"(He) had several asthma attacks," his daughter remembers. "The doctors told him that a climate change was in order. They wanted to be close to the water. So, Daddy drove by himself along the east coast and stopped in West Palm Beach. He probably found a Greek and decided that this was it.

 

" That may be so, but there weren't many Greeks to choose from at the time. The Karatinoses were the 17th Greek family in West Palm Beach, and this was far from their first big move.

 

Both Emmanuel and Aphrodite were from Karpathos, which their daughter describes as "a mountainous island northeast of Crete, and southwest of Rhodes, known for its raw beauty, beaches, and extraordinary olive oil," but met in the States, which had seen an influx of Greeks fleeing extreme economic decline.

 

"It was the land of opportunity for them. Greece had gone through a civil war, and it was absolute devastation there," says Anna's brother Nick Karatinos, 68, who lives in Tampa. "Many people left ​​

 there and went all over the world. We have family members in South Africa, in Australia, in Canada and in the United States

 

." Emmanuel took his own long voyage to the land of opportunity in the 1920s, around the age of 24. He settled in Chicago, where he worked in a restaurant and as a motion picture projectionist. In 1941, in his late 30s, he married Aphrodite, a girl from his village about ten years his junior. "

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​​​​Built in 1925 as the Hotel Enoree, the three-story building was a seasonal operation, open during the winter for tourists of more modest means, business people and some workers from Palm Beach, as well as a few semi-permanent residents.

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"The rest of the time it was really quiet," says Nick, who was 5 years old at the time. "This was before air conditioning. The electric company provided more electricity during the winter months than in the summer!"

 

The hotel represented "hard work, commitment to family, and a promise for the next generation," Anna says. "The idea was that we worked the hotel as a family and this allowed us to save money to buy the property in Palm Beach. 'Invest in your children,' was my parents' mentality, and this is how I raised my own children when the time came. It certainly pays dividends."

 

Living there also established the Karatinoses as part of a tight community.

 

"We all knew each other. The hotel was in a neighborhood of families," Anna says. "We were the only foreign family in our neighborhood. We went to Central Elementary, which is now Dreyfoos School of Arts. Nick went to Central Elementary, Central Junior High, and while I went to Rosarian Academy for many years, we both graduated from Palm Beach High.

 

" The Karatinos family did business with Sewell Hardware and Pioneer Linens, names that endure.

 

Known for his beautiful penmanship, Emmanuel gained a reputation as "a very honest guy," Nick  says. Didi has a letter written to him by Sewell Hardware founder Worley Sewell Sr. thanking him for his prompt payments. "

 

As an immigrant, that's the kind of thing that meant a lot to him," his granddaughter says. "Those are the things that he kept."

 

The Keswick turned out to be as steadfast as its owners, having survived several storms, including a fierce hurricane that struck in 1949.

 

"Luckily, the hotel is perched on the top of a natural hill, and we never flooded," Anna says. "It may be old, but it is well built."

 

The Karatinoses were committed to their life in America, while never forgetting the call of Greece, Anna says. In West Palm Beach, Emmanuel was a member of the local branch of American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA), a large Greek-American organization. With fellow member Gus Ross, he signed the mortgage for a former synagogue on Broward Avenue in West Palm Beach, which served as the first site of St. Catherine Greek Orthodox church, which has grown from the original 30 or so families to about 300 active families, says Father Andrew Maginas.

 

With the money they saved, Emmanuel and Aphrodite eventually bought property on Palm Beach.

 

"She loved the island's beauty and dreamt of retiring there peacefully," Anna says.

 

And that's what they did, moving to their small apartment building, down the street from the Brazilian Court hotel. Their kids remained there until leaving for college and Emmanuel and Aphrodite both lived there until their deaths, hers in 2003, and his in 1972, not long after selling the hotel.

 

Emmanuel didn't get to see his daughter marry at St. Catherine's, the church he'd helped build, or have her reception at The Breakers. He never got to meet his grandchildren, including Didi, who now lives in that apartment he so loved.

 

But the roots go deep. Both Didi and her brother, George, now living in Texas, were born at Good Samaritan Hospital, and even though they were raised in Greece, where their father's law practice was, they spent each summer in Palm Beach. And after some time away, including a stint in Boston, Didi came back home, meeting her husband Michael Kaplanidis in the kitchen of St. Catherine's, the church where she was baptized, and where her  daughter Anna, 6, now attends Greek school.

 

It's been a while since Nick Karatinos has been to the hotel: "I have driven by there, but it's never the same, is it? I didn't want to go in and bother people," he says.

 

Even though that chapter of the family's history was over long before Didi's birth, she feels part of it, too

 

. "When we got engaged, we were like 'Let's go!' " Didi says. "We talked to the manager and he let us walk around. Some things look familiar from the pictures, although some things have changed."

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What has not changed, what is still ongoing, is the story of the Karatinos story in Palm Beach County. On that visit, Didi and her husband scooped up some of the earth around the tree to send to her mother back in Greece, as a memento and a reminder of its roots.

 

Of all of their roots.

 

Through storms and droughts, the trees still stand tall," Anna says now. "It is wonderful to see the next generation."

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