When his father first came to East Marion in 1910, Koch said, “There was no electric. The road out here was not paved. We got picked up at the Greenport Rail Road station in a horse and wagon and down to the home they went. Getting out of New York City in the summertime and coming to East Marion was like coming to paradise.”
The experience, Koch said, left a “lasting impression on all of his family. East Marion was always a very special place for them.”
So much so that one cousin’s son, raised in North Carolina, named his house “South Marion. That’s how much it means to the family,” Koch said.
At the Home, Koch said his father learned how to swim. “A lot of those kids learned how to swim in the East River,” he said. “They’d go out in the back of their house on an outgoing tide, out to Kips Bay, where they’d get out of the river and walk back up.”
Later, his father bought the house in East Marion, Koch said.
His own personal first memory of the North Fork, Koch said, was “V-J Day” in 1945 when the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II. “My grandmother and my mother took me to the corner of Front and Main, where Alex’s Cigar Store was, right next to where Bruce’s Cheese Emporium. People were out in the street, hootin’ and hollerin’, and the fireworks were just magnificent. And this was at four in the afternoon. The only trouble was they didn’t realize they were out of work. When the war effort stopped, there was a lot of unemployment.”
His father, Koch said, first rented a house at the foot of Bay Avenue from Mrs. Ankers. “My father said, ‘The only way we’ll rent it is if you put a toilet inthe house,'” Koch said. The family rented in the summer of 1933 and bought the house in the fall, for $1,800. “Our family’s been in it ever summer since.”
Koch and the guests in the audience reflected on the days of Prohibition, when residents made extra money by “handling booze”.
His own childhood memories, Koch said, involved “messing around in the water in a rowboat. When you got old enough, you could venture a bit further. There was a store, where Fork & Anchor is now, where you could get an ice cream cone. Charlie King owned the gas station and you could get ice cream there, too. We used to walk it. Your mothers and fathers weren’t driving you. You had two things at the end of your legs and you used them. We’d go up every day to get the mail.”
One one neighbor, Harry Ketcham, had the only phone on the road. “People would call and his wife would walk down the road to get you and you’d use the phone.”
Koch still remembers the number, 0059J, a party line. “And when we finally did get a phone, what number did we get? 0059J!” he said.
Childhood days were spent swimming and hiking — instilling Koch’s lifelong love of the water. He’s known as the “best sailor in the East Marion yacht Club,” said EMCA member Ruth Ann Bramson, who conducted the interview and asked how he got the reputation.
“Practice, practice, practice,” Koch said, adding that in the beginning, he rigged up a mast and boon and boat at the beach, with his grandmother sewing a bedsheet into a triangular sail and then, setting off without a centerboard to see how far up the beach you could go.
One winter, he and his father built their own kit sailboat.
“It’s a funny thing, because when you’re around the water all the time, you become very accustomed to it, and feel very comfortable with it.” He was accepted into the SUNY Maritime College a Fort Schuyler and later served as a Merchant Marine for 26 years, venturing into Pakistan, the Caribbean, and South Africa.
Koch recalled his maritime adventures, such as when the ship was grounded for eleven and a half days, pirates who “climbed up the anchor chain at night,” and stowaways.
Later, Koch answered audience questions, including how the relationship was between the St. Thomas Home kids and year-rounders. “We’d all get to know each other,” Koch said. “There was no divide.”
Reflecting on the Hurricane of 1938, Koch said the family home was almost lost. “Back then, you didn’t have the DEC or town trustees. You didn’t have to get permission to protect your property. You just protected it.”
Next up on the agenda was George Giannaris, owner of the Hellenic Restaurant and author of “Ferry Tales”. He recalled the time The Who came into the eatery. “We had a waitress who spoke really broken Spanish. I didn’t know what she was saying. Then I saw a ruckus through the kitchen door and I saw, leaving my restaurant, Pete Townsend. They were on the last tour of the 80s, on the way to the ferry.”
His father, Giannaris said, began coming to the North Fork in the mid-60s; he was born in 1969. At first, the family stayed on Rocky Point Road, a “big Greek community,” he said.
Later, his father John and his Uncle Gus bought the Hellenic Snack Bar and Cottages from Roy Brown.
“That’s how I wound up here. I have wonderful memories and it hasn’t changed all that much. One time I was swimming under the causeway with my kids, and it dawned on me that my grandfather, my father, my kids and I have all gone clamming under that causeway. Four generations under that bridge. How cool is that?”
His father John, Giannaris said, started as a banquet waiter at the Plaza Hotel, and it was his dream to go back to Greece. When they bought the Hellenic, his uncle, who had a heart condition, managed the cottages, and his father managed the Hellenic Snack Bar. His father, Giannaris said, introduced the famous lemonade, which has become an “enormous success” and also began introducing Greek cuisine.
“An interesting thing was, at the time, we were not welcome in the area. They were not appreciated. But my father is a great, natural businessman, with a natural aura. The first thing he did was try to acclimate, with burgers, and Polish babka. I’m sure that didn’t stir up any confusion, Greek guys going to East Marion to serve babka,” he laughed. His dad, he said, “dunked babka in an egg mix for French toast — that was revolutionary.”
Eventually, though, the community embraced the Giannaris family as well the business, now a bastion of the North Fork.
Reflecting on his own journey, Giannaris said he attended public school in Queens until the sixth grade. During seventh and eighth grades, the family moved, in 1981, back to Greece for the winters, coming back to East Marion in the summers.
By 1983, his father’s partner passed away, and the family expanded the outdoor seating and tore down the snack bar. “Basically, we’ve expanded on what we’ve had since then,” Giannaris said. The family moved out to the North Fork full time in 1986; he attended Greenport High School.
“It was hard, because I went from having family roots in the city, then uprooting them to go to Greece, at a time when those roots should have been firmed up,” Giannaris said. While he was away, kids were forming cliques in school.
One day in Greece, his father told Giannaris to pack whatever was important, because they were leaving and not coming back. “I asked why we weren’t going back to Greece, and he said, ‘Two reasons. There is no work ethic, and this country will go bankrupt. Second, I can’t make you an immigrant. You’ll never have a home.’ So then we started building roots in Greenport.”
Advanced in math, Giannaris earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at Stony Brook, but found himself at a fork in the road, and opted to continue his work at the restaurant, eventually opening his own restaurant in Hampton Bays at 23.
The South Fork presented new challenges, with the season ending on Labor Day, and Giannari found himself heading back to East Marion, a move “that probably saved” the Hellenic, he said.
Faced with an emerging North Fork and the opening of new wineries, a new flock of visitors was entering through the eatery’s doors, Giannaris said.
“They were looking for an upgraded, Hamptons version of the North Fork , and still are,” he said. “They didn’t want plastic tablecloths, or sloppy, big portions,” he said. “They wanted finesse.”
But other than a few new homes, “Thank God, it hasn’t changed that much,” with sailing and the beach still hallmarks of the North Fork summers.
Overall, he said, there have been “no dramatic changes. We still like to call ourselves s snack bar, 38 years is not that long in the scheme of things.”
While the family had initially wanted to upgrade the cottages, the need for local government to adhere to federal and state regulations made it impossible to expand the restaurant.
In order to keep the restaurant at its current size, the cabins needed to be knocked down to allow for expanded parking. Watching them fall, Scott Corwin, who did the work, said, “I’ve knocked down a lot of buildings. Those cottages had a lot of life in them. They were all oak,'” Giannaris said, adding that, as a passionate woodworker himself, he saved the oak and later sold it to a South Fork builder who promised to use them in new homes.
Over the years, Giannaris said, everything on the menu has remained, except pineapple burgers, with new specials always evolving.
“One thing I love is the fact that we can have a fisherman with a commercial license with a tote full of fish, and I can buy from him,” Giannaris said.
EMCA corresponding secretary Bill Stamatis, who conducted the coffee table chat with Giannaris, asked about wine pairings.
”I really love to cook,” Giannaris said. “Since I was a kid, I love to go outside the box.” To that end, Giannaris said he feels he has “developed a really spectacular relationship with local wineries” embracing a menu infused with local produce and fresh fish and coupling it with local wines.
Last year, he said, he introduced a winery and brewery staff appreciation dinner, with live music. And an End of the Harvest Wine Pairing Dinner, held in October, sells out instantly, Giannaris said, with the upscale offerings such as butternut squash soup, seared sea scallops and smoked breast of duck, served with baklava ice cream made at Magic Fountain, all paired with local wines by Russell Hearn, a hit. Giannaris said he’s also expanded into catering large-scale affairs in the summer.
When asked by Stamatis how things have changed, Giannaris said he’s happy that the internet has made it possible to order everything he needs, while still living on the North Fork and shopping locally, too.
Next, Giannaris discussed his book. “I”ve been writing my whole life, collecting my thoughts and putting them on paper.” Rick and Elie Coffey of the Coffey House Bed & Breakfast in East Marion, he said, read his work, and urged him to publish “Ferry Tales”.
And, he said, a sequel was written a funny book entitled, “When Hellenic Freezes Over.” Originally slated for May, a friend read the manuscript and urged Giannaris to take the book a step further, adding color photos and recipes.
As an author, Giannaris said some Greeks have taken umbrage at the chapter “Are You Greek?” “It’s like ‘My Big, Fat Greek Wedding,'” he said. “That doesn’t go over with zero-generation Greeks. They don’t like to be teased about their shortcomings. One guy went from being my best customer to my worst enemy, standing outside the church with copies of my book and telling people to boycott m restaurant. I felt badly about that. Kids, meanwhile, thought it was hysterical and said, ‘You nailed it.'”
Other times, people took things he’d written out of context. “If you want to write, be really, really careful,” he said.
Some of his best memories, Giannaris said, center on people gathering together around a black walnut tree outside the restaurant. “It was this magical place,” he said. “Kids used to stay at the cottages in the back of the restaurant. Times changed, and people came out and bought their own homes, and we lost that. That’s why it gives me enormous joy at seeing that walnut tree becoming a waiting area. Nothing brings me greater joy than to see those kids playing sack toss. It just brings back great memories.”
