Demetrius Mazacoufa

Mazacoufa, Demetrius (Jim)

(April 6, 1947 - June 20, 2023)

As a little boy in his hometown of Hopewell, Virginia, where he was known as "Jimmy," he would read the death notices in the local newspaper. In his child's mind of the 1950s, he transposed the letters of the word "obituaries" to mean the orbit dead souls reached on their way to a celestial heaven, an appropriate image for a child growing up during the Cold War and the almost daily headline references to the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union. He would sit at a table in the White House Cafeteria, the store owned by his parents, Sam and Irene, with the paper spread out before him, as he read the news of the day, including obituaries of the people who had come and were now gone.

The simple, small-town world of the1950s and 60s could not inoculate him from the social struggles of the Civil Rights Movement of the day. In response to rightful demands for social justice, his native Virginia resorted to a strategy known as Massive Resistance which came down from the government and touched him, a little boy who only wanted to start swimming lessons at the community pool in order to be as good a swimmer as his Dad who grew up beside the waters of the Sea of Marmara, as a Greek Orthodox Christian in Moslem Asia Minor (now known as Turkey). Instead, the Commonwealth of Virginia decided it was better to close all public swimming pools rather than see those community spaces integrated. So, he had to learn to swim as best he could on the occasional family summer weekend trips to the beaches of Buckroe, Ocean View, and Lynnhaven Inlet along Virginia's Atlantic coast.

Finishing Hopewell High School and attending the University of Virginia did not distance him from government decisions which impacted not just him, but all the men of his generation (at a time when his name became "Jim" to mark his moving into adulthood which was announced with his registering for the draft). The war in Vietnam cast a dark shadow which changed the lives of his friends and ended some of them, too. The war was a factor in his moving to Atlanta after college. The city welcomed him and allowed him to prosper.

Now going by his baptismal name of Demetrius, he continued his education in Atlanta and earned advanced degrees which permitted him to teach at Georgia State University and later to practice law. As a lawyer, he had the privilege of representing several state health organizations, with the Georgia Nurses Association being the first on that list. Those were heady days, as he worked with state leaders to implement changes in the way health care was delivered to the public. Two things he was most proud of were his initiative to fund a statewide school nurse program and winning a decade-long battle against organized medicine to give advanced practice nurses prescriptive authority. Today, those standards are so routine as to ask why they were issues in the first place.

His thirty plus years of legislative work improving the health care system was the signature point of his legal career, or so he thought. Toward the end of his legislative work, he was asked by a consortium of film organizations to write legislation to improve the standing of that industry. Using his skills as a lawyer and knowing the ways of lawmakers, he drafted a bill which became the initial Georgia film tax credit law and, as they say in the movies, the rest is history, as the film industry has flourished in the state since then.

Along the way, Atlanta was the town where he fell in love and, as fate would have it, it was also the city where his heart was broken. It never fully healed.

In his old age, he looked upon his life with both satisfaction and regret. In the end, he became like those people written up years ago in the obituary section of his hometown newspaper, orbiting toward what he hoped was a celestial heaven. During that journey, his family and friends will gather to say prayers in the Orthodox Christian tradition which end with the humble supplication: May his memory be eternal. Amen.

Saturday, June 24th and Sunday, June 25th visitation for Demetrius will be held at A.S. Turner & Sons (2773 North Decatur Road Decatur, GA 30033) in room 9 from 10:00 am to 4:30 pm.

Monday, June 26, 2023 services for Demetrius will be held at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Annunciation (2500 Clairmont Road Atlanta, GA 30329) with visitation at 9:30 AM and funeral services at 11:00 AM.

Interment will take place on Wednesday, June 28, 2023, in Hopewell, VA. The family asks that donations be made to the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Annunciation in lieu of flowers (https://www.atlgoc.org/giving).