Angela Tsimikas was a poor girl in a small Greek village when her mother was kidnapped and killed during the civil war against the communists. It was 1947, and the woman who would one day find happiness and success in America was only six years old.

Christos Tsimikas, the oldest of eight, grew up in the same village. If there was a benefit to being the first child in a poor family it was that he was chosen to break in new shoes and shirts in the rare instances when the family could afford such things.

Their village, Megaro of Grevena, had only 370 residents as of the 2011 census. Humble beginnings, to be sure. The kind that inspire a person to cast their dreams across an ocean to find a better life, no matter the struggle.

Christos came to America first, finding work in a Pawtucket diner where he washed dishes and quietly studied the business and the country under the wing of his Greek boss. Angela came later. They worked hard. Every day. The kind of hard work that leaves a person with weary hands and throbbing feet after 14 hours of steam, fire and scalding water. The couple helped each other learn English and the ways of America as they dreamed of a better life on the other side of their toil.

The dream came true, as it often does to those who ask for nothing while working for everything, at The Bristol Family restaurant and The Warren Family Restaurant. The couple has served generations of East Bay families at their restaurants over the years. Seeing Christos at the grill through the window at the Bristol Family Restaurant was a constant for anyone walking on Hope Street. Seeing Angela tend to customers at The Warren Family Restaurant was a clockwork certainty. And though they are rugged seniors who look every bit like the kind who will never actually retire, they have retired from the business. (The restaurants have gone forward with the couple's blessings under new management.)

Not the kind to give long goodbyes or to brag on themselves, the couple wished to send a simple message to their legions of customers and beloved employees:

"Thank you to all of our customers," Angela said.

"We met so many nice people. And thank you to the employees who stayed with us."

Their daughter, Dorothy Benevides, grew up in the restaurants and remains profoundly inspired by her parents life and commitment.

"The adversity I have faced are merely mole hills in comparison," she said in an oral history project dedicated to her parents.

"My mother's calm and patient nature and my father's willful determination to succeed gives me confidence. It's not a matter of success or failure. It's a matter of simply believing."