John Santikos: Greek WWII Refugee Who Left $605 Million to Charity

Greek American World War II Refugee Leaves $600 Million Fortune to Charity

John L. Santikos, a San Antonio cinema owner who came to the United States as a teenager after surviving the occupation of Greece in the Second World War, left almost his entire fortune to charity. When he died in December 2014, aged 87, his will passed his theatre chain, real estate and land to the San Antonio Area Foundation. In December 2015 the foundation announced the value of the bequest: an estimated $605 million, the largest single charitable gift ever recorded in San Antonio.

Here is who he was, how a family of Greek immigrants built a movie business across a century, and what has happened to the money since.

The gift: what Santikos left, and to whom

Santikos did not leave a pile of cash. His estate consisted mainly of working businesses: his Santikos cinemas (around a dozen sites at the time, according to Philanthropy Roundtable), shopping centres and other commercial property, plus undeveloped land in San Antonio and South Texas. All of this went to the San Antonio Area Foundation, a community foundation that manages charitable funds for the region.

The aim was a permanent legacy fund. Instead of a one-off donation, the businesses would keep operating and their profits would pay for grants year after year, long after his death. The foundation said the bequest would more than triple its assets; local reporting later put the jump at roughly $300 million to about $900 million. It described the gift as the largest in its own 51-year history and, in its words, "the largest single gift on record in San Antonio."

Most of the yearly proceeds were intended for local causes: people in need, students, cultural institutions and medical care. Santikos also remembered the wider world. According to Philanthropy Roundtable, two organisations outside San Antonio, Doctors Without Borders and International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC), were each to receive 10% of the annual distributions from his estate.

Some gifts were paid straight away after his death, before the full value was announced. One of these, reported by the Greek-American news site The Pappas Post, was $500,000 to IOCC, which used it for food aid to struggling families in Greece during the country's long economic crisis.

A cinema family that began in 1911

The Santikos story in America starts a generation earlier, with John's father, Louis Santikos. Louis emigrated from Greece in 1911 and settled first in Waco, Texas, where he worked in a grocery shop. Across the street stood the Rex Theatre, a nickelodeon, and he noticed the queues outside it every day. He saved what he could, bought the theatre, and so began more than a hundred years of family involvement in movies.

In 1918 Louis moved to San Antonio, where he ran the Rialto Theatre and later opened the Palace Theatre on Alamo Plaza. The Palace was the city's first true "movie palace", a forerunner of the grand downtown cinemas that followed, such as the Majestic, the Aztec and the Texas.

Louis went back to Greece in 1925, married Toula Gatos and brought her to San Antonio. Two years later, in 1927, he sold most of his Texas interests and moved the family to Athens, where he became a successful film distributor. John was born there in 1927.

Growing up under occupation and civil war

John's childhood collided with some of the darkest years in modern Greek history. German, Italian and Bulgarian forces occupied Greece from 1941 to 1944. Athens suffered a devastating famine in the first winter of occupation, and reprisals against civilians were common across the country.

According to the family history published after his death, German officers requisitioned the Santikos home in Athens. The officers lived upstairs while the family lived downstairs, a frightening arrangement that lasted until liberation in October 1944.

Peace did not follow. Fighting broke out in Athens in December 1944 between communist-led forces and the government backed by Britain, and a full civil war raged from 1946 to 1949. During this period, the family account says, Louis and John escaped from their house just hours before communist guerrillas arrived searching for them.

Afraid for his children, Louis sent John to San Antonio in 1946, followed by his sister Kiki and brother Dean. John was a refugee in a practical sense, though he was also returning to the city where his parents had built their first life.

From ticket taker to theatre mogul

In 1947 John enrolled at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, learning English while taking his courses. He finished a business degree in about two and a half years. Meanwhile his parents returned to Texas, and Louis opened another cinema, the Olmos Theatre.

John learned the trade from the floor up. At the Olmos he sold tickets, ran the concession stand, booked films and handled marketing, a hands-on education under his father's eye. In 1958 Louis and Toula moved back to Greece for good, and John took charge of the San Antonio business.

Under his leadership the company expanded steadily, buying and building theatres. In 1987, as a real estate slump hit Texas, he sold his cinemas to Act III Theatres, a chain backed by television producer Norman Lear. Act III's theatres later passed to Regal Cinemas. When Regal went through Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001, Santikos bought back the San Antonio cinemas he had sold years before.

Santikos Theatres became known for bringing new technology to San Antonio and Houston audiences. Over the decades the company moved from drive-ins to indoor multiplexes, then to premium large-format screens, 4K digital projection and THX and Dolby Atmos sound. In early 2015 it was reported to be among the first cinema operators in the United States to install laser projection.

Alongside the cinemas, he built a real estate portfolio of shopping centres and land, which became just as important to the value of his estate.

What the Santikos fortune has funded

The bequest is administered through the Santikos Charitable Foundation, managed by the San Antonio Area Foundation, while the businesses themselves continue as Santikos Enterprises. Reporting by the San Antonio Report gives a picture of the early grant-making:

2016: $9.3 million to eight nonprofits for building projects, many carrying the Santikos name.
December 2017: about $500,000 in year-end grants to 25 nonprofits.
2018: a two-year, $400,000 grant to SA2020, a civic progress group, and $3 million to six nonprofits for capital projects, chosen from 122 applications.

The gift has not been without debate. In a 2019 commentary, San Antonio Report founder Robert Rivard described criticism from local philanthropists and nonprofit leaders: that cash payouts had fallen short of the predictions made when the gift was announced, that the assets had never been independently valued, and that profits were going into new cinemas rather than to charity. Leadership at both the foundation and the company changed in the following years. Supporters argue that keeping the businesses running is what allows the gift to keep giving.

That tension is common with very large bequests of operating companies: a business that is run well can fund grants for generations, but its value and pay-outs are harder to judge than a simple endowment of stocks and bonds.

Why his story still resonates

Santikos's life connects two big themes: the Greek diaspora, and the way war and displacement shape whole families. His father crossed an ocean to find work, built a business, went home, and then had to send his children back across that same ocean to keep them safe. The son, who arrived as a young man fleeing violence, ended his life by handing nearly everything he built to the city that took him in.

For many Greek Americans, the gift is also a reminder that refugees and immigrants often repay their new homes many times over. Today, with record numbers of people displaced by conflict around the world, his journey from occupied Athens to the largest gift in San Antonio's history is worth remembering.

Sources: Gregory Pappas, The Pappas Post (17 December 2015); Philanthropy Roundtable, "Tripling a community foundation"; Robert Rivard, San Antonio Report (2019).

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