Grandfather survived WWII and rooted family in Hawaii

This week’s column comes courtesy of Hahaione Elementary School reporter-for-a-day Christopher Petrides and is based on his interview with his grandfather.

Q. What is your full name?

A. Michael Klimenko.

Q. You don’t have a middle name?

A. No, because in (my) country, in Russia, you address people by your name and whose son you are. My father’s name was Yakov. I am Michael, son of Yakov.

Klimenko grew up in a small village in Rus­sian Ukraine. As a young man he was conscripted into the Rus­sian military to fight in World War II. He was captured in Germany and sent to the Karls­ha­gen prison camp on the Baltic island of Usedom.

Fearful of being persecuted should he return to Russia ("We were declared traitors"), Klimenko stayed in Germany after the war and was later taken in by a family that housed and educated him.

Q. How did you meet Titi?

A. We met, perchance, on a train.

Klimenko was traveling from Basel to Zurich in November 1944 when he met a pretty young nurse named Marianna. Their conversation was brief, but Klimenko was struck by Marianna’s character and her desire to help others.

Before they parted, Klimenko made note of the address on her baggage-claim card. A few weeks later he sent her a Christmas greeting asking whether she remembered him. She responded that she did, and thus began a courtship of many letters and precious few meetings.

"We discovered that we had the same values in life," Klimenko says. "She was religious. She liked music. We thought the same way. Soon we fell in love. It had to be."

The couple wrote to each other faithfully twice a week while Klimenko completed his education in Germany and Marianna spent two years in Chicago for training.

The couple married in 1958 and later emigrated to America. Klimenko taught at Wittenberg University (Ohio) and in Kansas before moving his young family — which now included four young children — to Hawaii in 1968. Klimenko would spend the next 30 years teaching Rus­sian language and literature at the University of Hawaii.

In Hawaii the couple held on to their European roots even as they embraced their new lives as Americans. They went to the opera. They exchanged views on classic literature. They hiked and swam.

"It was a very joyous marriage," Klimenko says.

Q. Do you miss her?

A. I miss her, of course, very much.

Now 94, Klimenko lives with his youngest daughter and her family. Marianna resides in a care home, although in her mind she is sometimes back in Switzerland.

Klimenko visits her, faithfully, twice a week.