HOLY RESURRECTION ORTHODOX CHURCH

Elena Borisova, 77, died of a stroke, after a long illness, at the Sullivan County Health Care in Unity, NH, on June 10, 1997. Elena was born on June 2, 1920, in Alexandria, Ukraine. Her parents, Evgenia and Pavel Myakishev, a teacher and bank clerk with four children, fled to Ukraine from the Bolsheviks and famine in soviet Petrograd (Leningrad).

 

In 1923 they returned to Leningrad, where she finished high school and entered the Lesgaft State Institute of Sports. Then the war began, and throughout the blockade of Leningrad, she stayed there with her mother. They also had a summer cottage with a small garden that helped them feed themselves, but they had to walk many kilometers to receive ration coupons and get groceries.

 

During the war, Elena met and married Eugene Borisov, and gave birth to sons Vladimir and Oleg. Her husband was a builder architect, and for some time, they lived in Estonia, then in Kamchatka, then again in Leningrad. And everywhere, Elena worked as a manager at different stores and restaurants. When her sons grew up, they became involved in protests against the Soviet government's restricting freedom of speech and movement and later against the use of punitive psychiatry against political dissidents. Elena actively helped her sons and the dissident movement and even sheltered the persecuted in her house. In 1974, Eugene died in Kamchatka, leaving her a widow.

 

In 1980 Elena's sons were expelled from the USSR, and in 1981 she followed them, first to France and then to America. She was employed as a caretaker for the old and sick in New Jersey but often visited her son Oleg, his wife Ludmila, and their son George in Claremont, NH. In 1992 she moved to Claremont permanently and became a parishioner of the Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church. Elena was a wonderful mother and a loving grandmother, warmly accepting new family members. All her life, she worked hard and made friends easily.

 

She was survived by two sons, Vladimir Borisov of France and Oleg Borisov of Claremont, and four grandchildren.

 

Elena was buried in Mountain View Cemetery in Claremont. Unfortunately, her sons also passed away a few years apart after their mother.

 

Memory eternal to Elena and her sons!