This may be, to some, a strange forum for an obituary for someone who was not, themselves, a Kossack however I feel compelled to share with this community the tremendous life of a woman who was more my mother than grandmother and who shaped my life and had more influence on who I am as a person than any other. Nagga, this is for you.
On the left, "Nagga", 28 August 1920-29 December 2011, with my mother (on the right), Portland, Maine, September 2011.
My grandmother (we called her "Nagga" because when I was a kid, I couldn't say "Baba" and "Nan" and "Grandma" were all taken plus, Nagga was Slavic) was an amazing woman. Born to immigrant parents in Pennsylvania, she knew what it felt like to have the rug pulled out from under the family when the Great Depression hit. She knew what that took to survive, and in the last years she used to say to me "Billy, darling, I don't care WHAT they call it, THIS is a DEPRESSION!" when she referred to today's economic situation.
In 1940, she married my grandfather. He was Episcopalian, she was Russian Orthodox, and neither denomination would marry them. So, they went down to the local American Baptist Church and got married. Neither of them were "churchy", so they didn't care. The rest of the family got over that in short order, even if her mother referred to my grandfather who was 8 years her senior as the "Wobidy pes" ("The Dog that Gets Around"). Ah, inlaws! But they loved him, and his loved her. A great family was born of that marriage, a great, great family.
The Dog That Gets Around (aka, my Grandfather, 1914-1992) in 1940
Well, they married, and given my grandfather's work, he didn't have to go to war (he was considered an "essential worker" and stayed stateside while his brother flew heroically in the European theatre of war) and after the war, they settled back in my Grandfather's native Massachusetts. It was there that two good generations, including my own, came of age, with healthy doses of Maine and good Yankee ethics.
Nagga was an amazing woman. In the early 50's, when she was the headmaster's secretary at the Fenn School, she was able to help out some Central European refugees the school had taken in temporarily because she just happened to speak their Slovak dialect. In the 80's, she retired early to take care of her mother-in-law (we all just called her "Nan") who was failing. Nagga saw her to the end, and as I was very close with Nagga, I had been VERY close with Nan as a young boy and what Nagga did for Nan speaks to her enormity of spirit and wonderful character.
Nan: b.1894, Stratford-Upon-Avon, England, d. 1986, Bolton, Massachusetts
But enough of family history. My grandmother was a strong woman. Born in the year that women first could use their franchise, she was a voter. She supported Hillary in '08 saying "I want to see a woman in the White House before I die!". After that, she put her support behind the President, not without criticism, but in the spirit of a real New Deal Democrat who wondered "Why is he pandering to the GOP? Heck, if he likes them so much, he should switch parties!". She was a real spitfire.
I could always count on her. When I came out, it was no big deal. "Billy", she used to say, "do you think you're the first gay person I ever met?!". She supported me, and my brother, and the whole family in the endeavors we undertook including crazy majors in music and art in college. She supported us all in everything, but with a watchful eye: she could see BS before she smelt it.
Nagga had some health concerns in her last years, and true to her spirit, she wouldn't let that get her down. This past summer, she managed to get up to The Rock with my brother and his kids, the wonderful summer cottage where I have been living and which she and my grandfather built, literally by hand, as a legacy for the family so we'd always have a place to go. In September, she was able to spend a week plus with me in Portland. Her last year was good to her, and good to us.
The Rock, St. George, ME, My Grandparents' Legacy to the Family
Here is a woman who took her grandchildren on picnics and gave us piggy-back rides, consoled us as adults when we were hurting, spoke frankly to us, was generous to a fault, always loved to salvage a piece of furniture and turn it into a gem, was always there for us, always giving, always loving, always putting in her two cents, always, always. I am really going to miss my Nagga. I have lost my best friend.