Helen J. Lambros

Helen was two when her mother died. Her father sent her to relatives in Zoupena, and she came back at eight, in 1920, with her uncle John G. (opens in a new tab) and his new wife. In Jamestown she was looked after by “Aunt Maude” Checkary, the American wife of a Tsintzinian confectioner, who became a second mother to her.

She came to Oneonta to work for her uncle Harry (opens in a new tab) and was “Big Helen” to her younger cousin’s “Little Helen (opens in a new tab)”. Apart from a few years back in Jamestown in the early 1940s, she waited tables at the Diana, and for a time at Molinari’s, until she retired in 1985.

She was briefly married to Louis Kramer during the war. She did not speak Greek as an adult. Of her childhood years in Greece she said only that they had been terrible, and that she had no wish to go back. She died at 89.