A student's birthday wishes for Thurber, Salonica, 1930

Item Detail

Handwritten letter written from the Russian hospital at Piraeus, where the writer was recovering from an appendix operation. He opens warmly — "I give you my goodmorning. I am well for the moment and I hoppe the same for you" — then apologizes that he had been unable to visit Thurber because the boat service from Corfu ran only once a fortnight. Two pages, in English, spelling original. Among the last letters Thurber received before his death later that month.

Context

Christopher C. Thurber (d. 1930), of Norwich, Connecticut, was a Near East Relief (NER) worker who served in Turkey and Greece during the organization’s peak relief and resettlement years. Arriving in 1921, he directed the NER orphanage at Sivas (Sebastia), survived typhus, and helped lead the evacuation of thousands of orphans from the Anatolian interior to Constantinople (Istanbul) and Greece after the 1922 Smyrna (Izmir) catastrophe. At the Selimiye Barracks refugee camp in Scutari (Üsküdar), he was beaten on the feet by local authorities for shielding a refugee, an injury that left him walking with a cane. From 1924, he directed NER’s work in Greece from Athens, overseeing orphanage education and the resettlement of orphanage graduates. He suffered a stroke and died in late May 1930; the Greek government honored him with a state funeral and a national day of mourning.

The collection gathers correspondence and papers associated with Thurber, preserved among the papers of NER administrator Henry C. (H.C.) Jaquith and received by the Near East Foundation — NER’s 1930 legal successor — as part of the Jaquith collection (now at the Rockefeller Archive Center, FA406). Most items are letters Thurber received from former NER wards and refugees across Greece — Athens, Salonica (Thessaloniki), Piraeus, Corinth, and Zante (Zakynthos) — who addressed him as “father,” thanked him, repaid loans, sent birthday greetings, and appealed for help with work, housing, and passage. Several of the latest letters date from the weeks just before his death.