- Date Of Birth: August 20, 1931
- Date Of Death: September 24, 2020
- State: Massachusetts
PLAISTOW, NH – Eleftherios V. (“Lefteri”) Beikoussis, 89, A loving husband, father and grandfather, passed away peacefully in his sleep at his home in Plaistow, NH on Thursday, September 24.
First and foremost, he was the loving and caring husband of Marina E. (Milidakis) Beikoussis, whom he adored and to whom he had been married for 60 years. Born in Filiates, Ipirus, Greece, on or about August 20, 1931, he was the fifth of seven children of the late Vasilios and the late Fotini (Lianou) Beikoussis but essentially was the baby of the family because the younger twins had died close to their birth. He attended school through the sixth grade in the local village school in Filiates, but even though he was a very good student, he did not go on to high school as it was 25 miles away in a larger town and he did not have the means to get there. As a young boy, he survived the Italian invasion of his village in the early part of World War II, fleeing his family home for several months. After returning to their home, he performed odd jobs first for the Italian soldiers and then for the Germans in return for their small meal scraps. Otherwise, he would not have had anything to eat due to the severe famine caused by the war. After the war, he eventually moved to Athens hoping to find a job. There he apprenticed as a tailor and met Marina, whom he courted for several years before marrying her on February 28, 1960. They sold part of her dowry, a small parcel of land in Ilioupolis, Athens, Greece, to finance a tailor shop in downtown Athens. He owned his tailor shop for seven years, and it was successful enough to hire an assistant. He enjoyed the creativity of sewing suits, and many of his former clientele from Athens raved that he made the best suits they had ever owned. However, he wanted a better life and education for his two daughters and dreamed of emigrating to the United States to earn enough money to be able to return to his beautiful Athens to continue his tailor business more comfortably and to give back to his country of which he was very proud. That dream became a reality when he was able to obtain a visa as a tailor to work in a garment factory in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he and his family moved on August 3, 1969.
In 1973, Eleftherios and his wife Marina purchased Wayland House of Pizza with a partner, and a year later they sold their share and purchased Steve’s House of Pizza in Haverhill, MA, which they owned until 1999.
