His actual birth date — March 17, 1911, in Soma — is recorded in a 1931 New York City certificate issued by Archimandrite Christophore Kontogeorgos, the former parish priest of the Greek Community of Soma (himself by then a diaspora cleric in NYC). The Archimandrite would have had access to the original baptismal register before it was destroyed in the 1922 catastrophe; his certificate, sworn-translated by Saint Francisque Kallistos and notarized by NYC Commissioner of Deeds Evagelos Kylsanee on September 9, 1931, is the primary-source record.
Every US document recorded him as born March 15, 1913 — a two-year falsification by his mother Eftyhia, who altered his records to keep him a younger age and away from military conscription. The 1931 priest’s certificate confirms what John’s daughter Aline testified directly in 2026: the actual birth was 1911. (Aline’s family-memory date, March 15, was off by two days from the priest’s contemporaneous record.)
He and Takis ran away together as boys, around 1924–25 when both were thirteen. They forged passports, told the Greek consulate their parents were dead, and got themselves shipped back to Greece. Family in Greece took them in “for a few weeks”; Lazaros and Eftyhia, frantic, posted newspaper notices in New York and dealt with a fake ransom note before finally arranging their return. Takis is the passenger recorded on the SS Byron arriving in New York in 1925; the corresponding return for John has not yet been located.
He was at the University of Paris in the 1930s. The 1940 US Census places him in Minnesota with the Civilian Conservation Corps, and his 1940 WWII draft registration confirms Minnesota. He was a physician — one of the four Jeannopoulos brothers who all became MDs (Constantine, Takis, John Lazare, Achilles) per Sophie’s FBI file. He served in the US Army Medical Corps during and after WWII; his 2004 obituary describes him as “a highly decorated soldier during World War II.”
He met Ines Valda in Strasbourg, where she was a French Red Cross nurse just liberated from her Resistance years. They married, and from 1948 to 1951 ran a regional field hospital together in Sousse, Tunisia. Their three daughters were Eftichia (Claudine), born in Tunis around 1950 — who appears on the 1951 SS Constitution manifest as “Eftichia C.” and went by Claudine in adult American life, then married Patrick Boyhan — Aline Athena (who married Nick Pepe), and Myriam “Mya” (adopted into the family, who married Dominick Durso and predeceased her parents in 2002). Ines and the infant Eftichia/Claudine crossed from Cannes to New York on the SS Constitution on November 30, 1951.
Back in the United States he volunteered at Harlem Hospital, served as a medical officer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and finished his career as Director of the US Public Health Service Outpatient Clinic, Department of Health.
He died January 31, 2004, ten weeks before Ines (whom the obituary names by her other name Agnes — the two names refer to the same woman, his wife of decades). Predeceased by his daughter Mya (2002) and his brothers Takis (~1980) and Achilles (the latter referred to as “Alfred” in the obituary, having anglicized his name to Alfred A. Johnson; d. Jan 22, 2004). Survived by Ines, daughters Claudine Boyhan and Aline Pepe, sixteen grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren, and his sister Rhea (“Lula”). Services at St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church via Brueggemann Funeral Home; interment at Calverton National Cemetery, New York.
