Margaret "Maura" Gioustremes

(1935-2022)

Maura Gioustremes

(November 13, 1935-February 14, 2022)

Margaret Mary Gioustremes, known to all as “Maura”, was born in 1935, in New York City.  Her father (James Fitzgerald) and mother (Margaret Fee) were immigrants who arrived from Ireland in the early 1900s.  The Fitzgerald family raised Maura and her adored siblings Cecile and James (Jimmy).  Maura’s father, James, was a committed and diligent worker, with colorful jobs including driving a baker’s truck and serving as a long-time conductor on the Long Island Railroad.  Undoubtedly, James taught his daughter Maura the well-entrenched virtue of always being on time and prepared.  Maura’s mother Margaret was a homemaker.

Maura cherished her childhood and adolescent years spent growing up in the planned community known as “Parkchester”, located in the central Bronx, New York City.  Maura spoke often of an idyllic childhood and how a best friend or gang of kids was one elevator ride down.  She rode her bike freely and participated in Bronx Zoo and other field trips organized by the residential community on Saturdays.  The Soda Fountain was a stroll away, where she cherished ice cream cones and 5 cent dill pickles.  Maura was a New Yorker through and through, never losing her “say it like it is” Bronx spirit.  She never fully understood Californians.

Maura was raised in the Catholic Faith and attended St. Raymond’s elementary school, followed by high school at St. Thomas Aquinas.  While always a spirited young lady, the nuns quickly discerned Maura’s intelligence and affinity for Math and Grammar and impeccable organizational skills.  Always one to embrace challenges and “never let moss grow”, Maura opted out of the popular stenography or teacher track, and set her sights on nursing.  She rode several city buses to attend Hunter College and also worked while completing her undergraduate degree.  Maura then attended Bellevue Nursing School on the lower east side, for an additional three years post college.

As a Registered Nurse, Maura’s career brought her to the hospitals of Bellevue and Jacoby in New York City.  One fateful day, the elevator doors opened on the Urology Unit.  As the doors parted, a young surgeon trainee, from Piraeus, Greece saw Maura, and was weak at the knees.  At the nursing station, Maura’s colleagues quickly took notice of the spike in accent laden calls from a Dr. Vassilios Gioustremes.  The courtship intensified and before long, young Vassilios (Bill) sent a letter home to parents Giorgos and Mina in Greece, stating that he had met the woman “with the most beautiful “matia” (eyes) in the cosmos.”  Despite their obvious differences in temperament and culture, Maura and Bill married, and moved to Los Angeles.

Maura and Bill both worked at Kaiser Hospital in Hollywood, until Bill eventually opened up his private practice and Maura began her important work as a mother of two daughters.  Having raised her two children, Maura again returned to school in her forties, earning a Master’s Degree in Nursing Education.  She worked tirelessly and with full heart as a nurse, teaching at Harbor UCLA hospital.  She often repeated the mantra “there is no greater gift than being a nurse.”  In her later years, she found her true love in helping psychiatric patients and families.  She channeled her innate talent as a great “encourager” and “listener”, responding to crisis calls, together with the LAPD, and advocating for appropriate treatment for the mentally ill.  She loved every heart-pounding minute.

Maura will best be remembered as someone who faced adversity with courage, big heart, and bright smile.  She was an optimist.  Maura faced many struggles and healed any sorrow by helping others.  She “tended” to all things important in her life:  Her daughters, her grandchildren, her ex-husband ill with dementia, her sacred girlfriends, her countless patients, her beautiful homes, her tenants.  She always knew what was important.

She loved the simple and the beautiful, also “tending” to her garden and flowers, wrestling watering hoses well into her 80s.  She never met an object that could not be somehow improved, cleaned, or polished, to bring out its best self.

Maura engaged deeply with anyone she met and it was hard not to laugh out loud with her Bronx humor and light.  If you met Maura, you always remembered her.  Any load you carried, she miraculously lightened.  Maura was elegance and grace.

Maura is survived by her daughters Greta (her boyfriend JP) and Mina (her husband Christos and sons Alexander and Andreas), her brother-in-law (Ed Regan) and nieces/nephews (Maura, Suzanne, James, and Wayne), and best friend and confidante Alyse Shaw.

May her memory and bright spirit be eternal.