“Take a look at this,” said Jorge, with a triumphant smile on his face as he dropped the Post on my desk. The headline read, “TYCOON TANKS AGAIN” next to a photo of a handsome 51 year-old lion headed Peter Georgiopoulos and supermodel Karan Young, his bride and mother of their two sons.
In the same photo appears their double brownstone mansion on Charles and West 4th Streets. The article included how the Greek American might lose one of his shipping companies because it had missed a $3 million debt payment this week.
Now, as it happens when the Georgiopoulos family moved in, not too many years ago, I struck up a conversation with Karan as she stood waiting for the movers who explained that her husband had a Greek name (son of George) and was a ship owner. He did not grow up speaking Greek and had only learned it as an adult. When I explained that my father was Greek, she said you have to meet Peter and later made him get out of the car they were driving, to ring my bell and shake my hand.
When we moved to Charles nearly 50 years ago, the two building were owned by an Irish-American family that operated a cluttered grocery store where Mary’s Fish Camp is today. Peter Georgiopoulos has been very generous to the Charles Street Association and always gives a donation for whatever event he attends. According to the Post, he claimed in 2008 to have made $2 billion. A Google search revealed a yacht and an estate, so I don’t think we need worry too much for the Georgiopoulos kids.
In 1927, when my father and mother were return to New York from Greece after my uncle had unsuccessfully run as mayor of Salonika, they met a Greek mother, Georgiopoulos, with her three daughters who, when they got to New York changed their name to “George.”
Our young Mr. Georgiopoulos grew up in the Bronx, attended Bronx Science before going to college and then Wall Street. He learned how to trade ships and the changing price of cargo. Karan is a name in fashion and she dated Donald Trump just before she married Mr. Georgiopoulos – she became Greek Orthodox, which indicates that Peter is still a “real” Greek.
Two weeks ago, I tried to leave him a note to allow permission to put a bench across the street in front of Sevilla, dedicated to Andromache (Maggie) Capsis but he never got back to me.
Maggie’s name was, before I married her, Andromache Geanocopoulos.
I hope he reads this and says “yes.”
