History

Saints Markella and Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church of Mary Esther, Florida traces its origin to a vow made to God and a promise kept across death. Constantine Loizos, known to his friends as Gus, suffered for years from kidney stones and in the 1960s made a pilgrimage to the island of Chios to pray at the shrine of Saint Markella, his family's patron saint, asking for her intercession. He vowed that if he were healed he would build a church in her honor. His kidney ailment vanished after the pilgrimage. Before he could fulfill his vow, however, Constantine choked on a peanut, causing a blood vessel to rupture, and he died. The task of fulfilling his promise fell to his widow Maritsa, his mother Irene, and his children, who took up the work with the help of a local Orthodox layman named James Middleton. Constantine had specifically asked that Saint Demetrios be included in the chapel's name because Demetrios was Middleton's patron saint and because Middleton had joined him in prayer for his healing. The chapel they built was completed in 1964, conceived as a wayside haven on Highway 98 where travelers could pause for prayer.

The young community lacked the fifty families required to receive a charter from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and had no priest, and so it became a mission of Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Pensacola in 1968. The mission grew steadily through the following years, and on October 21, 1975, the chapel received its formal charter from the Archdiocese, with Father George Konstantopoulos installed as the first full-time priest. A parish hall was added adjacent to the church that same year. In 1980, James J. Tringas donated adjacent land and stocks to the church for future construction, a generous act that helped lay the financial foundation for what was to come.

By the early 2000s the community had grown beyond what the original chapel could accommodate, and a new church was designed by renowned Orthodox architect Christ Kamages. Groundbreaking took place on July 26, 2003, construction began in earnest in August 2004, and on October 13, 2007, the community moved into the new church building at 104 Bryn Mawr Boulevard, the permanent home that the family of Constantine Loizos had first dreamed of when they set out to fulfill his dying wish.

Saints Markella and Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church at 104 Bryn Mawr Boulevard in Mary Esther serves the Orthodox Christian faithful of the Emerald Coast as a parish of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Atlanta within the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, a community born from a pilgrimage, a promise, and the faith of a family that refused to let that promise die.