News

By Emily J. Minor

    SOUTH PALM BEACH — Antigone Diane Potonides, a seemingly shy woman with a penchant for outspokenness who delayed her own dreams before launching a career teaching English, died in her sleep at a local nursing home July 2. She was 87.
    Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., the daughter of Michael and Mary Koconas, Mrs. Potonides was 8 years old when the family moved back to Cyprus for her father’s health. She returned to the States when she was barely 19 years old. Within the year, she had married Homer Potonides, a man she’d met at school in Cyprus.
    In the early years of their marriage, Mrs. Potonides worked at the local telephone company in New York, helping to put her husband through college. Homer Potonides, who preceded her in death, would go on to become an accomplished aeronautical engineer, holding many patents and working on high-level rocket ships, said the couple’s daughter, Mary Ann Babnis.
    After Mr. Potonides’ career was off and running, and after the couple had had their two children, Mrs. Potonides finally began her college studies.
    Mrs. Potonides earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Hofstra University, and then a master’s degree in English from Queens College. She also studied abroad one summer at Cambridge University and another summer at Oxford.
    Eventually, she taught English in Massapequa, N.Y., for 22 years.
    Mary Ann Babnis remembers her mother as quiet — certainly more quiet than their outgoing father. But she was also full of convictions and would very often “write letters about things she was passionate about,” her daughter said. She felt deeply about certain social issues and worked hard to “better the world for others,” Babnis said.
    “She wasn’t very outgoing, and the last 10 here she was very quiet,” Babnis said. “But she was accomplished, and she cared deeply about certain things.”
    Among those passions was her work with Daughters of Penelope, Senior Club at St. Catherine Greek Orthodox Church, West Palm Beach, and the Philoptochos Society, which means “Friend of the Poor.”
    Babnis said some of her mother’s volunteer work went mostly unnoticed during her and her brother’s childhood years.
 “She was named Penelope of the Year one year,” she said, “and some of this I didn’t even know until I started digging through some papers and things.”
    But quiet or not, Mrs. Potonides apparently loved learning. After the couple had moved to South Palm Beach for good in 2002, she continued taking courses with the Lifelong Learning Society at Florida Atlantic University, her daughter said. Mrs. Potonides also loved music, lectures and travel. And she loved the ocean view from their condo.
    Mrs. Potonides was buried July 11 at Our Lady Queen of Peace Cemetery in Royal Palm Beach. Memorial gifts can be made to the church choir at St. Catherine Greek Orthodox Church, 110 Southern Blvd., West Palm Beach, FL 33405; or the Alzheimer’s Association, Southeast Florida Chapter, 3333 Forest Hill Blvd., West Palm Beach, FL 33406.
    Besides her daughter, survivors include the couple’s son, Roy Potonides, and a granddaughter, Christina Diane Babnis.