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Sponge Man of Tarpon Springs

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By STEVE KORNACKI, Media General News Service

Published: November 25, 2007

Updated: 11/24/2007 11:44 am

TARPON SPRINGS - Sponges absorbed George Billiris as surely as they do water.

The 80-year-old has survived three strokes and many more close calls at sea. His face shows his age. But mention sponge diving and those kind brown eyes light up like a teenager's.

"I was 14 the first time I went diving," he says. "But I can remember it like it was yesterday."

He was nervous, wondering if he could do it.

"You put the helmet on and it shuts you out from the rest of the world. When you start to walk on the bottom, everything becomes OK. You see the loggerheads and the sponges with bass and grouper passing by. All the colors of the sea hit you. And it's a quiet world; all you hear is bubbles."

Many people in this Mediterranean-slice-of-life city have some connection to the sponge-diving industry and the Greek heritage that defines it. Billiris, however, stands out. He is the de facto community patriarch, the old man of the sea. It is to him that many of the 23,000 or so residents refer visitors, to him that many defer.

And, oh, it doesn't hurt that his wife's the mayor.

"It is his personality that attracts people," says Sue Thomas, interim president of the Tarpon Springs Chamber of Commerce. "It is his passion in life to have others see Tarpon Springs as he sees it.

"Nobody loves this town like him. And you can't help but love this place after George tells you about it and shows you around. But he doesn't go around with his chest puffed out; there is no pretense with him. That's what makes him so charming."

He has promoted the town over the course of six decades, narrating a 1986 National Geographic special about its sponge divers and daily banging the drum for its quaint, old-world appeal.

But his connection to the sponge industry was nearly squelched.

"My mother discouraged me from diving and getting into this business," he says.

"It was one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. I remember seeing 50 crippled divers walking around this town each day in the 1930s. If the bends didn't kill you, it could cripple you. And to be productive, you had to flirt with the dangers and elements in that hard-hat outfit."

Six close friends never returned from their last dives. And Billiris had accidents, including getting tangled in lines from a buoy and knocked unconscious.

"They thought I was dead."

But there was a flip side.

"The diver was like a god in those days," Billiris says. "It was a status symbol. It was money, recognition and prestige."

More than 300 sponge boats worked out of Tarpon Springs back then, before the blight of 1946 wiped out the sponge beds. They finally recovered in 1959, but by then, Americans had been introduced to the synthetic sponge.

One Of State's Oldest Attractions

These days, fewer than 10 boats regularly operate out of what was once the sponge capital of the world, and Billiris has his commercial boats out of the water while making his sponge purchases at auctions.

Billiris employs 15 in either his warehouse or for his tour boat, after having more than 350 on his payroll at one time.

But Billiris' hometown still revolves around sponges, now more for the benefit of tourists. It was his grandfather, in fact, who got the tourist trade moving in 1924 with a sponge-diving exhibition and boat tour. The grandson runs it now.

"It's the oldest, continual, family-run attraction in Florida," he says of St. Nicholas Boat Line.

His grandfather, John Michael Billiris - a sponge diver just like his own father and grandfather - came here from the Greek isle of Kalymnos in 1904 with other settlers from the Aegean Sea. His son Michael followed him into the water, and George did as well. But George didn't stay there. He eventually found his calling as a sponge boat captain and distributor.

He can still be found sorting sponges for orders that come in from around the world.

On a recent day, he and two of his workers plucked out those 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches in circumference for an order of 30,000 cosmetic sponges bound for England. They worked in a wooden warehouse barely older than Billiris; it's the headquarters for George Billiris Sponge Merchant International.

The sponges come from Florida's Gulf Coast, some from sponge beds only two miles from Tarpon Springs at the north end of Anclote Key.

On the wall behind his desk are photos of old sponge boats and divers, and his other love, his wife of 27 years, Beverley Billiris.

"That's my whole life up there," he says, turning and pointing to the framed photos.

Beverley, now 59, was a waitress at Pappas Riverside Restaurant on the sponge docks in the mid-1970s when she caught George's eye.

His first words to her: "Do you want to go to London?"

Her reply: "Hold that thought."

Then she sought out the maitre d' to ask whether this guy was a kook. Informed that he was a well-respected, prominent local businessman, she gave him a chance.

Four years later, they were married in town at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral.

"He got his Scottish lass," she said.

"And she got a Greek god," he said, chuckling.

Bath, Body And Beyond

She helps with the bookkeeping for his sponge company, which sells to 20 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia. The demand is much greater than the supply, he says, because worldwide water pollution has choked off much of the healthy sponge population and diving crews are difficult to keep together because of the demands of long stays at sea.

Most sponges are used for bath, body and facial needs. Others are used for cleaning and smoothing for work such as wallpapering and commercial window washing. There are 5,000 species of sponges, but only five are sold commercially, the most valued being Rock Island Sea Wool sponges.

"I haven't had to pick up a phone to solicit business in 30 years," Billiris says.

His seven siblings, all of whom still live in Pinellas County, also worked in the sponge industry. But he was the only one who made it his life.

Other than a short stint in the Navy at the end of World War II, the docks of Tarpon Springs and the sponges of the Gulf have been his labor and his love.

"My grandfather predicted its demise as an industry in 1945, but it's still going," he says.

"I'm still working."

Steve Kornacki is a staff writer for The Tampa Tribune.

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