I photographed each and single page of my Mom’s High School graduation album, but never showed these pictures to anybody, on any of the social networks. The main reason is that I brought it from Russia just a couple of weeks before my back surgery, and less than a month before my Mom came to the US. So I had other, more urgent things to address.
Last Sunday, I brought Mom to have an afternoon coffee with me, and she asked me about the album, and I took it out. She was slowly turning the pages, looking at each face, and reading all the farewell wished from her friends. And I thought – that’s what my next historical post should be about.
Then I missed two of my “historical” days because there was too much of life going on, and I promised myself to write a historical post today.
I am saying “high school,” but actually in the Soviet Union, it was just “school.” Students went through all the ten years of education with the same group, which was called a class. And what we call “class” in the US< was called “a parallel.” Do not ask me why :). Most of the time, each parallel would have two or three classes. And these classes would stay the same unless somebody would move to another place to live, which did not happen often.
My Mom was born in 1935, and at that time, children would start the first grade at eight, which means she started school in 1943, during the war, when she was evacuated to Siberia. She returned to Leningrad when she was in the second grade, and since then, she attended the same school.
Mom graduated in June 1953, and here comes her album.
Below are individual pictures of Mom’s teaches and classmates. Most of them wrote at least a couple of words, some wrote a lot. For the sake of future generations, I will try to translate all the notes, which means that I will need more than one post. Well, good thing to be busy in the times like these.
“Big ship deserved big voyage” (Russian saying – H.D.). To dear Nina from Neonila Pavlovna Vovk-Kurishev.
“When a person has a big dream, he can achieve anything, especially in the land like ours” – Musatov. Dear Nina, I wish you to achieve everything you want and can achieve in your life. Your old teacher V. Kamenetskaya
To be continued. 🙂
My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs, and what was before and after.
Hettie's Reflections 