From Lisa Day Hopper (childhood friend of mine)

I wish I could have remembered your father's jokes
to write about; all I see is his elf face telling them and chuckling
away!


The last time I saw George Cokinos, he was swinging in the hammock in
his backyard. As always, he made you feel good just to be around him—
kidding around with the children, telling jokes, giving them “jobs”,
and generally helping everyone have FUN. I know he must have had his
share of sadness sometime, but I sure never saw it. Before I left
that day, he jumped up and got out his tractor lawn mower to give
William and Keagan a ride, and I remember marveling that he had
ridden me around the same way probably almost forty years before,
stepping on the gas, and pretending to almost tip over. His energy,
enthusiasm, and optimism were contagious, and you always felt that
nothing terrible could happen when he was around, or if it did, it
wouldn’t be so bad in the end.
You also cannot think of George Cokinos without thinking of the
beach. It was his habitat. When we went to visit him there about
fourteen years ago, I remember how much he reminisced about the long
ago days when he and his wife and two babies would go down to the
beach for the day and picnic there, and how those were the happiest
times for him. I always remembered this, since I know now how much
those first years mean to me as well—of love and babies, and, even if
you are poor, feeling rich in family. This feeling of newness and
wonder at the sheer blessedness of life never seemed to leave George
Cokinos. Even in his death, he was living well, and now that he is
gone, he leaves behind children, grandchildren, family, and friends,
and even friends of children like me, who are lucky to have known him.

From Amanda Cokinos (grand daughter)

My favorite memories of my Papou usually involve sandcrabs, salt water, and the beloved beach house in Bethany Beach. When we were little, he would amaze us and our beach friends by "swallowing" the sand crabs he plucked out of the sand as we all watched wide eyed in amazement. As my grandmother says, "Your grandfather lived to embarass his grandchildren." So as we got older the fun times would continue with a teenaged granddaughter and an unsuspecting male lifeguard. I bet the lifeguards did not know what was awaiting them when they talked to one of the Cokinos granddaughters. My own story involved me and my friend Paige when we were 15 years old. I guess Papou caught us checking out the lifeguards with the binoculars from the deck as they did their morning jog down the beach. Later that day as we were playing in the ocean... Papou comes up to us and grabs each one of us by the wrist and starts marching down the beach towards the lifeguard stand. We laughed and tried to wiggle free, but that man had the strongest grip we had ever seen! We arrive to the lifeguard and he confidently yells up, "Lifeguard?! If these girls drowned would you save them?" The lifeguard looked a little confused and mumbled out some sort of yes because it was his job. Papou nodded in agreement and said, "Good, because these girls are lusting after you!" With that he turned around and walked back to his chair to resume his sunbathing. We stood there stunned and eventually walked back to our house very quickly with our heads staring at our feet, and spent the rest of the day inside hiding from the lifeguards. There are other lifeguard stories like when Papou interrogated a lifeguard who was taking cousin Chryssa to the lifeguard ball and told her to have her home by 9pm as he poked him with a rolled up newspaper. Or for my sister Alyssa, he managed to get a lifeguard up the stairs and into the living room to meet his granddaughter, and who knows how he managed that! Looking back these memories are some of the best we have, we may have been embarrassed at the time but Papou was always after a good laugh from us and usually managed to do so!

From Laric Beckman

Hello, Friends and Family of George Cokinos ~

I first met George and Bebe in 1968, when I was 12 years old. 1968 is the year that they ~ together with Ray and Irene Stone ~ built twin oceanfront houses on North 1^st Street, South Bethany, Delaware ~ the same street that my family had a beach house since 1962. (How lucky could I have been? First things first, the Stone’s son Stacey and I began learning to surf in 1969, a sport I continue to thrive on till this day.)

What struck me about George was that for him, life was fun. At 12 years old, I had never seen that in adults before. My earliest memory of George was honoring his invitation to Stacey and me to pop over for a pancake breakfast. Once seated at his dining room table, George began cooking flapjacks; as they became ready, he flung them like Frisbees at our plates. Some landed on our plates; some landed near our plates; some hit the nearby curtains and landed on the floor; some merely hit the floor. It didn’t matter. Life was fun.

Everyone knows how strong George was. He SQUASHED Stacey and me during our adolescent years. “The Claw;” “The Dutch Rub;” “The ~ ‘the shovel only missed my toes by a ¼ inch!!!’” Etc. Well, the years passed; Stacey and I were 15 and 16; we were feeling strong ourselves. Once, during the summer of 1971, I spied George from the Stone’s deck, reading a magazine in a beach chair down on the beach. “Look how vulnerable he is; LET’S GET HIM!!”

Stacey and I snuck down behind him and threw him out of his chair. Stacey and I jumped overtop of him; we met eyes and knew we were in control; for a second, there was no doubt. WE HAD HIM! However, within an instant, my face was smashed in the sand; only my left eye could see Stacey’s legs flailing uselessly in the air. It was reversed; both of us had been pummeled. That was the last time I ever physically messed with George.

I’ll close with George’s favorite story about me. One day in the summer of 2004, I saw George down by the ocean, entertaining some six or seven-year old kids. As I approached, I realized that he was explaining “sand crabs” to the youngsters. He had a large sand crab in his hand. George asked the kids, “Do you want to see something funny?” My arrival had been fairly sudden; George simply looked at me and commanded: “Open Wide!” Without thinking, I opened my mouth wide; and George threw that sand crab into my mouth as if it were a grape. I pretended to chew, and I fooled those kids; they thought I ate that sucker.

Papou never stopped describing his enjoyment of that moment….

All the best to everyone

From Sally Harris Gass (childhood friend)

As far as writing a story about your Dad, I really can't pick one anecdote because they all run together under one heading, "Life is Good!" He was always the gracious host, concerned father, interested-in-you observer. I can remember that slapping hands game which he always won...I was never fast enough. He rarely sat down but when he did, it was in HIS chair in the den. The tractor, the trailer, the leaves...50+ years in Potomac and there was always a kid getting a ride, being pulled, enjoying the moment. Last summer when I saw him, he said at 90, "I work 5 minutes and then sit 15 minutes." And all I could say was, "That's awesome." He loved his cars, always bought them in Delaware to save sales tax( and Papou on the license plate). The past 25 years I only saw him intermittently, but was always welcomed with a hug and huge grin.

Am not as articulate as some of the people writing on the blog page, but they captured him completely with the Emerson quote!

xoxoxo

From Karen Thomas

I awoke from sleep a moment ago with an epiphany: George P. Cokinos exemplifies “a life well-lived” -- a straight-forward phrase representing a profound endeavor that is a major conundrum for the majority of the humans. However, George did it triumphantly.

Forty-one years ago I met Pat Cibel and through Pat became acquainted with her parents George P. and Bebe, sister Lynda, and brothers Roger and Peter and eventually others members of their family.

Throughout the years, I was present at family events enabling me to gain a sense of George. I gleaned additional insight when Patsy, Roger, my sister Romelie, and nieces Amanda and Alyssa shared their wonderfully memorable anecdotes and experiences with and about George.

George’s legacy: perseverance, focused tenacity, superlative “sense of family”, appreciation and adherence to traditions, engaged daily in purposeful activity and work, a rich sense of humor and last but not least his “joie de vivre”-- buoyant enjoyment of life throughout!

The following quote from the great American essayist, philosopher, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson’s surely and perfectly speaks of George: "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."