The father would blush with pride. He actually had a name. It was on the sign of the restaurant, Gus' Sir Beef, the venerable Monroe Road meat-and-two-veggie eatery that Gus Bacogeorge built in 1968 the same way he made his lasagna and apple pie - from scratch.
Over the years, he became a Charlotte institution, at one time running three restaurants with family members and serving vegetables ("Fresh My Farm") that he grew on 18 acres off Sam Newell Road near Matthews.
Always printed on his menu was this declaration: "DON'T FORGET. IF I DON'T EAT IT, I DON'T TRY TO SELL IT."
Late Monday, Constantine "Gus" George Bacogeorge, a Greek immigrant who came searching for the American Dream in the 1950s and found it in Charlotte in 1960, died at Carolinas Medical Center. He was 87.
He suffered a stroke five weeks ago but still came to the Monroe Road restaurant until last week. He'd take menus to customers, serve them water and make them feel at home in his still-broken English.
"After he retired, my father used to say, 'This is what I know. What else would I do?'" Thrace Bacogeorge said Tuesday. "This was his labor of love. Dad was the face, the strength and the man who put in all the hours to make this business a success."
From Greek village to U.S.
Gus Bacogeorge was 5 in 1928 when his mother died during childbirth in Daphne, Greece, a mountain village 200 miles or so northwest of Athens. He was 11 when his brother found their father dead in his vegetable garden.
His older siblings took care of him, Thrace Bacogeorge said.
Gus moved to Athens when he was 20, working in a job investigating crimes and later serving in the Athenian Police Force with assignment to special protective services. But America beckoned.
In 1956, he left Greece for the United States, moving first to Roanoke, Va., where a cousin lived. He heard business opportunities were better in Charlotte and moved here in 1960. In a month, he was half-owner of a drive-in grill on Monroe Road.
A year later, he met Calliope "Clara" Fokakis at a Greek convention in Charlotte and asked her to dance. They wed a year later. While they worked the grill, they began raising a family, eventually with three children.
In 1967, the grill burned. Never one to be discouraged, Bacogeorge walked across Monroe road and bought a huge corner lot. He built a new restaurant with his own hands and began serving up the food he liked: roast beef, beef tips, chicken and dumplings, pork chops and an array of fresh vegetables.
He called it Gus' Sir Beef. "Sir, it shows some respect," he once explained. "But it's sirloin beef, too."
Gus wanted the food to be fresh, so in the early 1970s he bought the 18 acres and began growing his own vegetables. As soon as the new crops came in, he ordered a new menu and added his well-known slogan.
Clara ran the cash register, as she still does. And the children - sons Thrace and George and daughter Lisa-Leigh - worked the tables. The customers called each one "Little Fresh My Farm."
Soon, a state labor department inspector came around and told Gus he couldn't work his children like he did.
"He told the guy, 'This is my family. This is how we stay together. This is how I know where my children are,'" Thrace said. "Truth be told, the restaurant is where we wanted to be."
In the 1990s, they opened a restaurant uptown, but closed it several years ago. They also franchised four other restaurants, with Gus doing the training.
But it's the Monroe Road eatery that survived the years.
What Gus would have done
His family voted to open the restaurant Tuesday as a tribute to Gus. On the menu, where Gus typed messages to customers ("Be good to your children; always know where they are"), they let the patrons know he had died and that his customers had meant the world to him.
Longtime regular Spencer Barnes had planned to bring his two grandchildren to see Gus on Tuesday. If ever a child came in, Gus would stop everything to dote. He'd shout, "Come to Papa Gus," and bring that child a bowl of banana pudding.
Barnes and his grandchildren came for lunch anyway - to honor Gus.
Once they were seated, Thrace brought the children bowls of banana pudding.
"All the regulars were having a tough time holding it together," Barnes said. "I was doing OK, until Thrace brought the pudding and said 'This is what Papa Gus would have done.'
"It was a perfect way to remember Gus."
