As a boy, Pericles "Perry" Caranicas fled his village of Volos, Greece, with relatives. As they chugged up a hill in an old electric company truck, he watched in fright as Italian planes dropped bombs into the harbor.
Caranicas was only 5 years old when he first saw the horrors of war. It was 1940, when Hitler wanted to use the Italian Army to take over Greece to open a path to Africa. Then came the German occupation and a county torn apart by a brutal civil war for years more.
Caranicas set out for America as a teen. He became a quality control consultant for General Mills, Heinz and other companies, and over the years played a significant role in Minnesota politics.
Caranicas, of Minneapolis, died Aug. 19 — 60 years to the day after immigrating to the United States. He was 78.
"I hope he's remembered as a person who cared about things, who cared about people," said his wife of 56 years, Doris Caranicas.
Perry Caranicas had the kind of face and persona people didn't forget, including at the Black Forest restaurant, where he was a regular. He was witty, charismatic and ebullient. In his quiet moments, he'd make a soft clicking noise with his kompoloi (worry beads).
"He was bigger than life, so he was a very visible person at a precinct caucuses, at a political meeting, at a fundraiser," said former state Sen. Carol Flynn. She met Caranicas at a 1968 precinct caucus — a big guy with an accent at the back of the room. After that, he never did sit down, she said. His increasing involvement led to being a delegate from the Fifth Congressional District to the Democratic National Party Issues Conference in Kansas City.
"He was always at a microphone, pacing with his worry beads," she said. "In part, he kept things going at all our conventions. … Things just get bogged down, and his contribution at those conventions was to keep them going, getting the work done, getting an endorsement out the door."
