The Greek Community in Carlisle, Pennsylvania

In the heart of the very green and idyllic Cumberland Valley of Central Pennsylvania sits the town of Carlisle. Just like any other town, it has its old and historic buildings and people with their own backgrounds. Among these people of different ethnic backgrounds is the very prominent Greek community. There are forty-five families that reside in Carlisle that are of Greek descent. Fortunate for the writer who would examine the Greeks is that the patriarch, the original Greek to settle in the area is alive and very active in the Greek community.

He is Gus Kokolis, who was born in Sparta, Greece in 1898, and moved to the United States in 1912. His father was then in Pittsburgh, and they came to Harrisburg together. Typical of the era, many of the men who emigrated to the United States worked for many years and sent money back to the old country, where the wives would raise their children until the men returned. This is the pursuit of that happiness and the realization of that dream many looked at new horizons and explored them for a better economic opportunity. Thus, Gus and his brother Angelo, along with their father, moved to Carlisle six months after they had come to Harrisburg from Pittsburgh. There they opened up a shoe shine parlor and sold peanuts.

However, be it human greed, or Greek ingenuity, Gus and Angelo saw and seized an opportunity in the billiard business. They opened up on the main street, High, the Kokolis brothers billiard hall.

As human nature seems to have it with their better economic prosperity, more Greeks were attracted and settled into the area. Many of them went into the restaurant business, many of which are still operated by the original owners or their immediate family members. These early pioneers had more than their ethnic background in common. They were mostly men, all of the Eastern Orthodox faith, that yearned for the old country and their families. As they progressed economically, they started to build on the next block of what would complete the circle of a ideal Greek family's background. They started working together as partners rather then on their own. Thus, the famous Texas restaurant originally started by John Karagiannis, father-in-law to Gus Costopoulos, was taken over by his son-in-law and Charles Kallas in their early forties. This restaurant became the training ground for future Greek settlers of the area. It is now called the Lone Star Restaurant.

More of these young men started moving to the area and settling in it. As prosperity took hold ensuring the group, they started sending home for their women. As they came and settled, families with children had another need that is said to be innate in the Greek soul: the need of a church. In the early 'twenties the heads of the established families in Harrisburg had decided to sponsor a visiting priest at various sites of the city. They drew into the scheme the Carlisle Greeks. That seems to have been the original block of fervor for the establishment of a Greek church. During the 'thirties, a letter issued by the Archdiocese made Nick Panagopoulos (Pappas) the first constitutional president, and sanctioned was the formation of a church. Even though they had no building of their own, they practiced Orthodoxy, celebrated special occasions, had picnics, and reminisced about the "old country" as a group. In 1937 the Reverend Theodoros Tsekouras became the first of many priests to serve the community on a permanent basis. Church services were held in many paint shops, dance halls and homes and also at the chapel on Seventeenth and State Streets Harrisburg, where the Liturgy was complemented with altar boys and a choir. Then they moved the services to the Episcopal Cathedral Church of Saint Stephen on Front Street and they stayed until they built the church on Walnut Street. At that time progress was halted temporarily by World War II. Many of the Greek young men answered the call to duty for their country.

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