Nicholas Joseph Akrotirianakis, 78, of Whittier, California, fell asleep in the Lord on June 16, 2014.

Mr. Akrotirianakis was born June 20, 1935, in Chania, Crete, to Sifis (Iosif) Akrotirianakis and his wife Eleni (nee Saridakis). As a child, he survived the May 1941 bombing of Chania and the subsequent Nazi invasion and occupation (of which he later wrote in a 2011 memoir), and, as a teenager, the Greek Civil War.

Following the Civil War, he studied English at the Greek-American Institute of Athens and law at the University of Athens. He received his law degree, with honors, in 1960 and passed his bar examinations.

He proudly served in the Royal Hellenic Air Force from April 1960 to November 1962, as a Second Lieutenant assigned to the Press and Public Relations Directorate of the General Air Staff. Fluent in Greek and English and conversant in French, he hosted a number of NATO delegations to Greece and the Swedish delegation to the wedding of Juan Carlos I of Spain and Princess Sofia of Greece and Denmark, who later became the King and Queen of Spain.

Following his honorable discharge from his military service, he came to the United States on June 29, 1963, through the Fulbright Program, and studied economics at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Mr. Akrotirianakis lived in Montreal, Quebec, from 1964 to February 1968, where he worked as a junior officer of the Royal Bank of Montreal and perfected his fluency in French.

He married Barbara Jean Akrotirianakis (nee Proulx) in Detroit, Michigan, on March 1, 1968. They moved to California in 1968 and have lived in Whittier, California, since 1969. Until his retirement in 2008, he worked in the transportation industry as an accountant.

Mr. Akrotirianakis returned to his homeland in 2006 and completed a pilgrimage to the Church of Panagia Evangelistria on the island of Tinos, fulfilling a promise made by his mother while their family sheltered in the ancient Venetian walls of Chania during the 1941 bombing.

He was devout in his Orthodox faith and steadfast in his belief in God's promise of everlasting life in the Kingdom of Heaven.

For more than 35 years, he offered his talents as a chanter and choir member at several Greek Orthodox churches in Southern California.

He was a warm, friendly, and positive person over the course of his life, and he always saw his glass half full, even throughout his three-year illness.

He is survived by Mrs. Akrotirianakis and his sons, Fr. Stavros Nicholas Akrotirianakis, of Riverview, Florida, and Joseph Nicholas Akrotirianakis, of Pasadena, California, his daughters-in-law, Pres. Lisa Akrotirianakis and Sherese Marie Akrotirianakis, and his grandsons, Nicholas Stavros (7) and Nicholas Joseph and Michael Joseph (both 21 months).

His love of his faith, history, the law, and his Cretan heritage lives on through his children, as does his philoxenia (hospitality).

A Trisagion (requiem) will be sung at St. Anthony Greek Orthodox Church in Pasadena, California, at 7:00 p.m. on June 19, 2014.

The funeral service will be offered at St. Anthony at 11:00 a.m., on June 20, 2014. The Divine Liturgy will be celebrated that morning, beginning at 9:30 a.m.

The burial service will take place at Rose Hills Memorial Park, in Whittier, California, immediately following the funeral. A makaria luncheon will be served at the church hall at St. Anthony, following the burial.