Margaret Papandreou, American-Born Greek First Lady, Dies at 102

Margaret Papandreou, the American-born former first lady of Greece who pushed through a set of laws that rewrote how Greek families worked, died on Sept. 18 in Palaio Faliro, a suburb of Athens. Her family announced the death. She was 102.

She was born Margaret Chant in Oak Park, Illinois, the village just west of Chicago, and she married Andreas Papandreou in 1951. He later became prime minister of Greece. She became the most visible organizer in the country's women's movement, starting with the Women's Union of Greece, which she founded in 1975.

Greek President Constantine Tassoulas, in a statement after her death, said she had supported and inspired the reform of family law, the breakthrough in social and political rights and the modernization of women's status in Greek society.

The 1983 laws that changed what a Greek marriage was

Two years after she made a public case for change in 1981, and while her husband was serving as prime minister, Papandreou successfully pushed lawmakers to pass legislation modernizing women's roles on several fronts at once, according to accounts of her life published after her death.

One piece of it created divorce by mutual consent. That is a plain idea with a heavy effect: two people who both want out of a marriage can end it by agreeing to end it, instead of one spouse having to stand in a courtroom and prove the other did something wrong. Anyone who has watched a contested divorce drag through an American court knows what that difference feels like in practice.

Another piece let women keep their last names after marriage. In a country where identity documents, property records and bank paperwork all run off a legal name, that was not a symbolic change. It meant a woman's name on a deed or a diploma stayed the same name she carried for the rest of her life.

The same legislation abolished dowries. A dowry is money or property handed over by a bride's family at the time of a marriage. Ending its legal standing took the price tag off a daughter.

Guardianship, business licenses and a passport without permission

The 1983 package also made single mothers the legal guardians of their own children. Guardianship is the thing that decides who signs the school forms, who has legal authority over a child's affairs, and who is treated by the state as the parent in charge. Before the change, a woman raising a child alone did not automatically hold that authority.

Two more provisions dealt with a married woman's ability to act on her own. The legislation allowed women to start businesses and to travel abroad with their children without their husband's permission.

Read that one twice. A married woman who wanted to open a shop, or take her own kids on a trip out of the country, had needed her husband to sign off. Papandreou helped end that in 1983. In 1986, Greece also legalized abortion.

What she said in 1981

"We've had enough of being second-class citizens, always pushed to the margin," she said in 1981.

It is a sentence with no hedging in it, and it arrived two years before the legislation did. The line has followed her through every account of her life since.

First ladies, in the American experience at least, tend to be handed a cause and a podium and asked to be gracious about both. Papandreou used the position differently. She was described in reporting on her death as an architect of several women's rights efforts, not a supporter of them, and the record of what passed while her husband governed backs that up.

The group she built in 1975

Her organizing work began largely with the Women's Union of Greece, which she founded in 1975. That was eight years before the family law changes cleared the legislature.

Eight years is a long runway. It is also the part of this story that gets skipped in the short version, where a first lady snaps her fingers and a law appears. The group came first, and the legislation came later.

Her work after that was not limited to a single bill or a single term. She remained a public figure in Greek life for decades after the laws passed, and the president's statement on her death framed her contribution as the modernization of women's status in Greek society, language that covers far more ground than any one vote in parliament.

From Oak Park, Illinois, to Athens

The Oak Park detail is the one most Americans will stop on. She was born Margaret Chant there, in a Chicago suburb, and she died a hundred and two years later in a suburb of Athens, with a Greek president issuing a statement about her place in that country's history.

She married Andreas Papandreou, the future prime minister, in 1951. That marriage put her inside Greek political life at the top, and it is the thread that connects an Illinois childhood to a seat at the table when family law was being rewritten in Athens.

American-born first ladies of other countries are rare enough to be a trivia answer. American-born first ladies who are credited by a sitting head of state with the reform of that country's family law are rarer still.

Married in 1951, divorced in 1989

The Papandreous divorced in 1989, six years after the legislation that created divorce by mutual consent in Greece.

There is no way to write that sentence without the timing landing on the reader. The woman who pressed lawmakers to modernize the rules for ending a marriage went on to end her own under a legal system she had helped change.

They had four children together. The divorce did not end her public role in Greece, where she remained a known figure for decades afterward.

Her son ran the country from 2009 to 2011

One of her four children, George Papandreou, served as prime minister of Greece from 2009 to 2011.

That makes her both the wife of a Greek prime minister and the mother of one, a distinction that puts her family in a category Americans do not really have an equivalent for. The Adamses and the Bushes come closest, and neither of those stories includes a woman who personally drove a rewrite of national family law.

Those years, 2009 to 2011, placed her son in the prime minister's office during a stretch when Greece dominated international headlines. She was in her eighties then, more than three decades removed from founding the Women's Union of Greece.

The president of Greece on what she left behind

Tassoulas named three things in his statement: the reform of family law, the breakthrough in social and political rights, and the modernization of women's status in Greek society.

Official condolences usually run on autopilot. Kind words, a mention of service, nothing you could fact-check. That statement is unusual for a head of state because it is specific enough to be checked against the statute books.

Each item on his list has a date attached to it. The Women's Union of Greece in 1975. The quote in 1981. The family law package in 1983, covering divorce by mutual consent, name retention, the end of dowries, guardianship for single mothers, and the right to open a business or take a child abroad without a husband's signature. Legal abortion in 1986.

News that took weeks to cross the Atlantic

She died on Sept. 18, and Greek media reported it that day. American coverage followed on Oct. 8, when The New York Times ran its obituary.

Palaio Faliro, the Athens suburb where she died, is a long way from Oak Park. She spent most of her adult life in Greece, a country whose laws she helped rewrite and whose politics she married into in 1951 and never really left.

The record is short, dated and checkable. A woman born Margaret Chant in Illinois founded a group in 1975, said in 1981 that she had had enough of being treated as a second-class citizen, and two years later got a national legislature to agree with her.