Eliot Gregory Karambelas

Eliot Gregory Karambelas unexpectedly passed away from natural causes Tuesday afternoon, July 16, 2024, in St. Louis, Missouri. Although a resident of St. Louis for the past several years, Eliot was a diehard native New Yorker who was making plans to return to familiar surroundings to be among relatives, friends, and acquaintances in his home state.

Eliot was born in Brooklyn on June 25, 1950, to Chris and Clio (nee Macar) Karambelas, both of whom predeceased him. He also was predeceased by his sole brother, Paul, in 2022. Eliot’s childhood and teenaged years were spent living at 271 Spruce Street in West Hempstead where he garnered enduring friendships; achieved academic success; and excelled in sports, playing high school football and baseball for the West Hempstead High School Rams and participating in highly competitive summer baseball and fast-pitch softball leagues at Jones Beach on Long Island. He graduated from West Hempstead with the Class of 1968.

Sports would always be an important facet of Eliot’s life whether he was a participant or a spectator. It was team sports camaraderie that helped a teenaged Eliot shoulder his sorrow for his dad’s premature passing in 1966. Throughout his life he kept physically fit with exercise, running, and clean living. He continued to play baseball and softball and to run NYC marathons well into his forties and fifties. As a spectator, he was a dedicated and enthusiastic New York Yankees devotee and even was a Yankee Stadium Clubhouse bartender. After moving to St. Louis, he garnered an appreciation for the St. Louis Cardinals that accompanied, but never surpassed, his passion for the Yankees!

His love of “the game” as well as his prodigious knowledge of facts, stats, and dates associated with baseball or football, especially, but really most any game, led to opportunities to combine his mastery of sports information with his other natural ability—teaching—by volunteering as an usher at Busch Stadium, as a tour guide at the Cardinals’ Hall of Fame Museum and at the city’s International Bowling Museum and Hall of Fame. Eliot also served for a time as a communications consultant to the renowned baseball player and Cardinals manager, Tony LaRussa.

Following high school graduation, Eliot opted to enter the workforce to help support his mother and his younger brother, Paul. He worked as a paraprofessional with the YMCA to prepare students for the High School Equivalency Exam and at an After-School program with students attending the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Manhattan campus. Encouraged by his cousin, Jack Georges, Eliot enrolled in the Medgar Evers College at City University of New York and received his BA in Education. With BA in hand, Eliot began a 15+-year city-wide teaching tenure with the New York City Department of Education. He coached, mentored, and taught youth mathematics, history, and other subjects. He employed a no-nonsense, yet compassionate teaching style and served as a role model to those disadvantaged or socially noncompliant students in his care at the Jamaica Learning Referral Center in Queens.

Eliot was a well-read and culturally informed man of many talents. Equally noteworthy to his athletic achievements and his enviable ability to recollect dates and statistics--even the most obscure--of sports, of course, but also of the social sciences and the arts (Who needed Google with Eliot present?), was Eliot’s good-humored and self-effacing personality. Gregarious by nature and with a twinkle in his eye, Eliot could “hold court”. He would entertain his audience with stories sprinkled with a bit of ribaldry (only when appropriate!), with a spot-on impersonation or two complemented by an impeccable sense of timing, all of which would evoke boisterous laughter with each tale.

Finally, Eliot was a good man, a morally decent man—a credit to humanity and worthy of our respect. He is mourned by his family of cousins, his lifelong friends, and others with whom he crossed paths. A celebration of his life will be held later this year. May his memory be eternal!