Victor Terletsky

Victor’s life was always a square peg trying to fit a round hole. He was thrust into so many

situations where he had to overcome so many obstacles. He found himself traversing a new culture a new language school mates who didn’t understand him and accentuated these differences in unkind ways. You can respond by collapsing or fighting, Victor was a fighter. As in every warriors’ life there is much turmoil but amongst this turmoil he had teachers who guided him along the way not the least of which is my Brother Gordon. Gordon encouraged Victor got him certified in diving. Gordon signed him up for martial arts, Victor took Wing Chun Kung Fu. Here he had a guide a master if you like trying to guide the struggle he was living. After this I noticed a great deal of confidence in Victor when he came to visit me. He seemed to have a new confidence with which to face his difficulties. We would watch lots of martial arts and epic Chinese films such as Ip Man and Red Cliff. Victor delighted in filling in between the lines as we watched about the philosophy behind what we were watching. He admired me and I him. He called me a wizard because of the ornate basement and long stem churchman’s pipe and beard that I sported and art I was creating. He told me of his martial arts master and what a boon to his life this new skill had brought him, so we were the wizard and the warrior ready to take on what adventures came our way. Unfortunately, due to distance I could not spend much time with Victor as I would have liked. One day Victor surprised us all by signing up for computer graphics and animation courses all on his own. This floored Gordon who was so proud of him and his new found agency. Gordon tried to instill an appreciation for God and in helping others they attended church and manned homeless relieve efforts together. Still he was always longing for acceptance and bemoaned his accent which I adored. If only he could see his true self and how precious he was. He was coming into his own. Still there were unresolved bits of his life that kept nagging him and set him on a course to find compensation and comfort. Eventually sadly the gravity of life started to decay and Victors orbit and struggle against it as he might, it overtook him. I pray that he can now rest in peace and be fully complete and fixed and excepted by all.

I became Victor’s step dad in 2001. He had come over for a visit after Sasha and I had moved from Brooklyn to Hoboken NJ across the river from NYC. He was living with his father in Kiev but was missing his mother and we were able to arrange a 3 week trip. When we brought him back to our apartment one of the first things he did was wash our dishes in an effort to make himself useful so we wouldn’t want to send him back. In all honesty I really wasn’t keen on having a 10 year old kid to raise but actions like this made me reconsider. He also had great energy and was really a joy to be around. When his trip finally came to an end and we drove him back to the airport we noticed he was very quiet. For Victor to be quiet, we knew there was something very wrong. I found a place on the highway to pull over and Sasha climbed in the back seat to be with him. He was holding back tears trying to be brave and it was at this time I knew we had to do everything in our power to get him back. We were able to do that later that same year but not without a heart stopping moment when our route to Kennedy was blocked by an endless stream of motorcycles that took over an hour to pass (a 9/11 memorial rally) This was a serious delay that could result in Victor being returned to Ukraine since he was traveling alone. When we were finally allowed to pass we raced to the airport and to our great relief we found that the flight had been delayed and had to wait 30 min for him to pass through customs. On the way back I remember us hitting a terrible traffic jam and it took 2 hours to finally get home but Victor was happy and talking up a storm in the back seat, such a contrast from the last trip to the airport.

Our next mission was to find and buy a house. We found one in Secaucus that had vaulted ceilings to match our high ceilings in the Hoboken apartment. It was a converted Lipton Tea Factory building and Victor loved that apartment. Even though he lived there for only a few months he always referred to it as our old home every time we passed it.

There was a rough transition period for Victor in the Secaucus school system. He attended elementary school for one year where he barely spoke English and kids made fun of him and then it was on to Junior High. Junior High is rough for American kids let alone someone who comes from a different culture. It’s a point where kids seem to lose their innocence and run with the pack. However He was able to overcome many obstacles and mastered English in a very short period of time.

I also discovered another part of Victor that I hadn’t been aware of before and that was a courageousness about him. I remember an assignment his elementary teacher had given his class to write a description of every other student. I remember one boy writing that Victor was very brave. I was impressed by that. I saw evidence of this one day as I was walking in our Condo complex and saw Victor playing basketball with a bunch of the boys who lived there. He was taking an active role in the game catching and throwing the ball every chance he got. When I saw him I first felt guilty and ashamed since it was clear he didn’t know how to dribble or shoot baskets, something I felt I should have been teaching him but as I watched I noticed a special quality he had. Although he was only able to stand stationary he still had opportunities to catch the ball and forward it to his teammates which he did with much enthusiasm and noticed he was completely accepted by his other teammates. It’s hard to explain but it was his strength in character that was so impressive and I could see that the others boys respected this and were happy to have in the game.

Victor was not a guy to sit on the sidelines and was to show this many times to the point of being reckless. He raced go carts against adults, he skinned his head skateboarding down a steep incline and had to be taken to the hospital. He never backed down from a fight. He was my fearless dive buddy on wreak dives in Florida. He was better diver than I was. He was also generous and kind. His mother once told me how they were walking together when he was very young between 4 and 5 and how he saw an old man on the street suddenly not being able to walk and sitting down. When he noticed his troubles he cried ad asked his mother what was wrong and then walked over to see if he could help. Shortly after other people came to the rescue. It was a very sweet story. I would also send him many gifts from America in an effort to ingratiate myself with Sasha, I sent new soccer balls, a complete Yankee baseball uniform along with glove, bat and ball. He was to give all these things to his closest friends. That was the type of kid he was.

Over time He always seemed to have an entourage of kids that looked up to him. I also remember a time when we moved to Nutley from Secaucus he went to get a haircut. The man cutting his hair was a veteran who had trouble walking He told Victor about how he was once a Wing Chun martial arts master & Victor on his own organized a class with the veteran as the teacher. He did this out of generosity for the guy.

After High School and after trying college he decided he wanted to specialize in computer graphics and enrolled himself in the Anthem technical institute in a program that he later changed to computer training. He pushed his needier friends who didn’t seem to know what they wanted to do to enroll with him as the best way to getting their lives onto the right track. He did this out of genuine concern for them. I can go on and on with stories like this He was always helping his friends in need.

He was also a funny guy. He knew how to keep people laughing. He had a wry sense of humor and an empathy with people that allowed him to listen and ultimately charm. He was good a charming perfect strangers. After his father was able to move to Staten Island Victor was to leave us to go and live with him. It is hard for me to remember these times as happy times. I would still see him regularly and he would attend church with me on Sunday. After retirement this year he was going to move with us to Florida to be closer to his girlfriend Jalisa. I had dreams of us starting a silkscreen business with my generous severance from JPMorgan. This is terribly sad for me now. But even though I can’t think of a happy story to tell doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. I invite everyone to read through the other eulogies to see this side of his personality.

I want to finish by sharing the first time I realized how much I loved Victor on a car trip to Washington DC. It was just him and me for about a five hour drive. For some reason Sasha wasn’t along. He was about 10 or 11 years old at the time. At the start of the trip he was angry at me, I forget why. He wouldn’t speak to me but I had no worries that this was temporary and sure enough after about 15 minutes of quiet, a question from him and then a flood of conversation. We talked nonstop all the way to Virginia. I knew his enthusiasm would never let him stay quiet for long His need to share was too great. Of all the many wonderful moments I had with Victor this was the most special to me. There is a special quality that only children have and that is the inability to hide who they are. They have not developed this ability to hide their thoughts, feelings and dreams like adults who necessarily do this to protect themselves. That five hours permitted me to truly know Victor and forged him forever in my heart

I knew Victor back in middle school.into high school and all I knew him as then was this sweet boy from another country who had a love for video games as much as I did. We would talk on the phone endlessly for hours during the summer. We recorded a cover of Broken by Seether and Amy Lee. We wrote letters to each other and even when we fell out of contact, his number stayed the same for me to text and call. I remember my mom had an issue with him because his voice was SO deep for his age that she didn’t believe he was a teenager. It hurts now to know I will never hear that voice again. My number will never change but yours I can never dial again. I hope that everything you couldn’t do here in this lifetime is achieved with much higher success in the next so you can tell us all about it.