The Hellenistic

riganato served during Omaha’s annual Greek Festival in August, Amlin and Nick are nearly always behind the knife ensuring each dish is not only authentic, but delicious.

Greek Orthodox Easter, or Pascha, includes the church’s most sacred religious feast of the year, wherein garlic-roasted lamb and tsoureki sweet bread provide a rich, tantalizing reward after 40 days of fasting. Needless to say, the Helens work holidays.

‘Dynamic Duo’

Helen Amlin and Helen Nick Bring

Xenia, Traditional Fare to St. John’s

“We have to honor this country,” echoed Nick. As political tensions rose, the women departed Greece only a few years before the junta, with Nick arriving stateside in 1962 and joining the St. John’s community by 1963 its ornate, Byzantine cupola representing the oldest, and frequently only, Greek Orthodox congregation in the city. Meanwhile, Amlin’s marriage to a US servicemen involved frequent moves when she arrived in the US in 1964, settling in Omaha after her husband’s retirement.

“I’ve been here [in Omaha] for 45 years, and for the last 30 I’ve been cooking [at St. John’s],” Amlin said.

“Who knows? Maybe over 25, 30 years?” Nick said. “I’ve only been [in Oma ha] for 61!”

While they aren’t alone in the kitchen fellow parishioners are eager to lend a helping hand, offloading heavy baking sheets or chopping greens the Helens’ command of temperatures, seasonings, and sides (especially baked goods) is u nparalleled.

Strom affectionately refers to the pair as the ‘dynamic duo,’ because “they’ve cooked for everything, for every meal, for years. They’re both excellent cooks, I can tell you that right now.”

Whether it be flaky cod and spanakopita during Lent, or everyday favorites like baklava and the lemon-roasted chicken

“For the lamb, we pour whole garlic in it, marinate it with salt and pepper and oregano,” Nick said. “Sometimes people put lemon in it, sometimes they don’t. And we cook it until it’s 260°, and then we slice and we have the roast potatoes the same way.”

“A lot of garlic,” Amlin added. “A lot of garlic and lemon juice and olive oil.”

“And of course, home made yogurt. And we make special milk pudding, galatopita!” Nic k exclaimed.

While feast days and festivals see the Helens at their busiest, Nick stressed the importance of preparing meals outside of church functions. As members of the Omaha chapter of the Greek Orthodox Ladies Philoptochos Society, all three women not only practice xenia, but something altogether more active: ‘philoptocos,’ or ‘love for the poor.’

“Somebody who doesn’t have a family? You always think of that,” Nick said. “Also, if you think somebody’s sick take them a dish. Any kind of occasion, not only for Easter. Just this year we sold koulourakia (Greek cookies), and the benefits went to the poor.”

To support St. John’s, the area Philoptocos chapter, and Omaha’s Greek community at large, Amlin and Nick encourage locals to attend the Omaha Greek Festival on August 19th at the St. John’s community fellowship hall. The event features live music and traditional dance performances, historic tours, kids activities, and of course, authentic Gr eek cuisine.

“You better come to the festival,” Nick encouraged. “I’m gonna be at the pastry booth…if I don’t break another leg!”

For more information, visit stjohnsgreekorthodox.org, greekfestomaha.com, and philopt ochos.org.

It’s one of the most famous and enduring advertising catchphrases of all time. We’ve all heard Tony the Tiger enthusiastically extoll the flavor of Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, but while that booming voice is familiar, not many of us know that the man behind it was native Nebraskan Thurl Ravenscroft, a 6’5” singer and voice actor known for his distincti ve baritone.

Born in Norfolk in 1914, Ravenscroft was raised and educated in Nebraska before heading to California in 1933 to make his way in Hollywood. Succeed he did, and although his unusual moniker might not be a household name, his inimitable basso profondo became for many the voice of a collective childhood.

Within four years of his arrival on the West Coast, Ravenscroft became a member of the Sportsmen Quartet, which frequently performed with the likes of George Burns and Gracie Allen, Rudy Valle, and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. The group also did work for Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons as well as Disney, with Ravenscroft providing voices for Fantasia and Pinocchio, both released in 1940, and two voices in Dumbo one year later.

World War II interrupted Ravenscroft’s rising career when he joined the Airport Transport Command in 1942. Stationed out of Washington, DC, he flew international missions, including one that involved transporting Winston Churchill to the Conference of Algiers and Bob Hope to entertain the troops. After the war, he wed his wife June, with whom he remained married for 53 years. The couple had tw o children.

Although Ravenscroft trained to become a pilot with airline TWA, he returned to Hollywood in 1948 and cofounded the group The Mellomen, which recorded backup for such legends as Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee, Arlo Guthrie, and Elvis Presley. Through The Melloman, Ravenscroft did more voice work for Disney, and his film credits included classics like Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, Mary Poppins, and The Jungle Book , among numer ous others.

That wasn’t his only Disney work. Ravenscroft also provided the voice for many animated features at both Disney World and Disneyland and can still be heard at attractions such as the Pirates of the Caribbean, for which he played a drunken pirate, and the Haunted Mansion, where he was one of the singing busts. Even today, visitors often mistake his animatronic bust for Walt Disney, who, like Ravenscroft, sported a a pencil-th in mustache.

Keith Scott, an Australian cartoon voice actor, impressionist, comedian, and animation historian, penned a two-volume chronicle of voice actors called Cartoon Voices of the Golden Age, 1930 70 in 2022. His insider knowledge of the profession gives him keen insight into Ravenscroft’s success, and he understands well why the voice actor became such a mainstay for Disney parks, citing his “charismatic and truly distinct tones, that unique ‘bite’ Thurl had in his dee pest notes.”

Scott continued: “What made Thurl a legendary voice actor, as opposed to other straight bassos, was his gift for comic or dramatic interpretation. He was chosen to narrate or play characters at Disneyland attractions because he was flexible beyond his marvelous sin ging gifts.”

In 1953, Ravenscroft took a job as the voice of Tony the Tiger, the Frosted Flakes’ mascot. In an interview published posthumously in 2006 in Hogan’s Alley, a publication dedicated to cartoon arts, Ravenscroft said the line he was supposed to answer was “Tony, are Frosted Flakes any good?” The ad agency recommended that he play with the response. “So, I messed around and finally came up with ‘They’re Grr-eat!”

But it was more than just his inimitable delivery. “I made Tony a person,” he continued. “For me, Tony was real. I made him become a human being, and that affected the animation and everything.”

Ravenscroft went on to give the cerealloving feline a voice for over 50 years, or into his 90s. In 1996, he joked in an interview with The Orange County Register, “I’m the only man in the world that has made a career with one word: Grrrrreeeat!”

Ravenscroft even continued playing Tony through health complications. When corresponding with Scott during his later years, he confessed that he had finally quit smoking in his 80s, and although he’d had one lung removed, he kept going. The voice actor joked, “I just breathe twice as hard into my one good lung and say, ‘Okay! Let’s do another take!’”

Given this attitude, Scott isn’t surprised that Ravenscroft endured for so many decad es as Tony.

“A great voice actor is always trying for the truth in the words of a script, as opposed to people who think it is simply about distorting the vocal chords and making a strident or silly sound,” he reflected. “The true voice actor knows about the character to be portrayed and, although animation is one of the main topics and a medium that is broadly caricatured by definition, the artistic voice actor will make a character fully believable as well as being rich ly amusing.”

Amusing Tony the Tiger certainly was, and thanks to Ravenscroft’s ineffable imprimatur, he continues to rank as one of the most recognizable advertising icons of all time, with news outlets like Business Insider placing the mascot at the top of their lists.

Ravenscroft also became famous to generations of children for his often uncredited rendition of the classic Christmas tune “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” from the 1966 TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas!,which was erroneously attributed to the show’s narrator, Boris Karloff. (Karloff, for his part, alongside Dr. Seuss author Theodor Geisel, felt terrible that Ravenscroft did not receive proper credit.)

Scott said that in addition to Tony, the Grinch, “spooky yet humorous,” is Ravenscroft’s most distinctive role, “simply because of the number of times it has been re-run worldwide…I know from speaking with Chuck Jones, who directed that TV special, that he and Thurl worked on a particular delivery of that song with author Ted Geisel’s input, so that Thurl’s bass voice was not only meant to be a bogeyman-style of singing voice but it also had to have a subtle comedic twi nkle in it.”

Ravenscroft continued working almost until the end of his life, finishing his tenure as Tony the Tiger in 2004. He died one year later in May 2005, and the following month, Kellogg’s ran an ad in the publication Advertising Age to memorialize the man who gave their mascot his personality, saying, “Behind every great character is an even g reater man.”

Scott agrees, and reflects on what Ravenscroft brought to the voice-actin g industry.

“Thurl’s legacy is very important. His unique quality and outstandingly oneof-a-kind vocal delivery was unmatched in his specialty area of the character bass man who could do any assignment from stentorian straight narration to comic bass singing…to his character voices like Tony and the Grinch,” he said. “He should be acknowledged for his incredibly long career and his one-off voice which is known throughout the world and which has never be en matched.”

For more information, visit keithsc ott.com.au.