By George

Harris 'Bud' George's collection of stories begins with his father coming to America as an orphaned immigrant at 16 and becoming the first Greek businessman in Towson, Maryland, in 1912.His mother's imperatives about growing up in the Baltimore Greek community, his brother’s establishment of what is today the largest Greek Orthodox parish library in the western hemisphere, and his sisters' first attempt at Greek cooking and monomania about teaching English vocabulary are deftly and engagingly chronicled, as are the author's fascination with Kythera - the island of his parents' birth - and its lore. George shows how Greek as a second language is handy, how the Greek character manifests itself in airline passengers, in Greek newspaper reporters, in the Greek reaction to a Greek-American naval officer's being stationed aboard the largest ship in the world on its maiden visit to Athens, and in the Greeks of Capetown, Manila, and Gdansk.The story of his years in the US Navy offer interesting and amusing adventures in Capetown, Ceylon, the Singapore Straits of Malacca, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, Portugal, and Greece.

Towson, Maryland native Harris "Bud" George finished his Duke University undergraduate Phi Beta Kappa work at age 19 and passed the Maryland Bar at 22. He entered the US Navy, and after having served as Assistant Legal Officer aboard the USS Midway (CVA-41), was the plank owner first Legal Officer aboard the USS Forrestal (CVA-59), the first of the US Navy supercarriers. His tours of duty included visits to South Africa, Ceylon, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, the Caribbean, Portugal, Gibraltar, France, Italy and Greece.After leaving the Navy, George served as a law clerk to the Honorable Hall Hammond, Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals, Maryland's highest court. After working for a Baltimore City law firm, he opened his legal office in Towson, Maryland in 1960. He continues his practice today in a multifaceted private practice which has ranged as widely as foreclosing a chattel mortgage on a herd of cattle to defending the accused in Maryland's first savings and loan scandal.