After escaping unscathed from a February accident, Loui Gantidis, a contractor from Long Island, erected a shrine in the form of a miniature Greek church. Mr. Gantidis filled the shrine with icons donated by friends and placed it by the side of Interstate 91, southbound, between Orleans and Barton. Photos by Joseph Gresser
BARTON — Loui Gantidis and a friend narrowly avoided injury or death on Interstate 91 this February. His gratitude for the escape takes the form of a small shrine near the site of the accident.
In a telephone conversation on Friday, April 24, Mr. Gantidis said he and a friend, Georgios Branis, were headed down Interstate 91 on February 22. Mr. Branis drove a pickup that towed a trailer with a snow machine aboard. The weather that afternoon was snowy and the roadway, according to a police report, was snow-covered and icy.
Mr. Gantidis said that his friend tried to pass the car in front of him, but instead lost control of the pickup.
“We did two doughnuts and one tip in the air, and landed on our tires,” Mr. Gantidis recalled. The snow machine was thrown off its trailer and landed 30 yards away up an embankment, he said.
Mr. Branis and Mr. Gantidis were unharmed and the truck pulled out of the ditch under its own power. Mr. Gantidis said the snow machine also was undamaged after its unplanned flight. Only the driver’s side windows were knocked out, making the truck too cold to ride in.
“It’s customary in Greece to build a shrine,” he said. Mr. Gantidis runs Eurovision, a contracting company in Hicksville, Long Island, and was very able to undertake the construction job.
On March 8, two weeks to the day after the accident, a small church, about the size of a dollhouse appeared off the interstate between Orleans and
The interior of the chapel is decorated with icons picturing the Virgin Mary, events in the life of Jesus, and an assortment of saints.
Barton. The shrine, which sits atop a stand, is whitewashed and has small cupolas on the corners, painted sky blue in the Greek style.
Mr. Gantidis equipped the church with a tiny solar panel to make power to light it at night.
Inside, the shrine’s walls are covered with icons. Mr. Gantidis said that when his friends heard that he was building the shrine they wanted their icons included.
He said that he lost track of all the icons, aside from the image of the Virgin Mary he placed in the shrine and a friend’s icon of St. George.
A viewer peering through the church’s round windows can spot pictures retelling the life of Jesus, from his birth in the stable, his baptism by St. John the Baptist, his crucifixion and resurrection.
St. Christopher the patron of travelers is represented, while another icon features a Byzantine style portrait of St. Constantine the Great, whose conversion made the Roman Empire Christian, and his mother St. Helen. Below them is the Lord’s Prayer in the original Greek.
Mr. Gantidis’ shrine sits well away from the flow of traffic on Interstate 91.
Mr. Gantidis said he and his friends frequently travel to the Derby area to enjoy the winter riding on the area’s trails. Despite the accident, he expects to be back.
His only concern is that people accept his shrine. If it causes offense he is willing to remove it, he said, but he hopes people will understand the impulse behind its presence.
“You can be any religion,” he said. “There’s only one God.”
