To understand George Theoharis’ quirky quests, it helps to know something about him.
He’s not afraid to put it out there, is one way to put it.
For instance, when comedian Jay Leno visited Wichita in May for a show at the Orpheum, Theoharis sent a message offering to pick Leno up at the airport, put him up in his basement and serve as his personal valet.
For some reason, he never heard back from Leno.
But his persistence occasionally pays off, and this is a story about two of those times.
Shortly after Lily Wu became mayor of Wichita in January 2024, Theoharis conceived of a plan to obtain photos of himself with her and another Mayor Wu — Michelle Wu of Boston, Mass., probably best known for tangling with President Trump over immigration enforcement.
Why? Well, it has something to do with the fact that George and his wife, Janet, are proud graduates of Wichita State University.
Catching up with Wichita’s Wu was no problem. Theoharis and his wife snapped a picture with her at a neighborhood association meeting.
But when Theoharis visited Boston earlier this year, he found that access to its Mayor Wu was more limited. Or, as he says: “I played hell trying to get a picture with her.”
George and Janet Theoharis are shown with Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.
George and Janet were staying at the hotel in Boston’s former Custom House, located a few blocks from City Hall. “I just kept pushing, ‘Come on. Please. Please.’”
Theoharis has some experience pushing the levers of municipal government. In Wichita, he’s served on the city’s bicyclng and animal control advisory boards — stirring a little controversy on both — is president of both the Grandview/Meadowlark and Mead neighborhood associations and has been known to speak his mind at City Council meetings.
Also, Theoharis grew up in Haverhill, Mass., about 35 miles north of Boston, and still sounds like it. So his dropped r’s would have been right at home in Boston City Hall.
A word about Janet Theoharis’ patience in all this seems appropriate. Michelle Wu “is far, far left” politically, Theoharis said. “My wife is right. Not far, but right.”
Finally, Theoharis got word that Michelle Wu would be attending an event outside City Hall and he might snag a photo with her if he was willing to wait. Which he was.
“We hung around for about an hour and a half but I got my picture.”
There wasn’t much time for small talk, but Theoharis did learn that Michelle Wu knew about her counterpart in Wichita and had in fact called Lily Wu to offer condolences after the Jan. 29 crash of the American Eagle airplane in Washington, D.C., that killed a dozen Wichitans earlier this year.
By contrast, Theoharis heard plenty at his next stop — the Boston home (actually, a modest condo in Brookline, Mass.) of the oldest living presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis.
George and Janet Theoharis are shown with former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.
As Theoharis tells it, he simply called Dukakis to make an appointment, then jumped on the subway the next day. “I’m a seat-of- the-pants kind of guy. He’s still got a phone, a landline, and he answers it.”
Dukakis, who lost the 1988 presidential election to George W. Bush, was also the longest-serving governor of Massachusetts and, after former Vice President Spiro Agnew, the only Greek-American governor in U.S. history. Theoharis guesses his own last name “is the only thing that got me in the door. I was a Greek guy.”
Dukakis, he said, “talked to us for an hour and 15 minutes.” Theoharis barely got a word in, which is uncharacteristic.
When it came time for a photo, Theoharis said, “I gave him a little slap on the shoulder and said, ‘You better be smiling.’ He’s an old Greek guy so his smile isn’t exactly what I’d call a smile, but we got it done.”
The Dukakis photo gives Theoharis a photo of the only Democratic presidential candidate he remembers voting for. As for the photos of George, Janet and two Mayor Wus, Theoharis explained that he and his wife are big fans of the Wichita State mascot, WuShock, a sort of humanoid bundle of wheat.
So the photos are going on his mantel as — maybe you guessed it — “bookend Wu Shockers.”
Michelle Wu, naturally, “is going to be hanging off the left side.”
That might have been the end of the story except that Theoharis was recently informed that there are more than two Mayor Wus. Indeed, a quick Google search found two more in California alone.
“Now I’ve got to fly out to California,” he said.
