Harry Mark Petrakis

News

How beauty of a horse racing ‘madhouse’ lost its luster

When I was 16, adrift in my green-boned youth, Zack, my best friend, taught me how to handicap the horses, something you can see people doing today in

By Harry Mark Petrakis

News

Opinion: An audacious leap in pursuit of a dream

The photograph I hold in my hands shows my wife, Diana, our three sons, and myself taken sometime in the years of 1960 to 1961. Diana is seated in a

By Harry Mark Petrakis

News

Opinion: Depression-era voices, not yet silenced

I was only nine or 10, not yet old enough to understand the full impact of the Depression that ravaged our country in my childhood. The beginning of

By Harry Mark Petrakis

Commentary

Opinion: Small gestures teach lesson of thoughtfulness

Not everything I have done in my life would serve to qualify me as a role model for my sons. I am human and I am flawed. But age and experience have

By Harry Mark Petrakis

News

As it did for Greeks a century ago, America lures immigrants who dream

For most of the world, “America” remains a word spoken with reverence and longing by the young and by the old.

By Harry Mark Petrakis

News

OPINION: An era of fear in 1940, at work and in the world

I was skewered between a fear of being maimed or killed and my desire to become a soldier and do something heroic for my family and country.

By Harry Mark Petrakis

News

OPINION: Three lives from the 1930s

Remembering three influential figures: a veteran, an educator who also was an abuser, and a caregiver.

By Harry Mark Petrakis