The Losing Winner

Greeks were understandably astounded last May when Evanghelos Georgakakis came out ahead of all the other 360 candidates in the Athens bar exams. Reason: Georgakakis, 33, has no eyes, an artificial right hand, and only one finger on his left hand that has any sense of touch. A onetime Cretan shepherd boy who received his disabilities from a German mine explosion in 1944, Georgakakis uses the tip of his tongue to "read" Braille, got through law school by tape-recording and memorizing 60,000 pages of legislation. Highly impressed by his showing, the bar examiners took an unprecedented step: they urged every imaginable government and business leader to hire the winner at once, declaring that his blindness "bears witness to his exceptional abilities."

Unhappily, Georgakakis has drawn a total blank: apparently no one wants a blind and crippled lawyer. Even in a recent audience with Queen Mother Frederika, Georgakakis was told only: "Why come to me when so many important people could help you?" But all the important people seem to be unmoved by the fact that Georgakakis is officially the ablest new lawyer in Greece--and without doubt its most determined.

Fifth Among 2,000. Sent to an Athens school for the blind after the war, he found that he was unable to read Braille with the numbed fingers of his left hand; he learned to use his tongue, even though he was scolded for wetting the books. Because he could not take written entrance exams, Georgakakis was barred from high school and relegated to making brooms and brushes with his teeth, a future he could not bear. Then, when he was 20, a new law allowed him to take oral exams. With the aid of a tape recorder, the gift of a New Zealander whom his father had hidden during the war, Georgakakis graduated at the top of his class. In 1959 he ranked fifth among 2,000 applicants to Athens University's law school, won a scholarship as the first blind student ever admitted. After three years' required apprenticeship in an Athens law office, he capped his bar exam by successfully arguing a moot case before a panel that included Greek Supreme Court justices.

All to no avail. The law office where he had served his apprenticeship decided against hiring him. Partly supported by his aged father, who still tends bees and olive trees in Crete, Georgakakis goes on struggling in Athens, studying tape-recorded legislation, handling a few minor cases sent to him by friends, and hunting the bigger, elusive job that would vindicate his efforts. His spirit is waning. "My dream has been to become a productive unit of society," he says. "What am I now?"

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