Niki Paradise

Funeral services for Niki Paradise, age 88, of Norfolk, Nebraska will be 10:30 a.m. Saturday, November 30, 2024, at Home for Funerals Chapel, 708 Georgia Avenue, in Norfolk. Reverend Gordon Braun will officiate.

The service will be livestreamed on the funeral home website.

Visitation will be one hour prior to the service.

Niki Paradise, renowned for her hospitality and famous Greek cooking, died Saturday, November 23, 2024, in Norfolk, Nebraska at the age of 88. She was born Agathoniki Portalios on January 2, 1936, in the village of Vizari, Crete, the second of four children born to Stylanos and Eleni.

Niki grew up during the World War II Nazi occupation of her village, with her family surviving hardship and the loss of her father. As a teenager, she attended school to learn practical nursing and home economics. From childhood, she was an excellent seamstress. As a young woman, Niki made gorgeous blankets “from scratch”--shearing the sheep, spinning the wool, and weaving beautiful patterns. She was an artist with a needle, embroidering a variety of tapestries.

She grew up in the village with her husband George, but they weren’t allowed to date because she needed permission from her brothers. Before he left Greece to work in Belgium, he surprised her with a ring and then formally proposed in a letter. In a time when marriages were often arranged by the family, they were a true love match. They were married at the Greek Orthodox church in Rethymnon, Greece, on April 19, 1964.

For the first seven years of their marriage, they lived and worked in Verviers, Belgium, where their children Makie and Maria were born. In 1970, the family moved to Norfolk. George and Niki took night classes at Northeast Technical Community College, graduating from the Adult Education Program, and they became United States citizens on July 15, 1976.

Niki worked as a seamstress at Berle’s for Men and Beverly’s Store for many years. After the stores closed, she did tailoring and sewing in her home well into her 80s. She was a member of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Sioux City, Iowa.

Niki was renowned for her hospitality and generosity to friends and neighbors. She loved to throw dinner parties featuring her signature Greek dishes and inviting people to share a cup of Greek coffee at her kitchen table. She shared her French bread, baklava, and Greek cookies with friends, family, and the community and provided her famous baked goods for many events. In 1992, she received the Ak-Sar-Ben Good Neighbor Award for “exemplifying the good neighbor spirit of the Midwest.”

She is survived by her husband, George; two children, Maria Paradise of Tampa, Florida and Makie Paradise and his wife Lisa of Berthoud, Colorado; two grandchildren, Alex and Eliana; her brothers, Nick and George Portalios of Athens, Greece; and extended family in the United States and Greece.

She was preceded in death by her parents and her sister Maria.

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