The family of seven in a NYC or Athens studio portrait, c. early 1920s. Lazaros (seated right) and Eftyhia (seated left) with five of their surviving children — the youngest, on Eftyhia’s lap, is almost certainly Achilles (b. January 1920, Smyrna), making him about two or three years old in this frame. The unnamed daughter who would die of malnutrition in the Mytilene refugee camp is not in the photograph; she is the one Eftyhia would never speak of.
The four Jeannopoulos brothers — Takis, John Lazare, Constantine, and Achilles — in a balance pose on the beach in the 1920s. Achilles, the youngest, is one of the two boys seated on his older brothers’ shoulders. Per Aline’s caption: John is the one at bottom right. The horizon line places this either Coney Island or a Long Island shore, in the family’s earliest US years.
Among the six Jeannopoulos siblings, Achilles is the one who chose to disappear into America. He was born in Smyrna on January 20, 1920 — two years before the 1922 catastrophe drove the family out — and by the time he set up his Manhattan urology practice he was no longer Achilles Lazare Jeannopoulos. He was Alfred A. Johnson.
The translation is, technically, literal: Ιωαννόπουλος means “son of John,” and Johnson is the direct English equivalent. He understood his name and chose to render it precisely. But the choice cost something. Per family tradition relayed by his niece Aline Pepe in May 2026, there was a falling-out over the name change — his siblings kept Jeannopoulos, and Achilles’s branch lived apart from the rest of the family in NYC. The details of the rupture have not survived; whether it was over identity, perceived disloyalty to the refugee story, or something more domestic remains open.
Per the Social Security Death Index archive entry surfaced in May 2026, he carried four legal name variants — Achilles Lazare Jeannopoulos, Achilles Jeannopoulos, Alfred Achilles Johnson (a transitional form preserving the Greek middle), and finally Alfred A. Johnson — all tied to a single SSN, 065-24-5702 (issued in New York State). The same archive entry was also the source that resolved his mother Eftyhia’s maiden name as Karamitrou.
He was a physician (MD) — one of the four Jeannopoulos brothers who all became doctors (Constantine, Takis, John Lazare, Achilles), and per Peter’s 2026 recollection, a urologist in Manhattan. He lived his whole adult life in the city, ending in the Upper East Side / Lenox Hill area (ZIP 10021). He died on January 22, 2004, two days after his 84th birthday — and nine days before his brother John Lazare, who died on January 31, 2004. Two of the Anatolia-born brothers, gone in nine days of each other in the same Manhattan they had spent eighty years in.
WWII draft card + the dated name change
His 1941 WWII draft registration card captures him at a fixed point: age 21, medical student, living at 28 West 69th Street, NYC with his brother Dr. Takis Jeannopoulos as next-of-kin. The card is annotated “Name changed to Alfred A. Johnson, 12/13/46” — pinpointing the legal name change to December 13, 1946, six weeks after WWII demobilization (his older brother John Lazare was released from active duty November 14, 1946). The name-change registration timing — coming so quickly after the end of military service — suggests the decision had been made and held until the war was over.
His children
Per Peter (his nephew) and corroborated by Aline (his niece) in May 2026, Achilles had at least two children: Nanette and Sandy — both presumably carrying the Johnson surname. Aline raises the possibility that Sandy may be a nickname for Alexander, and that there may have been a third child whose name has not survived to the rest of the family. Their current locations, families, and whether they know of their Greek heritage are all open. Under the Greek-citizenship framework, they (and their descendants) would be independently eligible through their grandfather Lazaros — likely without knowing it.
