In 2015, when he went to Greece as a courier for a bone marrow transplant program to deliver plasma for a patient, George Cretekos didn’t let on who he was when he was picked up at the airport until after, in typical Greek style, some incessant questioning – he is fluent in Greek – the driver got him to say he was the Mayor of Clearwater, Florida.
“Dimarchos!” the driver shouted in Greek, indicating his passenger’s office and on went the flashing lights because now a very important person – embarrassing to Cretekos who said in his home town of Tarpon Springs they still him Georgie, even 70 years later – was in the car.
“It was good to feel that kind of love,” Cretekos told The National Herald, recalling that visit to his family’s homeland and relation to his home town, famous for its Greek community of sponge divers and merchants, including his grandfather, whose sponge boat, the George N. Cretekos is on the United States’ National Register of Historic Places.
So it’s odd that the low-key Cretekos, who spent 36 years as an aide to the late former Congressman Bill Young, has found himself trying to handle the delicate and occasionally contentious matter of the Church of Scientology buying up building after building in the center of the West Florida gulf coast city of 107,685 people, making some people leery indeed.
The church, denounced as a mind-control brainwashing cult by its critics and some former members who fled, is maneuvering to control Clearwater’s downtown real estate to create a master retail district that will operate under its management and oversight, the Tampa Bay Times said.
That has put Cretekos in the position of trying to deal with the church’s rights to buy property and residents worries they could be locked out of their own downtown, with the Scientologists putting up surveillance cameras and said to be following people.
“It’s distorted,” Cretekos said of some coverage that makes the church look as if it’s trying to create a kind of theocracy centered around their beliefs that include, ironically using a Greek letter, that humans are immortal Thetans.
“They have a big presence in downtown and are very visible but they do not stalk people who are visiting and tend to stay within their groups and downtown,” he said, where they have centers charging members $100,000 to learn superpowers.
The Scientologists have snapped up more than $260 million on property in Clearwater, famous for its beaches and where people tend to go instead of downtown where the church has bought more than 67 buildings is looking to acquire more.
“They have their way of doing things and the Church of Scientology is sometimes its’ own worst PR department. They don’t realize sometimes you have to compromise to get things done and can’t always have it your own way,” said Cretekos, who is active in the Greek Orthodox Church. He has used a reason approach in dealing with the often obstreperous Scientologists, indicative of a man who considered being a priest and whose life has a devoutly religious focus.
He switched to politics, being graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina and earning his Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
A LITTLE OFF KEY
Why not a priest? “I cannot carry a tune,” he said, so when the priest of his church when he was young “reminded me that the Church needs good laymen as well as good priests … I have tried to up to to that challenge through my public service,” in politics.
That now includes trying to deal with the sometimes overarching issue of the Scientologists and the daily needs of a good-sized city.
“Clearwater remains a top tourist destination and its beach is recognized throughout the world. The goal of ‘Imagine Clearwater’ is to bring that success to the downtown core and for its residents to embrace the downtown as their ‘second neighborhood,’” he said.
Of his heritage, he says that, “It’s my rock, something I can always fall back on and goes back thousands of years,” and is a driving force in his life and career, in which he said he preferred the background of politics until winning the Mayor’s seat in 2012.
So while the Scientology issue captures the attention in Clearwater, where it has its headquarters and celebrity zealots, there’s more to being Mayor there, he said.
“We have a City Manager who runs the day-to-day to operations. When you’re a staffer you get to hide behind the elected official. When you’re the elected official you’re the focus of everybody’s attention,” he said.
He said he’s tried to bring a quieter approach to dealing with the Church although they had to be fined when they cut down a tree without a permit ….
There’s more to his life. “My parents and grandmother would always remind me to be respectful, dignified, and humble—as one of Greek descent, they would tell me to show people the value of ‘philotimo in all that i would do—keeping those values and understanding that God became man so that man could come to God would bless me throughout my career and life,” he said.
It started with those values and family roots in Tarpon Springs, just 13.4 miles north of Clearwater. “I spoke Greek before I spoke English,” he said. “Tarpon Springs instilled in its youth of Greek descent the belief that we were fortunate to be citizens of the united states with greek heritage,” he said.
“We learned to respect our parents and elders and the importance of the tenets of our Orthodox faith—the heritage of Greece and its many contributions to civilization were also an important part of growing up—sometimes were looked at curiously because we celebrated easter at a different time, wore Evzone outfits, or ate types of different food, but we never that let deter us or shame us,” he said. Spoken like a priest. Or a Mayor.
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