By George
Author: Harris "Bud" George [Tzortzopoulos]
When Published: 2005
Publisher: BrickHouse Books, Inc.
Available:http://www.itascabooks.com/index.cfm?page=Detail&isbn=0-932616-78-X
Email the publisher of By George
Description: 7 x 9 · Paperback · 248 pp
New!
December 2005
ISBN 0-932616-78-X
Biography & Autobiography
Price $ 25.00
"...I asked them whether this was the road to Karava. The oldest of the three smiled even more broadly and said, 'Monsieur, this is not Paris. There is only one road to Karava.' "
Harris 'Bud' George's collection of stories begins with his father coming to America as an orphaned immigrant at 16 and becoming the first Greek businessman in Towson, Maryland, in 1912.
His mother’s imperatives about growing up in the Baltimore Greek community, his brother’s establishment of what is today the largest Greek Orthodox parish library in the western hemisphere, and his sisters’ first attempt at Greek cooking and monomania about teaching English vocabulary are deftly and engagingly chronicled, as are the author’s fascination with Kythera - the island of his parents’ birth - and its lore. George shows how Greek as a second language is handy, how the Greek character manifests itself in airline passengers, in Greek newspaper reporters, in the Greek reaction to a Greek-American naval officer’s being stationed aboard the largest ship in the world on its maiden visit to Athens, and in the Greeks of Capetown, Manila, and Gdansk.
The story of his years in the US Navy offer interesting and amusing adventures in Capetown, Ceylon, the Singapore Straits of Malacca, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, Portugal, and Greece.
"Anybody in the legal community will get a tremendous charge out of this book. That goes double for anybody who has also been in the Navy." - Richard A. Reid, Esq.
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Towson, Maryland native Harris “Bud” George finished his Duke University undergraduate Phi Beta Kappa work at age 19 and passed the Maryland Bar at 22. He entered the US Navy, and after having served as Assistant Legal Officer aboard the USS Midway (CVA-41), was the plank owner first Legal Officer aboard the USS Forrestal (CVA-59), the first of the US Navy supercarriers. His tours of duty included visits to South Africa, Ceylon, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, the Caribbean, Portugal, Gibraltar, France, Italy and Greece.
After leaving the Navy, George served as a law clerk to the Honorable Hall Hammond, Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals, Maryland’s highest court. After working for a Baltimore City law firm, he opened his legal office in Towson, Maryland in 1960. He continues his practice today in a multifaceted private practice which has ranged as widely as foreclosing a chattel mortgage on a herd of cattle to defending the accused in Maryland's first savings and loan scandal.
Comments by Harris George 2007
My motivation for writing the book was not to make a profit. It was to memorialize my family (particularly my father), Kythera, my Navy experiences, and some of the interesting cases that I have handled in my legal career.
I especially wanted to tell the world about Kythera, since very few people know anything about it. My brother-in-law (who is now 90) was born in Cyprus, and Cypriots claim Aphrodite as their own. I have always argued that Aphrodite belongs solely to Kythera, as proved by the fact that the famous French painter Watteau called his most celebrated painting Embarkation to Kythera (and not Cyprus).
I want very much to distribute By George both near and far, and I am delighted that Australians quote excerpts from the book at various Kytherian & Hellenic gatherings that they organise. I await information as to book sellers on Kythera, Nikos Petrochilos at the Society for Kytherian Studies in Athens, etc. I would be happy to email them some of my stories -- for example, “The Picnic”, “Liaison to Athens”, etc.
