Focus on Eggie Razi

Picking apples in Maine, 2019.

By Forrest Bachner

Walking into Eggie Razi’s Burleith living room is to enter a sophisticated, old-world elegance of books, sculpture, Persian rugs, charcoal studies, and family photographs. It’s a room of refinement, history, and travel arranged with deeply personal care and thought. No decorator could have put this room together. It’s also a room that makes you want to ask questions.

Eggie has piercing eyes, a quick laugh, timeless style, and a certain tilt of her head that signals you really should think before you speak. And that she’s in charge. “Forrest, you must read this! You must eat that!” And I always do. Though I’ve known Eggie for some 40 years, it’s only been recently that I’ve asked Eggie to tell me her life story. And what a story it is. A story mirroring much of the tragedy and glory of the 20th century, from the horrors of World War II, the lowering of the Iron Curtain, to US postwar leadership efforts in Europe and Africa.

A Life Only Read About in Novels

Born in 1926 Romania, Ioana (nicknamed Eggie) Heliade-Radulescu’s family was composed of half-sister Josette, her mother, Ecaterina, and father, Longin, a lawyer. Cultured and prominent (a statue to her great grandfather, Ion Heliade-Radulescu, a renowned polymath, stands in front of the University of Bucharest), the Heliade-Radulescus lived a life most of us have only read about in novels. There was a country house, very Romanian with covered terraces and vine-covered arches three hours by train from Bucharest in the Oltenia region, where the family would be met by horse-drawn carriages at the station. Eggie recalls the times in the country with her mother as among her favorite memories, picking mushrooms, riding horses, pumpkin time in the fall, and wine making. Everything the family ate came from the garden. A poignant memory is as a four-year-old seeing King Carol walking in the mountains nearby and saluting him with “Long Live Your Majesty.” (I contrast that with her salutation “You bastard!” to Alex Trowbridge, a one-time Burleith neighbor and former producer for The Colbert Show when he surprised her for her 90th birthday.)

Life in Bucharest was likewise happy. Eggie remembers a light-filled, two-story house, with balconies overlooking a public garden and staffed by a maid and cook. Her daily routine included English nannies, rigorous public schools, large European lunches at home, and many, many friends—one in particular, a friend of her sister Josette, a young lawyer named Gerasimos Michael (Maki) Razi. Although she recalls a general sense of the far right rising, Eggie believes that, owing to her youth, she was not that scared in the years leading up to WWII. When a friend of her sister’s appeared at the house one day in the uniform of the fascistic Iron Guard, the family was taken aback in a “what the hell” kind of way. She also remembers the family listening to English and French radio at increasingly lower volumes as these stations were prohibited due to the Romanian alliance with Germany. When the news of the fall of France came over the radio, Eggie saw her mother really cry for the first time.

Eggie and Maki Razi in greece.

Reading the history of Romania from the period after WWI to 1944 was a near-migraine for this Burleith resident, but after multiple changes in government and shifts in alliances, King Michael’s Coup was announced in 1944, the same year Eggie’s mother died. According to Eggie, King Michael’s Coup against Ion Antonescue was a moment of country-wide elation as Romania would now join with the allies. But that elation was short lived. Although Russian forces occupied Romania beginning in 1944, according to Eggie no one in Romania expected that the country “would be sold out at Yalta. Churchill and Roosevelt gave them [Romanians] away.”

Leaving Romania

In 1947, the year Eggie married Maki Razi, “people were trying to leave Romania en masse before Russians could put in a monetary reform that would basically devalue everyone’s money to nothing.” While Maki already had a passport, one of his employees with connections to the Interior Department arranged a passport for Eggie. Greek by birth, Maki was also able to get Eggie’s sister Josette out of Romania through a marriage of convenience with a Greek friend. Eggie’s father, like most Romanians, was unable to obtain a passport himself, but encouraged their move. “Go to Paris,” he said. “Go to the Sorbonne. Then come back.” Everyone in the family believed they would see each other again. But when their Romanian passports expired after one year in Paris, the Romanian consulate in Paris refused to renew their passports. Suddenly it became clear that if they returned to Romania, they would never be allowed to leave again. At once, the young couple became citizens without a country.

Yet, despite their passport issues, Eggie studied linguistics at the Sorbonne while Maki continued his law career and studies, earning the Doctorat a État in law as well as degrees in international and comparative law. Josette, Eggie’s sister, also landed well in Paris, finding work with the New York Times, where she stayed for 25 years, eventually becoming the Sunday editor for arts and culture. Meanwhile, back in Romania, Eggie’s father was disbarred immediately after the communist takeover of the country. Owing to the prominence of his grandfather (Ion Heliade-Radulescu, mentioned earlier) he was allowed to continue his work with the Romanian Senate, receive a pension along with one meal a day, and to keep a room in their city house. The country house was confiscated altogether.

From Paris to NYC to Burleith and Back Overseas

In 1952 the Razis’—now Eggie, Maki, and children, John and Katherine—lives changed again. Under the auspices of a 1952 Act passed by the US Congress, they joined 243 other refugees from behind the Iron Curtain and were brought to the United States. At first, Maki worked for Radio Free Europe in New York City but after two years joined the Voice of America (VOA), a part of the United States Information Agency, as the editor of Romanian Services. With the VOA job the family moved to Washington, first renting a house at 3521 S Street NW and then buying their current house because, according to Eggie, “buying a house in Burleith was cheaper than renting.” While Maki wrote and delivered the news, Eggie would also go in every day as a broadcaster for the service. From her father’s letters routed through Paris (because mail delivery from Romania to the US was prohibited at that time), Eggie learned that he was listening for her and Maki every day. Perhaps even on the day in 1957 when the Razis became American citizens. Eggie was fortunate also in that three school friends found their way to this country: Mica, who would marry Ahmet Ertegun, the music magnate who founded Atlantic Records and shaped the careers of John Coltrane, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, and others; Dana, the mother of writer Susanna Andrews; and Nana, who married the inventor of parking elevators.

The move to Burleith turned out to be temporary, however. In 1963 Maki was sworn in as a Foreign Service Officer for VOA, and the family, now including Ioana and Maria, moved overseas for 15 years to postings in Morocco, Paris, Ivory Coast, Kinshasa (then Zaire), Chad, and Madagascar. At each site Maki worked with the American Cultural Center promoting cultural exchanges. For her part, in addition to setting up housekeeping anew at each site and managing children in schools on different continents, Eggi worked also. Among her many duties as Maki’s wife, she was called upon to entertain visiting American dignitaries, entertainers, and host country officials. She also oversaw distributions of educational materials to university students as the president of the American Women’s Club in Rabat for three years. And, at each of the centers, she taught English as a Second Language (ESL).

In 1966, at long last, Eggie’s father obtained a passport allowing him to visit her in Paris at the family’s then posting. But the day after receiving the passport tragedy struck; Longin was hit and killed by a bus. In 1971, Eggie returned to Romania. The visit was a strain, however. She was constantly followed and her relations were questioned by the Securitate and risked imprisonment for speaking with her. She felt even the rhythm of the language had changed. “It sounded like people quarreling all the time.” After her second visit back to Romania, in 1974, she was so relieved to leave that upon arriving in Athens, she knelt and kissed the ground. In 1978, the Razis returned at last to Burleith, with Maki transferring from USIA to the State Department to work on issues related to the Freedom of Information Act. In honor of his work related to the historical relationship between Madagascar and America, he was made a Knight of the Malagasi Academy. Maki died in 1989. Josette had died previously, in 1983.

A Vital and Involved Matriarch

From her house in Burleith, Eggie remains the vital and involved matriarch of a large and extraordinarily close family. Eggie has also continued her travels, including annual trips to Maki Razi’s family home on the Ionian Island of Kefallonia; a stay in a rural village in Zambia with her Peace Corps volunteer grandson, Costa; to Paris for a great grandchild’s graduation from Le Cordon Bleu School; and to India, unknowingly arriving during the pandemonium of Holi, the Festival of Colors. In between, she travels regularly to visit with family in Oregon. With four children, seven grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren, friends all over the world, and a summer home in the Penobscot Bay area of Maine, Eggie continues the active life she’s always lived.

So now back to that living room in Burleith. From the many family photos, my favorite is a black and white of Eggie and Maki in Greece. The couple are sitting amid temple ruins in the sun, the wind in Eggie’s hair, and we wonder what they are talking about, this couple who have lived such a huge life. A life of endurance. A life of achievement. A life this article has only scraped the surface of. Then, if I continue past the pictures, and into the dining room, I’ve visited enough times with Eggie to expect that perfectly steeped tea and pastry on small delicate plates will wait. I also expect, with that customary tilt of her head, to hear Eggie beckon: “Come, Forrest, you must try this.” And of course, I will.