Nikolay was born on the 19th of July 1945 in a small town of Grigoriopol, Moldova that’s located in Eastern Europe and was once part of the former Soviet Union. There he spent his childhood reading books, roaming the beautiful countryside farm fields and gardens, playing sports and swimming in the Dniester River.
His father, Leonid, was an engineer and his mother, Lidia, was a preschool director who devoted her whole life to educating children.
Nikolay was an amazing person with a difficult and interesting fate. His early childhood was deeply marked by consequences of the recent World War II, famine of 1946 and ruthless Stalin regime. His family was broken up when his father was falsely labeled a political enemy of the Soviet Union and imprisoned in a labor camp for 10 years until he was finally exonerated and reunited with his family. In the meantime Nikolay grew up without his father and endured a major famine that over the course of 2 years caused an estimated of 300,000 deaths in Moldova. Sadly his grandfather, who was a priest, suffered the ultimate fate of becoming a victim of the Soviet regime in 1938. The family only found out about his execution in 1994 after they requested an investigation from the Ministry of Defense in Moldova.
The country then had a very difficult life and despite all this, even then there were bright features of his personality: discipline, an extraordinary mind, persistence in study and work. After finishing high school with top honors, Nikolay moved from Moldova to Russia to attend the South Ural State University located in Chelyabinsk.
Nikolay always dreamed of space and wanted to become a rocket scientist. After successfully graduating from the School of Aerospace Engineering, he accepted a research position at the university, where he became the leading specialist. During this time he met the only love of his life, a beautiful student named Tatyana. They got married and after Tatyana graduated they moved to Tiraspol, Moldova. There he spent 20 years working for the local Department of Agriculture research laboratory and eventually becoming the head of the engineering department. Together they created a wonderful family having two sons, Dmitriy and Andrey. For his sons, Nikolay became the best father, an indispensable friend and a great role model. Family was his life’s main driving force and focus. In those years in the USSR it was very difficult to develop an intelligent and educated person in order to ensure a decent life for one’s family. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, life in Moldova became unbearable for Russians and Jews due to ethnic tensions as well as poor economic conditions. Having survived the Moldova Civil War of 1992, the family immigrated to the United States as refugees.
Starting a new life in United States at the age of 50 was not easy for Nikolay. Due to his poor English and unrecognized professional and educational credentials Nikolay had no choice but to start working from the very bottom in a restaurant kitchen and later as auto mechanic. Five years later Nikolay joined the Consulting Engineering Group where he spent 14 years working with drafters and engineers by greatly contributing to numerous multimillion dollar projects for precast drawings that facilitated building various structures in the United States to include parking garages, stadiums, jails, malls and schools. Nikolay’s desire to provide a good life for his family was realized through his great perseverance, intellect, and education which ultimately put the family on a successful path of living in the United States for 24 years. Nikolay and Tatyana loved to travel the world as well as vacation at their favorite destination in Riviera Maya, Mexico. This could have gone on for many more years, but unfortunately a serious illness in the form cancer destroyed their plans of living out their golden years together and watching his grandkids grow up.
Nikolay was a wonderful and kind person, a loving husband, father and grandfather. He passed away on September 12, 2019 at the age of 74. He will always be loved and remembered by his wife Tatyana, his youngest son Andrey and his wife Nadia and granddaughter Maia, his eldest son Dmitriy and his wife Isis, who are expecting the birth of a boy and girl twins, his older brother Viacheslav, his wife Galina and their daughter Tatyana.
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