This is my wife Mayli Kurg. The photograph was taken in Tallinn in 1968.
I met my second wife, an Estonian lady called Mayli Kurg, a long time ago, in the 1950s. I was still married when we met and we were just friends. Mayli is a very kind and smart person. I always asked for her advice when I had some difficulties with work. We started seeing each other more often when I moved to Tallinn. By that time I had been divorced. I really needed Mayli. We got married in 1975. The wedding was not special, we just had our marriage registered and in the evening we had a party at the restaurant with relatives and friends.
My wife was born in 1933 in the small hamlet of Cambia near Tartu. Mayli’s father, Arthur Kurg, was a gardener, and her mother Leine was a housewife. Mayli also had an elder brother. He is dead by now. In 1948 Mayli finished the eighth grade of compulsory school and left for Tartu to study in the ninth and tenth grade. Shortly after that her father died. Mayli came back home after having finished school. She was supposed to work and help her mother. She worked as a teacher in the elementary school and studied at Tallinn pedagogical school at the extramural department.
Mayli had worked for two years in Cambia, when she decided to find a job in Rakvere. At that time Rakvere was a hamlet, there was neither transport, nor modern conveniences. Then Mayli moved to Tallinn. First she worked in the kindergarten, then she was offered a job in a seamstress vocational school. She worked there for a long time. Her teacher’s salary was skimpy, and she had to think of her pension. Mayli went to work as person in charge of the warehouse at the milk factory. She worked there for ten years and retired in 1988.
When Estonia became independent, life was getting difficult. There was not enough money and Mayli started working as a librarian at school. She stopped working in 1998. Mayli is a wonderful person. Both my daughters loved her very much. Mayli treated them like her own. She loves her grandchildren.
