Political poster on cardboard. In blue and red lettering reads:
"Qualified, Experienced, Honest
Elect Nicholas G. Manos
Republican Candidate for Cook County
Circuit Court Judge"
In the upper right hand corner is a blue filtered photo of Nicholas Manos in a suit.

Nicholas G. Manos was born in 1922, the son of Greek Orthodox immigrants, George and Eustathia Manos. Deeply religious, the Manos family raised Nicholas and his older brother, John, on Chicago's West Side near Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, where the boys received religious instruction and learned the Greek language.

Mr. Manos attended Austin High School, DePaul University and then entered DePaul Law School. In November 1942, two months shy of graduating, Mr. Manos was drafted into the armed forces.

During naval training, his legal acumen was recognized by the District Intelligence Commander, and it was arranged that he be sent back to DePaul to complete his law studies. He graduated in 1943, first in his class, and passed the Illinois bar examination.

Although initially trained in Japanese for intelligence work in the Pacific, with the growing threat of communism in Greece, he was sent to London.

In postwar Europe, Mr. Manos was assigned duties as legal officer for Adm. H.K. Hewitt at the Nuremberg trials, where some of the most notorious military leaders of defeated Nazi Germany were prosecuted.

In his unpublished memoirs, Mr. Manos wrote about the trials and recalled a chilling moment in 1946 when Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess rose from his chair and "stared him down," in an effort to prove insanity. Hess was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 1987.

In 1946, Manos was honorably discharged and continued his studies at Harvard Law School as a special graduate student. He then opened a private law practice and in 1953 was appointed an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

That same year, he was introduced to Catherine Gianacakos through friends in the Assumption Greek Orthodox congregation. They also were married in 1953 and had two children.

In 1968, Manos ran as a Republican for judge of the Circuit Court for Cook County. In 1975, when Rock Island Railroad filed for bankruptcy, Mr. Manos joined the case as attorney for the railroad's court-appointed trustee.

Mr. Manos was a leader in Chicago's Greek community. In 1974, when Cyprus was invaded by Turkey, he helped arrange for a committee of Greek Americans to meet Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Washington to receive a report about why the United States had not intervened to prevent the invasion.

He died on Oct. 16, 2010.

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