Demetra A. Bourbaki, a former Chicago public school teacher, died Sunday, Feb. 18, of cancer in Minnesota. Mrs. Bourbaki taught in Chicago for 40 years, including at Kelly High School, where she taught senior history. She retired in 1984. “She loved teaching,” especially teaching history, said her husband, Socrates. He said Mrs. Bourbaki did a great deal of traveling and used the information from her trips in her classes. “When she took European trips, she would take slides of her travels in London, Rome, and Florence and Venice and she would show them to supplement the book study,” he said. “She wanted [her students] to know something about European history.” The couple lived in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood and in Rochester, Minn., where they helped care for relatives, her husband said. The couple married in 1947, her husband said, but she would never tell her age, not even when they applied for their marriage license. “When we married, she wouldn’t even tell the clerk her age and he just marked it over 21,” Mr. Bourbaki said. “That’s just the way it was, and I never argued with her.” Mr. Bourbaki added that even though he knew his wife’s age, he agreed to keep her secret. Mrs. Bourbaki was born in Chicago, her husband said, and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1939. She also received master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is also survived by her mother, Pandora T. Argiris. Services were held Saturday.
