In Memoriam: Bahamas Sen. Alexander Maillis – Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

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Submitted by Clifford T. Argue

NASSAU, Bahamas – Alexander Pericles Gregory Maillis, a former senator in the Parliament of the Bahamas, businessman, attorney, and parish and community leader, died Oct. 3, at his home. He was 99.

Fr. Irenaeus Cox officiated at the funeral in Nassau’s Annunciation Church. The Maillis family was among the founders of the parish who built its current church in 1932. Sen. Maillis served as a Sunday School teacher, trustee, and parish council president. His children and grandchildren have been and continue to be active in various leadership roles and ministries, including his grandson Alexander P. Maillis II, who is also a member of the Archdiocesan Council.

Sen. Maillis is survived by his wife Cally to whom he was married for 66 years, four children, ten grandchildren, and nine great grandchildren.

The service was highlighted by the presence of the country’s Prime Minister, Perry Christie, and other government officials. Sen. Maillis was accorded full national honors, including escort by companies of the Royal Bahamas Police and Defence Forces.

He was born Aug. 14, 1916, in Nassau, the third son of Greek immigrant sponge merchants Pericles and Kalliope Maillis. Despite at age 10 losing his father, the future senator graduated at the top of his high school class. Maillis worked at the St. Moritz hotel in New York to pay for his college degree and beginning law school at New York University.

Under a war–time treaty between the United States and Great Britain, allowing British nationals in the U.S. to be drafted, Maillis trained as a paratrooper.

He later served in the Air Corps Intelligence unit of General Patton’s Third US Army as they crossed France and was the first American soldier to enter Frankfurt to check out potential German opposition.

Following the war, he converted family property into a restaurant and nightclub called the Imperial Hotel, introducing what is now standard Bahamian fare in local restaurants – “Cracked Conch.” The nightclub also served as a start of careers for several Bahamian entertainers.

About this time, Maillis began buying land in Adelaide which became the family’s residence and extensive mango orchard.

In 1949, he married Cally Simeon of Tarpon Springs, Fla.

Maillis saw the need to enhance tourism to the Bahamas, and in the late 1960’s was one of the founders, man- aging director and later president of International Air Bahama.

Throughout all of his endeavors, Maillis had a strong desire to serve his country in the political arena. Three times he ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Parliament’s lower chamber, the House of Assembly. In 1972, he was appointed to the Senate where he served for six years.

Prime Minister Christie, who was in the Senate with Maillis, noted in his remarks that Sen. Maillis broke the color barrier of the Progressive Liberal Party by becoming the first white Bahamian in Parliament from the PLP.

He was the first ever Bahamian “of pure Greek extraction” in that body. Christie also recalled both he and Sen. Maillis liked to give passionate speeches.

“But behind Alex Maillis’s fiery rhet- oric was a fertile intellect that turned out some really good ideas, ideas that were always directed towards the advance- ment of the people of The Bahamas,” Christie stated.

Grandson Alexander II spoke on behalf of the generation of grandchildren remembering the good times and life’s lessons learned from “Paps,” as well as expressing the hope that the entire family would “prove worthy of the legacy he wrought by holding fast to the ideals he held out to us as an example – family unity, hard honest work, service of God and country.

Sen. Maillis was buried at his beloved Adelaide farm in the shade of one of his favorite mango trees.

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In Memoriam: Bahamas Sen. Alexander Maillis – Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

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