Peter G. Pakas, former City Hall worker

Peter G. Pakas, a City Hall employee who worked for more than three decades in community relations and was an active member of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, died April 9 at Good Samaritan Hospital of a blood clot. The Glen Oaks neighborhood resident was 70.

Peter George Pakas, the son of Greek immigrant parents, George Peter Pakas, and his wife, Litsa Dourakos Pakas, was born and raised in Martinsburg, West Virginia, where his parents owned and operated George’s Restaurant, which they had established during World War II.

After graduating in 1967 from Martinsburg High School, where he had been senior class president, a varsity football player and played trombone in the marching band, he enrolled at Yale University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1971 in urban studies.

In 1979, Mr. Pakas began a career of more than three decades at City Hall working in the mayor’s office in community relations, until retiring in 2014.

Mr. Pakas was an active member for years of the Northeast Community Organization and at his death was its president and a board member. His volunteer work earned him awards from Gov. Harry Hughes, and Mayors William Donald Schaefer, Kurt Schmoke and Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

He was also a longtime active member of the Glen Oaks Improvement Association and had been a member of the board of the Friends of the Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Mr. Pakas was a member of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Annunciation, where he had taught Sunday school for 30 years and worked annually as a committee chairperson for the church’s Greek Food and Cultural Festival.

“He was such a bright spot,” Melody Simmons, a former Baltimore Sun reporter who now covers real estate and economic development for the Baltimore Business Journal, wrote in an email. “He always worked ‘tray duty’ at the annual Greek Festival at the Cathedral, collecting trays in the dining hall in his Greek fisherman’s cap and a volunteer’s blue vest. We loved him and his smile.”

Mr. Pakas was also a member and officer of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association.

For more than 50 years, he enjoyed playing bongo and conga drums, and especially entertaining children.

A kidney transplant survivor for 11 years, Mr. Pakas was a strong supporter of organ donation, family members said. He was also a tissue donor with the Living Legacy Foundation.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, plans for a memorial service are incomplete.

Mr. Pakas is survived by his wife of 17 years, the former Latricia Dominique Wilkerson, a homemaker; a sister, Evie Pakas Williams of Catonsville; and several nieces and a goddaughter.