George M. Laskaris

Born in the family home on Lawn Avenue in Oneonta and taken to Greece as a small boy, George got back in 1925, as a teenager, with his brother Aristidis (opens in a new tab). They went to work in their uncle John Laskaris’s candy store at Main and Dietz Streets. Self-conscious about his acne, George kept to the kitchen for years, then worked the soda fountain seven days a week with Wednesday evenings off.

In 1942 he moved to Cambridge, Ohio, lived with his aunt Effie (opens in a new tab) and opened a bar with two partners. After his brother-in-law, brothers and sisters were killed in Greece, he gave the rest of his life to supporting his sister Antonia (opens in a new tab)’s orphaned children, and eventually brought his mother and the three youngest to America.

He returned to Oneonta around 1948 and, with Gus Chronis, opened the new Laskaris Restaurant at Main and Chestnut Streets. He never married, because of a mild form of epilepsy. He went back to Zoupena to nurse his mother in her last years, and died of cancer two days before his 88th birthday: “a dear, sweet man”.