Mya in her wedding gown — white satin and lace, long veil pinned in her dark curls, holding a red-rose bouquet, head tilted toward the veil. Late 1960s / early 1970s by the style. The first archived adult portrait of her in the family record; previously we had the high-school yearbook and the obituary.
Mya — listed in the yearbook under her baptismal name Myriam — at Mother Cabrini High School in Washington Heights, Manhattan, 1965.
From the 1964 Mother Cabrini yearbook
Four pages from the 1964 Mother Cabrini yearbook trace Mya’s junior year. She turns up across the book — in the academic class portrait, the homeroom group, the French play, and presenting an appreciation plaque to a US Army officer on behalf of the school’s drum corps.
The French IV class — Mrs. Hogan’s advanced French students. The caption identifies Mya in the second row from the front, alongside Elizabeth Madonna, Sylvia Smith, Sheila McCarthy, Jean Shanahan, Regina Gurzynski, and others. French IV — fourth-year — was the school’s highest-level French course.
Her junior-class homeroom, Room 206 — the formal group portrait. Mya appears in the first row, alongside Jo-Ann Pomara, Gilda Quinones, Dolores Woods, Bonnie Jolly, Cheryl Julia, and others.
A page from the school’s French Play spread. The caption reads: “The monks of the abbey prepare gifts for the people of the village. Kathleen Martin, Myriam Jeannopoulos, and Susan Opava.” A French-language Nativity play, staged in costume, with Mya playing one of the monks.
From the yearbook section “And Its Rewards” on the school’s drum corps achievements. The caption reads: “While the Drum Corps stands at attention, Myriam Jeannopoulos presents Mr. Arthur Petersen, Chief Warrant Officer of the 102nd Engineers, with a plaque in appreciation of his years of devoted service to Cabrini.” A senior-year honor: Mya delivering the school’s thank-you to a US Army officer who supported the program.
Senior-year scholarship listing
A page from Mya’s senior class scholarships and awards section, with her name (MYRIAM JEANNOPOULOS) appearing at the bottom of the listed honorees.
Myriam — Mya — was the adopted daughter of John Lazare Jeannopoulos and Ines (Agnes) Valda, a fact her sister Aline only made explicit in May 2026 after an earlier draft of this record had mistaken her for the Tunis-born biological baby on the 1951 SS Constitution manifest. (That baby is her sister Claudine.) Mya joined the family separately, by adoption.
Per her 2002 Staten Island Advance obituary, she was born around 1950, moved with the family at age seven, and grew up in Manhattan — attending Mother Cabrini High School (Catholic girls’ school in Washington Heights) and the Katherine Gibbs School (the famed secretarial school) — before settling on Staten Island as an adult. She married Dominick Durso and they had two children: a son Anthony Durso and a daughter Aline Durso (named after her sister Aline Pepe).
She lived in Prince’s Bay on Staten Island’s South Shore, was a parishioner of St. Thomas R.C. Church, Pleasant Plains, and served as PTA president at PS 42 Eltingville, Totten Intermediate, and Tottenville High School — the public schools her own children attended. She worked for eight years as a receptionist at Kvaerner in Bridgewater NJ. Her hobbies were classical piano and the accordion.
She died at home on March 29, 2002, age 51, of complications of breast cancer. Funeral Mass at St. Clare’s Church; burial at Resurrection Cemetery, Pleasant Plains. Survived by Dominick, Anthony, Aline Durso, her parents John and “Agnes” Jeannopoulos, and her sisters Claudine Boyhan and Aline Pepe.
