‘Take care of your brothers.’ How 6 decades of a Florida family revolve around a meal

Every month, Virginia Elias hosts a “brothers lunch” at her home in Coral Gables. At 101 years old, she can no longer make the Lebanese spread by herself, so she enlists the help of family, usually a niece or a nephew, to cook with her.

Virginia’s skill in the kitchen is the stuff of family legend. Her nephew, David Elias, insists that she is one of the finest Lebanese cooks on earth.

“Brothers lunch is very, very important,” Virginia said, but she insists that “it’s not the food” that brings her brothers— all of whom are in their 90s— back to her house for lunch each month.

When asked what brings them back, Virginia gestured at her assembled family, as if the answer was obvious. “To sit and talk,” she said.

Her brothers come so they can be together.

Virginia is the “benevolent matriarch” of the Elias family. Born to Lebanese parents in West Virginia in 1923, she and her seven siblings were raised to value hard work and service to others.

A family’s military life

All five of Virginia’s brothers served in the U.S. military, two in World War II and all five in the Korean War. She worked in a factory in Charleston during World War II, making shell casings for allied bombs. After the military, her brothers built successful careers in medicine, law and business in South Florida.

Three of them were awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, an award celebrating immigrants’ contributions to the United States, for their professional and philanthropic work. “Back in their day,” said Robby Elias, the son of one of the brothers, “they were it.”

To the Elias family, more meaningful than careers, military or philanthropy has been, well, family.

“That was the most important,” said George Elias Jr., 97, “keeping us together. Nothing is closer than blood.”

During the 1960s and ‘70s the Elias family followed one another to South Florida, settling permanently in Miami-Dade County.

Four of the eight siblings are alive today. Virginia is the eldest and only surviving sister. Dr. Lewis Elias, 98, is a retired internist. George Elias Jr., is a retired lawyer and the sole surviving founder of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Dr. Richard Elias, 94, is a retired cardiologist.

The eldest Elias daughter, Guinevere, and their cousin Olga, who was raised alongside the siblings by their parents, died in 2018 and 2008, respectively. Both women were in their 90s. Their brother, Albert, a musician and inventor, died in 2015, just a few weeks shy of his 87th birthday. Their youngest brother, Gwyn “Babe” Elias, a retired real-estate developer, died on July 17, 2024 at age 92.

The only sibling to never marry, Virginia dedicated her life to keeping the siblings together, holding brother lunches and hosting family dinners as often as she could.

On the wall of her spacious home in Coral Gables, just to the left of her front door, hang two portraits— one of her mother and one of her father. Every morning Virginia speaks to these paintings, she said, telling her parents the same thing: “Mom, Dad, you got to be proud of your children because they made a name for themselves.”

“I remember, I remember, the house where I was born. The little window where the sun came in at morn.”

This poem captions a small, black and white, photo that opens one of the Elias family’s tome-like scrapbooks. The photo shows a modest but well-kept house that once stood on the east side of Charleston, West Virginia.

Family memories

Virginia and her brothers, gathered at her home on a recent Saturday afternoon, sat on the couch and flipped through the family scrapbook. Lewis and Richard mostly remained quiet. Lewis suffers from memory loss, and his older brother Richard has Parkinson’s, making it difficult for him to speak.

Virginia and George did most of the talking, though Virginia insists that George is “the storyteller” of the family. Though he is nearing a century of life, George is still a fount of names, dates and detailed memories. He pointed to the photo and the poem beneath it: “All of us were born in that house,” he said.

George and Virginia’s father, George Elias Barbour Maloof, emigrated from Lebanon to the United States in 1901 when he was 14. An immigration officer at Ellis Island, deciding that his name was too long for a prospective American, left him only as George Elias.

George Sr. lived with different relatives throughout his first years in the United States, working and eventually receiving his citizenship in 1911. During that time, he also caught the eye of Louise Sahley, the daughter of well-to-do Lebanese immigrants in Ohio.

A smile widened on George’s face as he spoke about his mom. “My mother’s cousins all said that she was the biggest brat that God ever created,” George said, laughing. He said that when his mother first saw George Sr. she immediately said, “I’m going to marry him; he belongs to me, period.”

She was right.

After serving as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War I, George Sr. married Louise upon his return to the U.S. in 1920. They lived together in Charleston, where George Sr. ran the Elias Supermarket and was deeply involved in the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

Louise was a tenacious woman. Though she only had a seventh-grade education, she demanded that her father bring her newspapers every day so that she could continue her education on her own.

For her own children, Louise stressed education above almost everything else. She used to say that she had completed school eight times, once for each of her children, such was her commitment to their learning.

“Education was everything to our mother,” said Virginia, “to both of our parents.” However, as important as education was, it was simply a means to an end.

“We want to make sure you’re educated,” George recalls his parents telling him, “but when you get on your feet, you have got to help others who are not as fortunate as you are.”

It was this sense of duty to others that drove George and his four brothers to enlist in the military.

The flight surgeon

George and his older brother Lewis joined the Navy in 1944 just as World War II was coming to a close. The war ended before either of them were deployed overseas.

Just a few years later, however, all five brothers would serve in the Korean conflict. George returned to the Navy, serving on an aircraft carrier. Pointing to a photo of his ship in the scrapbook, George remembers playing football with the other sailors on the deck of the enormous vessel.

Richard also joined the Navy, and was stationed at a submarine base, where he did medical research to help determine how long sailors could survive beneath the ocean’s surface.

Lewis, deciding not to return to the Navy, joined the Air Force, becoming a flight surgeon and treating airmen returning from bombing runs in North Korea.

Babe’s service

Albert served as an army chaplain, entertaining soldiers with his singing voice and skill on the piano. Gwyn, who as the youngest earned the lifelong nickname Babe, served in Army Intelligence.

Stationed in Paris during the Korean War, Babe “never wore a uniform,” Virginia said. What exactly Babe did during the war remains something of a secret. Up until his death, Virginia “was not allowed to tell what he did,” she said, with a mix of exasperation and pride.

Lives of law and medicine

George Sr. and Louise’s emphasis on education and service continued to shape the lives of their children, even after their sons completed their military service.

Lewis attended medical school at Columbia University, and then returned to West Virginia. He opened a clinic in the small town of Montgomery, where most of his patients were poor or disabled coal miners. Lewis would often accept things other than money for his medical services, offering treatment in exchange for whatever goods his patients might be able to barter.

George attended law school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. After getting his degree, he went to work for the U.S. Department of Justice, and was thrust into the center of McCarthy-era Washington. He immediately began writing briefs for high-profile treason and anti-communist cases. Within a year of his graduation, George Jr. recalled sitting at the counsel table of the U.S. Supreme Court, sweat “dripping down [his] ear,” as he gazed up at Justice Earl Warren and his fellow legal juggernauts. “It was incredible,” George recalled.

In 1960, Babe first visited Miami on vacation. After, he told his family, “If you ever want to see me again, move to Florida,” according his daughter, Christi Elias. Babe went on to become a successful real estate developer, building homes across Miami and Coral Gables for celebrity clients like Pat Riley and the Miami Heat.

Richard, who like his older brother had just graduated from Columbia University Medical School, found a placement as a cardiologist at the Miami Heart Institute in Miami Beach, and followed Babe south in the early 60s.

Eventually, the entire family would relocate to South Florida. Lewis closed his clinic in West Virginia and moved to Bal Harbour, where he built a thriving practice, treating celebrity clients like President Richard Nixon and tennis legend Jimmy Connors.

Robby Elias, Lewis’ son, recalled a time in the ‘80s when Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, House Speaker Tip O’Neill and Sen. Bob Dole were all sitting in his father’s waiting room. Not wanting them to be bothered by the public, Lewis invited the three politicians to wait in his office.

“We don’t know what happened in that office,” said Robby, “but the Cold War ended just a few years later.”

Richard, too, would develop an impressive reputation as a cardiologist, practicing medicine at the Miami Heart Institute and Mount Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach, and developing his own slate of influential clients. Albert, Guinevere, Virginia and their parents all eventually made South Florida their home.

As part of the family migration, George left his job at the Justice Department and relocated his wife and young family to Florida in the early ‘60s.

The start of a famous hospital

It was around this same time, in 1959, that George Jr. attended a meeting in Chicago organized by entertainer Danny Thomas. The celebrity had gathered a group of fellow Lebanese Americans to pitch them a bold idea— a new research hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, built with the purpose of curing leukemia and other childhood cancers and diseases.

Most of the 4,000 people who attended the meeting were unimpressed, George said, but he and a few others “believed in it,” and began fundraising for what would become St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

As George spoke about St. Jude, his eyes shone with enthusiasm.

“It is the only children’s research hospital in the world,” he said, swelling with pride, “and no one pays.” “We started out with one little building,” he recalled. “Today it’s like a college campus.”

George worked alongside Thomas for years, growing St. Jude into one of the top children’s cancer centers in the world. George remains an emeritus member of the hospital’s board.

St. Jude first opened in 1962, just a few years before George’s son, Chris, was diagnosed with leukemia.

George remembers taking his family to church in 1967 and seeing his parents, who by then had also relocated from Charleston to Miami. “What’s wrong with Chris?” his mother had asked. Chris had a cold, George said, but Louise was adamant that something more was wrong.

George called his brother Richard, who saw Chris the next day and ordered a blood test. George was away, working on a case, when he called his brother’s medical practice to hear the results of his son’s test. “Sorry George, it’s leukemia,” said one of Richard’s partners. “That was how I heard.”

George Jr. immediately called his brother Lewis, who, at the time, was still running his small-town clinic in the hills of West Virginia. When George told his brother about the diagnosis there was a long moment of silence. Then, Lewis “rattled off the protocol,” explaining exactly what would need to happen next.

Chris died in 1970, but even half a century later, speaking about one of the most difficult moments of his life, George was proud of his brother.

“He’s a little country doctor at the time,” recalled George, “and he rattled off the exact protocol for leukemia. He’s the only doctor I’ve ever encountered” who could do something like that, George said.

This kind of delight in their family member seems to define the Eliases. Their closeness as a group is reflected in countless small moments, like when Virginia took her brother Richard’s hand while they posed for a photo, or how, as George pointed to something in their scrapbook, his brother Lewis quietly moved behind him, silently looking on. “He likes to be near his brother,” Rosita Nicolas, Lewis’ caretaker, said.

This reverence for one another means that George, and especially Virginia, can seem almost uninterested in discussing their own accomplishments, choosing instead to extol those of their parents and siblings.

Virginia and George often referred to their brother Albert as a “genius,” speaking at length about his inventions and his prodigious musical abilities. Virginia spoke fiercely of her mother’s resilience, of how unfazed Louise was when her father lost everything in the Depression. Virginia also spoke proudly of her mother’s relationship with U.S. Sen. Claude Pepper of Florida, a client of Richard’s, who would come over for dinner and spend the entire evening talking to Louise. “She must have been pretty smart for [Pepper] to spend all evening talking to her,” Virginia said.

Around the table

As the Elias discussed their history, they shared food and Virginia sat by herself in the corner of her living room, watching her brothers and their children eat lunch. She had not cooked that day — the food had been supplied by her nephew David — but she still made sure everyone got a plate.

“Did George tell you about when Babe had to dance to pay the bill?” she asked.

Gwyn “Babe” Elias’ death weighed heavily on the whole family, but especially on his sister Virginia. Babe was Virginia’s “first call every day,” said Christi Elias, Babe’s daughter. “They would talk 10 times a day.”

On this Saturday, in seeing her remaining brothers gathered once again in her living room, Virginia started to cry.

“Why take the youngest and leave me here?” she asked.

Later, while posing for a photo, Virginia had been handed a photo of Babe to hold. She looked at it briefly, and broke down once again, before George softly reached over and took the photo from her, without a word.

She recounted a story about how Babe and his Army buddies, while stationed in Europe, had one night realized that they didn’t have money to pay for dinner. Virginia described how Babe, at the behest of his friends, had begun to dance, asking his fellow patrons to give some money for his performance.

Virginia began to laugh, reliving the tale she had heard her baby brother tell, about how they had finally gotten enough to pay for dinner and, “I quote, got the hell out of there,” she said.

She smiled at the memory of her brother’s story, as she watched Babe’s children eat lunch in her house once again.

“I remember my dad when we were all little. He said, ‘Virginia, take care of your brothers.’ ”

She repeated the command to herself several times, gazing at her assembled family.

Take care of your brothers, take care of your brothers.

“He knew I would do it.”