The Beginning

I was born in Brooklyn. Not only Brooklyn, but Coney Island. You cannot get more Brooklyn than that. My parents were Greeks from Asia Minor. They ended up in the States after The Catastrophe. Mom via Paris, and Pop directly. Pop went to Paris to marry mom and they ended up in Coney Island where Pop had an ice-cream parlor; he made his own candies and ice cream. This was a perfect place for a kid to grow up; the excitement of Coney Island plus my own candy store. It couldn’t get any better. I had two older sisters and being the only boy in a Greek family, as well as the youngest, is probably as good as it gets.