ELAINE (MAKRIS) DANIELS

Oct. 10, 2008
SOUTH BEND - Elaine Makris Daniels, 69, a South Bend native who was long involved in refugee resettlement and immigration issues, and politics in Indiana and Maryland, died of a pulmonary embolism Oct. 10 at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Medford, Mass, where she was visiting family. She had lived in Bethesda, Maryland for many years.

Born in South Bend, she was one of five children of Panayiotis and Panayiota (Anagnostopoulos) Makris, both immigrants from the province of Arcadia, in Greece.

She was a graduate of South Bend Central High School and Indiana University in Bloomington. 

Together with his brothers, her father operated the Victory Lunch restaurant, located near the corner of West LaSalle Avenue and North Michigan Street from the mid 1920s to 1963. During the 1980s and early 1990s, she was director of the refugee training program in the Montgomery County, Maryland public schools, where she coordinated efforts to help refugees with English and job-training skills.

During the Carter and Reagan administrations, she served on the staffs of the Select Committee on Population as well as the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy. She had settled in the Washington area in 1961 and spent several years as a legislative assistant to U.S. Rep. John Brademas and U.S. Sen. Birch Baye, and as assistant superintendent of the Senate Radio-Television Gallery. In the 1976 and 1980, she worked on U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes' campaigns in Maryland.

A woman of passionate enthusiasms, she loved her family, her Greek heritage, travel, opera, literature, painting, and conversation about politics. As an editor of Tegea Press, she oversaw a collection of essays called Growing Up Greek in South Bend (2001), which included accounts by 13 women who grew up in the city between the late 1920s and the early 1960s. She was a member of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington, where her funeral took place on Oct. 15. Her father and his brothers were founders of St. Andrew's Greek Orthodox Church in South Bend.

Survivors include her husband of 44 years, Michael P. Daniels of Bethesda; three children, Anthony Daniels of Brooklyn, N.Y., Maria Daniels of Medford, Massachusetts and Alex Daniels of College Park, Maryland; three stepchildren, Lisa Daniels of Bethesda, Rachel Ring of Amherst, N.H., and Aaron Daniels of Clifton, Va.; two sisters, Bessie Stamatakos of Okemos, Mich., and Efthalia Walsh of Bethesda; two brothers, Chris Makris of South Bend and John Makris of Athens, Greece; and 10 grandchildren.

Published by South Bend Tribune on Oct. 19, 2008.

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