Thanks to My DC Dad

Since I lost my dad some years ago, Father's Day has become a time to remember things. George Cokinos was born at home on 9th Street Northeast to Greek immigrants in 1916. He grew up here and never left the DC area except to travel. We didn't sightsee unless we had out of town guests. We didn't go to the Smithsonian or other museums, but he did leave me an appreciation for living in the District, and I'd like to thank him for many things:

Taking me to the zoo.  A lot.  Sometimes just on the spur of the moment, sometimes for a birthday.  I suspect he liked it because it was uptown, free and outdoors.  I remember he would park our station wagon right near the elephant house and partly on the sidewalk. Crazy, right? He had a little home made sign that he would put on the dashboard which said  "Modern Linen -Making Delivery." That seemed to do the trick.

All those DC stories. George worked mostly in the restaurant world, and he had the low down on how the Italian statues got into AV's yard on New York Avenue, or how Ulysses "Blackie" Auger got his start after World War Two when everyone was craving meat after years of rationing. He sold steaks from the trunk of his car for a short time, but soon opened his own place called "The Minute Grille."  When he had made enough dough to buy the property at 21st and M, he called it Blackie's House of Beef. The kitchen was in terrible shape. One day my father and Uncle Mimi happened by to see the new place, and Blackie asked whether he should spend his money on improving the kitchen or buy a sign. My father said go for the sign, and that's exactly what happened. It was a big sign!

Introducing me to DC centric food 
George always asked for a half smoke over a hotdog. He also liked the fried chicken wing sandwich at the Florida Avenue Grill which came with another story.  Chewing right through the cartilage and spitting out the bones, he would talk about how his parents would have the priest from St Sophia's over for Sunday dinners when he was a kid.  The chicken on the table only went so far with a family of five and an honored guest.  The priest would get the biggest piece, and my grandfather would get the next biggest and so it went.  My grandmother always insisted that "Georgie loved the wing." I guess it happened so many times that he believed it, too.

Teaching me how to drive with impunity. Technically I learned to drive a VW bug with a driver's ed teacher, but my father taught me the finer points of operating a motor vehicle with his mind bending lane changes on the Beltway and sometimes stunning U turns on avenues around the city. Even though he constantly scared the crap out of my mother, he gave me a lot of confidence behind the wheel. And unlike my mother, he taught me how to pump my own gas.

Taking me to see the Watergate concerts.  I feel like I dreamed this, but there once was a floating barge on the Potomac River where concerts were held. The band played on the float, and the audience sat in folding chairs in the road or on the steps leading up hill to the Lincoln Memorial.  After I grew up, I caught the movie "Houseboat" on TV and realized it was the same venue the kids went to with Cary Grant.

It's a good thing they caught that era on film because I can't imagine stopping traffic for anything like that now. Once upon a time the staircase was meant to be part of a grand entrance into the city, but now it's just a strangely marvelous out of place phenomenon on Ohio Drive.

Taking me to Sherrill's Bakery. When I first met the "girls," as George called them, Lola, the owner, started yelling at him in Greek as soon as we walked in. She seemed angry and scary to me.  Her daughters Kiki and Dottie were less frightening, but I didn't know what was going until the scene devolved into pinching cheeks and handing out cookies. They loved my father and were scolding him for not coming by more often.

The bakery was once a mainstay on Capitol Hill and served breakfast, lunch and dinner 364 days a year in a time capsule of a 1940s diner which is when Lola and her husband Sam Rivas bought the place. A cigarette machine and a fortune telling scale flanked the front door, and I thought it was cool we didn't have to pay for the cookies. Former busboy and local film maker David Petersen almost won an Oscar and did win a well deserved Emmy for capturing those crazy and hard working women and their customers in his documentary "Fine Food and Pastries." Hit the link to see it as there's nothing left of Sherrill's except memories now.  Lola worked at the diner until she was 92 years old, but had to quit after a fall.

Showing me how the linen service worked. In the 1950s my dad and my Uncle Mimi started a company called Modern Linen which meant I got to go through the back doors of a lot of restaurants and meet the people in the kitchen. I worked at the laundry in the summertime and saw how all consuming the restaurant biz was.  Customers were constantly having crises. They would run out of clean napkins or dish towels after hours, sometimes a delivery truck would break down, and my brother or a cousins would have to jump in and drive the order in a car. When I decided to be a sign painter my senior year in high school, I think my father thought I was nuts, but he let me paint the trucks, and that was the last time I worked at a laundry. 

Soliloquy for St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Church

St Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral has always been a part of my life. It's the church my family didn't attend. At least, not very often. My grandparents were all in from the get-go and rarely missed a Sunday, but my mother was not Greek which meant she and my father couldn't get married at St Sophia's unless she converted. Plus they both worked at Churchills, our family diner, often until 2 a.m.  And Churchills was open on Sundays.

Still, my dad literally paid his dues to St Sophia's, and we went there for all the important rituals like christenings, funerals and bazaars. A lot of bazaars. My dad always bought raffle tickets for the Cadillac even though in over fifty years he never won and had to buy his own.

Driving down Wisconsin Avenue, it's easy to miss Saint Sophia sitting quietly in the shadow of the National Cathedral on Massachusetts Avenue. The bigger cathedral has held many a state affair, but the staff at St Sophia have waved over a few presidents starting with Dwight D. Eisenhower who laid the cornerstone in 1956.  A time capsule was included and will be opened in 2056. (I'm probably going to miss that event just like I missed this one.)

St Sophia's has seen the likes of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Clinton. Plus a few football players.

(That's Father John- the one without a football or plaid pants)

The church began humbly enough back in the early 1900s when a few hundred Greek immigrants scraped together enough money to rent a room downtown and to hire an itinerant priest. A Washington Star article in 1904 reported "in the heart of the Nation's Capital dwells a community of nearly 500 souls whose lives, customs, religion...are utterly alien to our institutions. It is the Greek colony. They are among us, but not of us."

Wonder where they got that idea?

By 1908 the parish was organized enough to have its own priest and to rent the upstairs of the former Adas Israel Synagogue at 6th and G NW where it remained for 13 years awaiting the construction of their own digs at 8th and L NW.

Though the congregation was small, differences of opinion soon brought on strife courtesy of the Balkan Wars. Father Alexopoulos asked the congregation to take a stand by separating- the Loyalists  had to sit on one side of the church and the Royalists on the other. (talk about division in the aisles) This is why even before St Sophia had its own building, another church, St Helen and Constantine came into being in at 6th and C Street SW.  Father Lambrides, one of St. Sophia's early priests, was so passionate about politics that he vowed to his congregation that he would rather die than celebrate the return of the throne to King Constantine. He had a heart attack that night and died the next day according to his obituary. Wow.

St Sophia finally did land at 8th and L in 1921 and stayed put for 34 years. The convention center has swallowed those blocks now- including part of 8th Street.  A commemorative marker stands nearby on 7th Street and was blessed by Father Steve last fall in a ceremony held in room 140A exactly where the original nave of the old St Sophia's was.

Even the sign got baptized.

photo by Bill Petros

The new Cathedral was dreamed up in the late 1940s as the congregation grew. Property was bought at 34th and Massachusetts, and the ground was blessed in 1950, though the church wouldn't be ready until 1955, and the plain walls would take many more years to adorn.

The founders in the weeds of the new site of St Sophia

This weekend St Sophia will celebrate its 60th year on Massachusetts Avenue and will be consecrated with as much hoopla as only Greeks can muster complete with saint's bones, incense and a whole lot of chanting. If you have ever been to a Greek ceremony you know this will take all weekend. Every inch of the cathedral has been transformed into a beautiful work of art, built with many years of hard work and long term dreams.