Takis (Panagiotis) Kyriakeas' family is sad to share the passing of this beloved multilingual sailing horticulturist on March 17th. Born in Stoupa, Greece, March 21, 1944, Takis went to school in Piraeus, attended the Merchant Marine Academy and traveled the world as a radio operator aboard ships stopping in ports around Europe and Asia where he discovered a love of languages and travel. Returning to the Mani as a young man to help his parents, he met a group of hippies camping on the beach in Kalogria. Eager to use his language skills and borrow their books, he quickly made friends. Among them was a young couple from America who soon wrote to a sister to come down to the hard-to-get-to Mani peninsula to marry the village intellectual. Tracy indeed married Takis and they moved to the United States together and had two children. While in the Washington, D.C. area, he got a degree and began working in landscape horticulture. They enjoyed time with Tracy's family and extended Greek family also living in Arlington but after a decade of American life, they missed their earlier traveling lifestyle enough that they looked for ways to explore more cultures, foods, and foreign languages. Tracy got a job teaching in American military schools and the family moved to West Germany. From there, not only could they explore Europe, Takis returned home to Greece more frequently and spent time with his parents before their deaths. After the kids graduated high school and went to American universities, Tracy asked for a transfer so they could spend the three years before her retirement in South Korea traveling all over Southeast and Eastern Asia. Once retired in Stoupa, they enjoyed sailing trips and trying to keep their little keelboat upright in the Messinian Bay. When not traveling, he could be found daily at the Kafenion by the beach or in the field looking at his trees. He shared his love of good food, horror movies, science fiction books, plants, and his Mani home with all his family and friends. As a polyglot, he helped British and German expats dealing with Greek bureaucracy and borrowed books from visitors in Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Admired by those he met for his good nature, intelligence, sense of humor, and style, he will be missed by surviving family: his wife Tracy (Marie), children Sofia (and husband Chris) and George, grandchildren Claire and Ryan, sister Voula and her daughter Leda, and US-based sister-in-law Judy and her husband Archie, and his nieces and nephews Amy, Anthony, Heather, Mark, and Brian.
