Maria Papanikolaou
January 20, 1961 – July 12, 2006
Maria Papanikolaou was an amazing woman. Married at 20, she moved from Cyprus to New York to begin the next step of her life. As a restaurant owner with her husband, she was working all hours of the day while raising her three daughters. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t do. Her smile brought happiness to everyone around her. She cherished life and held everyone around her close to her heart.
She was diagnosed with malignant melanoma in Sept. 2001. A mole on her thigh was removed and a biopsy confirmed she had Stage III melanoma. She tried every single therapy in the book and went through a number of surgeries as well as a couple of clinical trials. However there wasn’t anything that seemed to work the way it should have. Although she was going through so much all these years, she remained a strong woman. Not once did her weakness and pain overcome her. Her experience has given us the knowledge of what melanoma really is and how cautious we must be with ourselves now.
She was an amazing wife, mother, daughter, sister, aunt and friend. Although she is not with us physically, we know she will always be with us in spirit.