctors had given her one-year to live. She immediately received chemotherapy. Around January, she began to take courage and feel better. So then he said one day suddenly: "Do you have an appetite to work?" Whereupon the proposal made for concerts in Australia. According to Lakis, although the situation was aggravated she felt good. Wearing a wig, they made a stop in Singapore for not getting tired, then continued journey. She appeared in 4 of the 5 concerts. They returned to Greece and medical checks showed the cancer had spread to vocal cords.

She worshiped Crete and Hamezi. She even went to Sitia, where she sang in the local celebrations unflatteringly. Shortly before she died, as if she had been told of her death, she had asked her son, Takis, to go to Hamezi while her dream was to buy the house where she was born, a wish that was never fulfilled.[5]

Before she died she called her first husband, who also suffered from cancer, telling him "or you'll take me with you, or I'll take you with me", something that turned out to be prophetic as she died out for 18 days from him.[5]

Sakellariou died on 6 August 1999, aged 64, after spending 40 days at Hygeia Hospital in Athens after returning from treatment at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. According to a Lakis, her last words were, "Oh Lakis, and I had so much yet to do!"[6]

She was survived by four sons and a daughter, two children from her first marriage, and three children from the second. She was buried on 9 August in the First Cemetery of Athens.[7][8]

• In the 1973 blockbuster The Exorcist, Jason Miller starred as Greek American Father Damien Karras, one of the priests who exorcised young Regan. In one scene, Karras’ mother, played by Greek actress Vasiliki Maliaros, is listening to a Greek radio station broadcasting the song Istoria mou, amartia mou.

• Rita Sakellariou biography, sansimera.com
• Sakellariou profile, musicpedia.gr