Chris Plakas

Chris J. Plakas , 85, died on Sunday, July 12, 2015 in Mathews, Virginia. Chris owned and operated Walden's Marina in Deltaville for nearly thirty years. Born on the island of Ikaria, Greece, Chris served in the Greek Air Force before continuing his graduate education in Athens, Lisbon and at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. In the 1960s, while working on power generation for the new city of Brasilia, Brazil, the Rockefeller Foundation recruited him for his engineering expertise to work in the U. S. space program. Chris received several awards from NASA for designing instrumentation to detect evidence of extraterrestrial microorganisms. Later he designed centrifuges for cancer research at the University of Illinois, before returning to Washington D.C. as a consultant for NASA. After sailing his ketch,, Ikaria, from Deltaville to Greece in 1999, Chris retired from marina life to spend his summers sailing the Mediterranean. He is survived by his loving son, Costa, daughter-in-law Aisnlie, and granddaughter Zoe Matilda, as well as four siblings and their families in Greece. The family will hold a private celebration of his life.