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Äåòêè Ìèëûå, õîðîøèå íàøè äåòêè!!! Òàê ïðîñòî íå äîëæíî áûòü, ýòî áîëüíî, ýòî íå÷åñòíî, ýòî óæàñíî. |
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Ïàìÿòè Àëåêñåÿ Äìèòðèåâè÷à Ãðèøèíà Ñâåòëàÿ ïàìÿòü ïðåêðàñíîìó ÷åëîâåêó! Ìû ðàáîòàëè â ÃÌÏÑ, òîãäà îí áûë ìîëîäûì íà÷àëüíèêîì îòäåëà ìåòàëëîâ, ïîäàþùèì áîëü... |
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| Written by Ëþäìèëà Øðîïøàéð-Ðóñàêîâà (Îêëàõîìà) | ||||||||||||
| Ïÿòíèöà, 15 Íîÿáðü 2002 | ||||||||||||
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- Mallory Sturua, ‘Izvestiya’ I was forced to write this article because of the abundance of misinformation published in the American and Russian press, as well as on the Internet, concerning the life and tragic death of my friend, Sandy Booker, whom, in October of this year, destiny willed to be taken hostage in Moscow by terrorists. One winter three years ago, at a ski resort in the Colorado town of Crested Butte, a man approached me from our Oklahoma City Ski Club: “Hi! I am Sandy Booker. They tell me you’re Russian! Is this true?” And we struck up a conversation. About the ‘Iron Curtain’, presidents, Russian traditions and culture. As they say here, ‘easy going’ Sandy immediately endeared himself to me. It turned out that his life was interesting in many ways. He was a great skier, had a good command of judo, and worked in Oklahoma City for several years as an instructor teaching teenagers the art of The following year, we were together again on a bus carrying ski fanatics to the Colorado slopes. We skied in a group, waiting for each other on the steep slopes. Sandy was always in the lead, and full of energy. He flew like a bird down the hillocks, and fearlessly challenged the Sandy phoned a few months later, and we began. He seized the Russian language on the fly, and all the while searched for analogies in other languages. He would note: “This word is consonant with Japanese, while this one with Spanish.” He was very fond of talking about different topics, and could talk for hours. In addition, he liked to teach me about computers, local life, and even politics. Gradually we became friends and began to share lessons learned. I taught him Russian, and he gave me ‘lessons in American life’ and other information. I marveled at his performance, memory, and level of activity. He was constantly perfecting himself. He even studied language at work, during breaks and when it was a slow shift. He said he was interested in Russian literature and had read Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Solzhenitsyn, and that he loved music, especially classical. Our lessons were on weekends, because Sandy worked evening shifts. Sometimes he came to my home, and sometimes I went to his. He lived in an old district near the center of town. His house looked unusually picturesque: from ground to roof it was entwined with green ivy and stood between the huge trees. Inside, there were only the necessities of life, and striped cat named ‘Tiger’. On Saturdays, we met halfway, at in his favorite cafe, ‘Panera Bread’. There we had lessons with a coffee theme, and he was terribly pleased. He loved to pronounce aloud the names of dishes in Russian. Sometimes he went there with his daughter Debra, a slim, beautiful girl, a teenager who lived with her mother: Sandy’s In addition to working at the factory, he had other occupations. He bought and rented out houses, and so he was kept busy with repairs. Sometimes he came to lessons all smeared with paint and in work clothes. At one of the lessons, Sandy said he wanted to marry a Russian. They say that Filipino and Russian women make the best wives in the world. He was attracted to Russia, and in deference to his future wife he had decided to learn the language of her country. He said that he was in correspondence with an inhabitant of the Crimea, to whom he was introduced by the Russian wife of a friend from a neighboring state. Sandy planned to go to the Crimea to meet his potential bride, a woman with two daughters, After returning from the Black Sea coast, Sandy said that they got along and had asked the immigration service for a bridal visa, but in the process of further correspondence with this Crimean woman, he found out that for some reason the woman had sought advice from a Oklahoma City is a deserted town. People here can only be found in stores or gas stations. Sandy’s evening schedule did not allow him to go to places where there was a chance of finding a future spouse. In addition, after his main job, he was constantly busy with his rental houses: something always needed to be repaired, changed, or redone. Only the Internet remained. I got Sandy to promise me that he would introduce me to his next choice. Later he called up and said: “Listen, it takes so much time to search on the Internet! Can I place an ad in Russia? I don’t want to go through any American agencies.” I recommended the Moscow newspaper ‘Hand in Hand’, the most widely circulated. The result exceeded all expectations. In the first week, Sandy got more than two hundred letters from the former USSR, including Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Thus he found Svetlana Gubareva, and in time it turned out that Sandy had made a wonderful choice.
Svetlana worked as an engineer in a large factory in Kazakhstan and lived in the city of Karaganda with her In May of this year, Sandy was planning on going to Russia to see his future wife ‘in the flesh’. They decided to meet halfway, in Moscow. Sandy asked Svetlana to bring her daughter. Sandy returned to Oklahoma City a happy man. His intuition did not fail him, and all three got along very well. He immediately set about getting Svetlana a fiancée visa. He hoped that his new family could come later this year, for Christmas. He was excited, and said that now he would work even harder: “I’ll have two daughters, and I need to save up money for their educations!” That was in June, and since then I barely saw Sandy, only a couple of times when he was showing off another house he was repairing. Even smeared with paint, plaster, and all sweaty, he would manage to squeeze in a Russian lesson! We exchanged occasional phone calls and short emails. I asked how things were going with the visa for Svetlana, and Sandy replied that he was still waiting. Our last conversation was at the end of September. On the eleventh of October, I went on vacation to New York. There I learned about the tragedy in Moscow, but I never could have guessed that one of the hostages was Sandy! When I got back, friends asked if he was my friend, and I replied: “As far as I know he wasn’t planning on going to Moscow. The name must be a coincidence.” The next day, however, the radio reported: “Sandy Booker from Oklahoma is one of Moscow hostages,” and I realized: it was Sandy. Could it be that Svetlana was invited for an interview at the American embassy, and Sandy went to support her? As I later learned, that is what happened. It always best not to take the press to heart. The papers cut Sandy down for finding a On the first of November, I was asked to translate a videotape of an interview Svetlana gave for Moscow television. After watching it, I could not refrain from tears. The first scene was footage from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and the voice of the anchorman: “This story began seven years ago in Oklahoma City, when a government building was blown up in the center to the city, killing 168 and injuring over 500. Sandy Booker happened to be nearby, but was not hurt. He helped the injured. Back then fate would grant him a gift: he would live another seven years. “Svetlana Gubareva watched the tragedy of Oklahoma City on television from her city in Kazakhstan. In October of this year, she and her daughter Sasha came to Moscow for an interview at the American Embassy, in order to marry Sandy Booker.” Svetlana said that, before the embassy interview, Sandy would say: “You’re my Russian woman,” while afterwards he started to say: “You’re my Russian wife.” Sandy and Sasha during their first visit had hit it off well. That day they were all in a wonderful mood, a feeling that it was like a holiday. The interview went well, and all three were happy. They went into downtown Moscow, had lunch at a small cafe, and strolled about. Near the ‘Okhotny Ryad’ metro station, they stopped at a theater kiosk and bought tickets for the popular musical In the television interview, Svetlana told how, when the terrorists took everyone at the play hostage, the three of them were so happy that they simply could not believe that this was happening to them. On the last night before the assault, a small hope appeared. The terrorists had agreed to release the American hostages, and had allowed Sandy to call the embassy. The next morning at 8 o’clock, representatives were to come get them. The conversation took place at one and two in the morning. Svetlana said that those six hours before their release seemed short in comparison with those hours they had already spent waiting. They sat and asked time to hurry up, and then fell asleep. During the night, Svetlana woke up and looked at her watch: half past three in the morning. Svetlana thought: “Another four hours of waiting! Better get to sleep so that time passes more quickly.” Sandy and Sasha were asleep at the time. The anchorman’s voice: Interview: “Svetlana, why didn’t you take your daughter’s body back to Kazakhstan? Why did you decide to bury her in Moscow?” Svetlana Gubareva: “Three years ago we came to Moscow to see the capital: I love this city and wanted to show it to my daughter. Moscow made an enormous impression on Sasha, and she exclaimed: Mom, I want to live in this city!” The videotape frame freezes on Sasha’s eyes. When I got back home, I sent Svetlana an email, never hoping for a reply. Three days later, a familiar address leapt onto my monitor! Svetlana wrote that she was still in Moscow, in the hospital, but sometimes she could use a computer to check her mail. She thanked me for the letter, and said she wanted to come to Oklahoma to meet Sandy’s relatives, but her desires did not coincide with her capabilities, as she had no money for the trip. * I just left the funeral. Svetlana was not there. December 28th will be Sandy’s birthday. He would be fifty. Written by Lyudmila Shropshire-Rusakova (Oklahoma) In ‘Chaika’ # 22 (38), November 15th, 2002 Views: 14220 |
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