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Lambros

Generation 5 · born in the United States

George H. Lambros

Ran the Diana for forty years

Born
3 Dec 1924, Fox Hospital, Oneonta, NY
Died
1 Aug 2010, Oneonta, NY

An outstanding athlete, George lettered in football, basketball, baseball and track at Oneonta High School, graduated in 1942, and played freshman basketball during a year at Notre Dame.

He left college for the Army, enlisting at Utica on 24 June 1943, and served with the 56th Armored Infantry, 12th Armored Division. He saw combat in Belgium and Germany at the start of the Battle of the Bulge, was wounded twice, and received the Purple Heart. After three months at the American Army college in Biarritz he was discharged on 16 April 1946.

Back in Oneonta he joined his father at the Diana and ran it for more than forty years, with his sister Helen (opens in a new tab) beside him and later his wife Mary. It was Main Street’s gathering place for businessmen, workers, shoppers, professors and students, known for its lasagna, its Greek baked chicken and potatoes, and the “LaMonica Burger”.

George and Mary had five children; their only son, Harry (opens in a new tab), died at twenty months. In June 1991 George sold the restaurant, and the couple spent their retirement between Oneonta, Greece and Florida. They marked their sixtieth anniversary in 2009.

An avid reader, golfer and card player, he was a fixture in the Elks Club card room for more than sixty years. He died at home at 85. His nephew, the Most Reverend Seraphim Poulos, led the funeral at St. Mary’s Church, and he was buried with military honors.

Marriage

  • Mary S. Carayanis (b. 1927)

    • Also known as Carayanni
    • Married 16 Jan 1949, St. James Episcopal Church, Oneonta, NY
    • Daughter of Stavros Carayannis and Ioanna Chronis
    • Born 1927, Goritsa, Greece

    Mary’s family lived in Halandri, outside Athens. Her father had been a businessman in Stamford, Connecticut, in the early 1900s, and as the daughter of a U.S. citizen she applied to emigrate after the war. Unknown to her, the government was moving to strip him of that citizenship. A young embassy clerk slipped her papers in among others awaiting the consul’s signature, and at twenty she sailed from Piraeus on the Saturnia, landing in New York on 5 February 1947 after two weeks of seasickness.

    She lived with relatives in Stamford and did piece work in an Electrolux factory, so quickly that she was told to slow down because she made the other workers look bad. Then a shadow on her lung meant months of bed rest by the living-room window. “I’m in Florida on vacation!” she told her cousin.

    She met George at the Tsintzinian convention in Jamestown in 1947. The next summer she rode home from the convention with the Lambros family to visit her uncle Gus Chronis in Oneonta, and they married in January. Once their children were in school she joined George at the Diana, where her warmth made her a favorite of the regulars.

Children (5)

On record

School
Bugbee Elementary; Oneonta High School, 1942; University of Notre Dame, one year
Military
56th Armored Infantry, 12th Armored Division; Purple Heart
Business
Diana Restaurant, Main Street, Oneonta, until June 1991
Godfather
Nick Georgeson of Port Allegany, Pennsylvania
Buried
Oneonta Plains Cemetery

Where the records disagree

  • His obituary says he was wounded twice in December 1944; an Army record in the family history notes a wound in Germany on 6 January 1945, treated in France.
  • Mary’s birthplace is Goritsa in the family tree; George’s obituary describes her as from Halandri.

Sources