My wife Lubov Bruches sent me this photo to Ternopol from Odessa in 1952.
I was chief engineer at a maintenance construction company in Ternorol. I had a low salary. I received a one-room apartment. In 1951 when my first year at work was over, I went to a recreation center near Odessa on vacation. On my way back I visited my family in Odessa. I visited my relatives when I met a lovely Jewish girl. She was to be my wife. Her name was Lubov Bruches. I fell in love with her at first sight and took her home on that day. We began to correspond and sent photographs to one another. I saw her again on October holidays [October Revolution Day]. I came to Odessa and we met at a party. Lubov came to the party with somebody else, but left the party with me. We met again on New Year's day and on 30 April 1952 I came to Odessa and proposed to her. We had a civil ceremony in the registry office and a small wedding dinner at Lubov parents' home in the evening. Shortly after we got married Lubov finished a Pedagogical College in Odessa and joined me in Ternopol.
Lubov was born in Proskurov town in 1929 in a Jewish family. Her family moved to Odessa. Lubov's father worked at a confectionery. Her mother Edes Bruches, born in 1902, got a good education. She finished grammar school, could play the piano and knew French. Lubov's mother was a housewife before the war raising her two daughters: Lubov and her older sister Maria. Lubov's family wasn't religious. They evacuated from Odessa in 1941. It turned out that we left Odessa on the same 'Dnepr' boat and they were in evacuation in Northern Kazakhstan. During the war Lubov's mother was director of a children's home and after they returned to Odessa she went to work at a children's home. Her daughters followed into their mother's steps: they studied languages and were intelligent people.
In 1953 our elder son Gennadi was born and in 1960 our son Yuri was born. My wife worked as a teacher of the Russian language and literature in a school in the center of the town. Our children finished this school. We live in a small town where she taught many children. For her kind heart and readiness to come to help at any moment people call her 'Bureau of good services.' We often had her pupils that had problems with their parents stay with us. Once Lubov's friend left her husband and stayed with us for some time and children of our acquaintances that came to town to enter a college lived with us. We kept our door open. We had a difficult, but interesting life. We went to the cinema and Russian and Ukrainian Drama Theaters and never missed a performance of Kiev or Odessa theaters when they came on tours. We had many friends. We celebrated Soviet holidays together: October revolution Day and 1 May. We often had guests. Lubov is very hospitable. She likes cooking and having guests. Before our children got married we spent vacations together at recreation centers in the Crimea and Caucasus.
