Spiro Agnew 10, 1973, after months of maintaining his innocence, Agnew pleaded no contest to a single felony charge of tax evasion and resigned from office. He was replaced by House Minority Leader Gerald Ford. Agnew spent the remainder of his life quietly, rarely making public appearances. He wrote a novel and a memoir that both defended his actions. Spiro Agnew's father was born Theophrastos Anagnostopoulos in about 1877, in the Greek town of Gargalianoi. The family may have been involved in olive growing and been impoverished during a crisis in the industry in the 1890s. Anagnostopoulos emigrated to the United States
Spiro Agnew fruit and vegetables from a roadside stall, while the youthful Spiro helped the family's budget with part-time jobs, delivering groceries and distributing leaflets. As he grew up, Spiro was increasingly influenced by his peers, and began to distance himself from his Greek background. He refused his father's offer to pay for Greek language lessons, and preferred to be known by a nickname, "Ted". In February 1937, Agnew entered The Johns Hopkins University at their new Homewood campus in north Baltimore as a chemistry major. After the first few months, he found the pressure of the academic work increasingly stressful, and