Victoria Regina Shainoff

Victoria Regina Shainoff, 96, born on July 9, 1916, in Cleveland, Ohio, passed away March 15, 2013. She resided in San Marino, California at the time of her passing. Arrangements are under the direction of Forest Lawn, Glendale, California.

There is a scripture that says that God knows -- and has even written in his book -- the hour of your birth and the hour of your death. But even with God, my aunt was pushing the envelope. Once, in 2010 when Vicky had almost died and my father was starting to falter, I cried with happiness, asking her how she had come back to us. She replied, straight-faced, "I don't die." Recently she's been talking to loved ones on the other side, and checking out her options. A couple of months ago, she told us that her sister Olga had come to see her and pleaded with Vicky to come with her and help her. We asked her what she said to Olga and Vicky replied, matter-of-factly, "I'm not going with you. You're dead!"
This was my aunt, always negotiating, always with an angle. Not happy unless she was beating the system. Loving her family and friends fiercely but definitely doing things her own way.
She was one of the few people left in the world who held me in her arms when I was a baby, who was my godmother, and there for my entire childhood, guiding me my entire life. All the happy days and all the sad days when people we loved went before us. When we played on the swing in the yard, or when we spent long summers in hospital waiting rooms when my mom had surgeries. She buried her own sister in her childhood, a beautiful little baby named Sonia, whom she always pictured toddling in the snow before a medical error killed her at 18 months. She buried her father when she was 19 and took on the mantle of provider for the family as she had promised him, working in a factory to put beans on the table, walking instead of spending one extra penny for the streetcar, and raising my 3-year-old mother when her own distraught mother could not function in the darkest days of the Depression. In the early 1970s cancer came into our house like a wildfire. She buried her closest sister, Olga, who was 2 years younger, in 1972, and then my mother Betty, who was 16 years younger and the apple of her eye, a year and a half later. Again, her own mother went to bed, shaken and almost broken by the loss of two more daughters. Everyone said how strong my grandmother was. But again, it was Vicky who worked hard, kept the family together and even managed to help raise me. I remember when my mother was in the hospital for long weeks in the summers before she died. I would wait all day for Vicky to come home from work after her usual 12 or 14 hours. We would take our silver poodles in the Cadillac and drive out to 31 Flavors to get her beloved ice cream. The dogs always got a vanilla cone too. She knew death and sadness, and yet what she really loved was a party. And she always said, "This too shall pass."
She went to school speaking only Serbian, the Eastern European dialect of her parents, a young woman from Novi Sad, Austria-Hungary, who spoke five languages and an older but dashing successful furniture maker from Macedonia who spoke a few more. You can see little Victoria still in wedding pictures of the early 20th century, unsmiling with severe bangs, looking straight into the camera. Not a pretty child, but an intent one, armed with a queen's name and ready to take on the world in whatever way she needed to. At 6, she was playing with fire--literally--and was burned on her chest and right arm. I never saw her in a bathing suit or short sleeves, as she hid this scar. The intent little girl grew into a young woman who, despite her immigrant status, earned a full scholarship to Bowling Green University in Ohio that she had to turn down to help her family survive. Later the scar of the breast cancer she survived around the time I was born left her right side even more disfigured, but also left her strong and healthy for almost 50 more years.
When my aunt was in her early 20s, the family was struggling in Cleveland, Ohio, where they were picking up the pieces of their lives for several years after her father's death. My grandmother's beloved cousin from Europe, who invented a modern welding process and owned a very successful company called Southwest Welding, came and asked her to move West. He would help her, he said. Always practical, they agreed that spending all that money on heating oil just didn't make any sense. So they all came West on the train, passing through Chicago, where my grandmother would not let them leave the train terminal to shop because there might be gangsters with machine guns or maybe, just maybe, there wasn't any extra money. They bought a modest Craftsman bungalow on Atlantic Boulevard near Commonwealth, about a hundred yards from the Atherton Home, where my aunt passed away. It is now part of a Ford dealership, with only part of the backyard wall remaining, relinquished to development only when the ceiling and roof almost caved in. It was a special house, the center of warm family life for almost 30 years. The other relatives were richer, that is true. But even those who lived in fancy mansions in San Marino and Los Feliz wanted to have parties at the smaller home on Atlantic Boulevard, where the train rumbled right past and the cabbage rolls, stuffed peppers and wonderful nut-filled pastries and cookies of the Old Country kept coming. Of course there was a piano, and everyone played. And in the halcyon days before TV, the sisters and cousins were all expected to perform along with the adults. Whether it was singing, recitation, or a comic play, everyone added to the fun. Then there would be cards and coffee, and always a little brandy or Champagne. There was always a dog or two, a garden and a clothesline in the yard, and my grandmother loved nothing more than to kill and dress a good-sized duck, turkey or chicken out back, while sitting astride it if necessary. I always pictured my father, a white-boy engineer from Venice on the Westside whose mother's cooking consisted of canned ham, American cheese and salty peas, coming to meet this slightly quirky family for the first time, taking one look inside the refrigerator and saying "I've found it!" My mother may have looked like Elizabeth Taylor, but the real score was the food.
My aunt typified the saying, "Work hard, play hard." It was during World War II that she learned to defy the rules of day and night as she struggled to work full time, get her accountancy license and seemingly spend every night dancing with a different soldier at the Hollywood Palladium. There is still a large box of letters from at least 20 different GIs who wanted to see her when they came to town to Long Beach, before shipping out to points unknown and untold. They wrote to her from Hawaii on special tourist stationery, from dusty bases in the Midwest, lonely and dreaming of those glamorous nights dancing with my aunt. She always loved to dance, and one of my favorite memories of her was when I was in high school and she used to go to the Catholic Church in Alhambra with her friend Mary Dugas, who got her to join the Italian Catholic Federation so she could get the $2 spaghetti dinner and dance the night away with Mary and other old ladies of the church. As my father used to point out, Vicky was neither Italian nor Catholic. But she didn't let that get in the way of a good time, or a bargain.
Vicky loved to travel, whether it was long car trips to Alaska or Yellowstone with her friends Hilda and Gussy, or a yearlong sojourn to Europe in 1959. Again, there are letters and postcards aplenty. They crossed the Atlantic on a German freighter with the millionaire cousins, and she liked to recount that the ship's captain complimented her on her wonderful table manners, as she was frustrated while trying desperately to teach them to me. Once there, she was the driver in a VW Eurobus that she found out--after she had it shipped home--had a speed regulator on it. She was dismayed trying to drive through the Alps with a gas pedal that wouldn't make the car go any faster, but she just pressed down harder and kept going the best she could. That was my aunt. When Uncle Andrew, his wife Aunt Mable and her mother all kept her awake with their snoring, she went to sleep in the bathtub or the stable. But in almost every city they visited, Uncle Andrew declared it was his birthday and was feted at the American Embassy--as every multimillionaire should be (even though they probably knew it wasn't true after checking his passport). From him, she learned even more about how to be the life of the party, even if his outsize personality embarrassed her a little.
In 1964, his death and my birth, which happened within days of each other, brought more change. There was a falling out of some kind, some say about whether he should be visited in the hospital or not. And some of the relatives didn't come anymore. They always said I was like Uncle Andrew, whose funeral was on the morning I was born, and that I would be rich because I had hair on my toes. But I always wanted to meet the fantastically French and glamorous Aunt Mary Louise, who wore hand-crocheted dresses and was married to Uncle Andrew's brother John. By the time I discovered she existed, she was an elderly recluse in a San Marino mansion and I never did. But Vicky made sure that when I got older, I knew not only my grandmother's other cousin Aunt Mary, Andrew's sister, who always visited regularly, but her lovely daughter Aunt Mary Kay and all of Mary Kay and Hal's wonderful children. (Aunt Mary Kay, who really does look like Grace Kelly, credits Vicky with creating her signature bun when she was on her way to a dance during college.) She also made sure I knew the cousins in Ohio on my grandfather's side, and I couldn't love Mitzi, John and their family more. When I was a teenager, this push into family connections had all the charm of getting one's teeth cleaned. But later I came to appreciate that she wanted me to know the history, the stories and the people and places we came from. When she discovered in the early '80s that we had some long-lost cousins who were Mennonites and famous singers who had escaped the Nazis from Austria a la "Sound of Music," she immediately invited them to come from Canada and stay with us--which they did--for weeks--their hair covered inexplicably with little starched white hats, dressed almost like the Amish. To her, it was like winning the lottery, and another wonderful family connection was forged. Everywhere my aunt went, she asked people where they were from. And if they were Slovak or Macedonian or Serbian, or even close, they were like family, and hugged and kissed along with the rest of us. For that matter, if they were Panamanian or Japanese or Jewish or Armenian or Vietnamese or Filipino, or pretty much anyone, they were hugged and kissed and loved by my aunt, who unconsciously mimicked their accents (which I am accused of doing too). Even the receptionists at every doctor's office got hugs and kisses, to my father's chagrin. But for someone who had lost so much family, there was never a reason not to love and cherish someone. She made friends long into her 80s and held onto the old ones forever as well. She never left a job, a person or a house without a fight. And she wouldn't leave her life without a fight either. She was loyal and stubborn almost to a fault, but this was also her source of great strength.
But when I was 3 years old, she and her mother moved from the little broken-down bungalow on Atlantic north to San Marino. Although I was very young, I still remember this frenzied house hunt, looking at Spanish Revival homes on Monterey Road and all over town until they found the house at 1442 San Marino Avenue. It wasn't the prettiest or the grandest, but it was near a market and a bus line straight to Los Angeles, perfect for my grandmother who grew up in the days of horse-drawn buggies and simply would not drive a car. And the price was right: $49,000. Oma moved about 50 rosebushes up to San Marino to stave off their imminent paving over, and the family had a new house, complete with a dishwasher, a new refrigerator and other modern conveniences. This was the house that seems like my real childhood home, the magical place where I always wanted to be, filled with hand-carved furniture my grandfather had made. When I wasn't there, I was dialing them up on the phone several times a day. When I wasn't there, they were out in Claremont, bringing me pots of stuffed peppers or helping me with a school project. Because Vicky was the most fun person in the world and there were tons of drawers of interesting things to go through, lots of old clothes to dress up in, and oven-hot Van de Camp's coffeecake in the mornings. Sometimes Johnny, my cousin who is 14 years older, would come on his chopper or in his latest sports car. Or rumbling through the night from Arizona with his dad, Big John, with Vicky waiting up till all hours for her beloved nephew to come to her from across the desert like Lawrence of Arabia.
When I was 16, my grandmother passed away at 84 in an accident and my aunt entered her long-delayed adolescence at the age when others were collecting their Social Security cards. This was the time when she met the person who was probably her best friend, besides the always-flamboyant Ann Bode. Something afoot in the City Council united the neighborhood and she found she had a whole new slew of friends, but especially Maryon Gazarian, the amazing neighbor with the rhyming name. When I went to see Maryon the day before Vicky died, we talked about Vicky and how they had come together at a time when Maryon's brother was dying of cancer and Vicky's mother had just died. Vicky went every day to help the family and found her own solace too, telling her "your mother will now be my mother." They were sisters in so many ways, devoted daughters who loved and cared for their mothers. The back gate of the "Berlin Wall" opened and they were forever going back and forth into each other's lives and watching TV together almost every night.
But besides finding Maryon, Aunt Vicky found her real self, a person who loved culture and wanted friends. Her antidote to loneliness was to buy tickets--to everything. The Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena Pops and later California Philharmonic, the Music Center, the box at the Hollywood Bowl, complete with valet parking. This allowed her to invite her family and friends to all sorts of fun events that involved what she loved best, music and food. I'll never forget singing along loudly to "Oklahoma" with her at the choicest table in the front and center of the Arboretum at the California Philharmonic, which she supported mightily. And she continued to make friends with hairdressers, people at church and everyone she met. All of my friends were her friends. This, and her myriad health books and home remedies, kept her young, along with her almost pathological refusal to believe she was old. Even the day she died, she had less gray hair than I do now, at almost exactly half her age. And although she shunned face creams or sunscreen, she had hardly any wrinkles, as my best friend Lisa pointed out the night Vicky died. She worked until she was almost 80, not quite getting the hint when her beloved boss at the meat company threw her a lavish surprise 75th birthday party at the Dal Rae restaurant, complete with diamond rings and speeches. It was obviously meant to be a retirement party, but Vicky didn't take care. She was going to do it her way as she did at her 85th, 90th and 95th birthday parties. This was a woman who celebrated her birthday for at least a month each year.
All my close friends and even boyfriends over the years knew my aunt, and knew her well. My high school boyfriend Wit went to consult her when he heard I was going to marry Frank, just to see if she thought it would all work out all right. When I first took Frank over to her house, we spent the evening separating about 20 pounds of wafer-thin sliced basturma (an Armenian pastrami) into thousands of slices for a birthday party for Maryon. I'm not sure he knew what to make of it all. In 1996, our daughter Alison was born premature after I was in the hospital over a month. Vicky came by regularly and when she was born at 4 pounds got off one of her best lines: "She wouldn't even make a decent pot roast!" Still, Alison was the new apple of her eye, closely resembling my mother in looks, demeanor and academic and musical talent. About six years later, our daughter Charlotte was born and when we told Vicky that Charlotte's middle name was Victoria, she got mad at me. Yet it has proved apt because Charlotte has definitely inherited all of Vicky's emotional and physical energy, along with her drive and stubbornness--and then some. And she too is a beautiful, fun-loving dancer and the life of the party.
But even though there were grand-nieces to dote upon, she was mad at me again when I "made" her retire because then what would she do with her boundless energy? Well, she kept on with bookkeeping, doing the paper ledgers for a doctor who helped the poor in the barrio of East L.A. until he was almost 100 himself. She kept going to the theater, seeing her friends of all sorts and going to concerts, lectures and events. She drove a car into her early 90s, driving the other "old" ladies--of whom she wasn't one. But her beloved high-heel shoes had taken their toll on her knees and so she decided, at age 92, to get her knee replaced. She wanted to be dancing again and fully believed this would happen. Although she was phenomenal through the surgery, she contracted a very bad type of bacteria in the wound and had to go on very strong antibiotics. That was the beginning of the end for my aunt.
She entered a phase where she was more housebound but still enjoyed living with her caregivers, Lumen, Mary and Divina in the house on San Marino Avenue. People still came to visit, especially Monique and Maryon. Highlights of the last few years included visits from our cousins Mitzi and Sharon from Ohio and several very loving reunions with Aunt Mary Kay and her two daughters. Occasionally the nurses took Vicky out to the casino, where she enjoyed drinking, eating ice cream and miming that she was smoking cigars. The girls and I visited often as they were growing up, playing piano for her or showing off the latest ballet moves. After my dog died, Vicky said she wanted a dog and so I went to the pound and got her an elderly little Maltese, who loved everyone and lit up the house. She named him Casino and he loved playing with Monique's dog Lulu, his girlfriend. Occasionally Vicky would demand an In n Out burger or a hot dog, and the nurses would somehow pile her into the car and take her out do it her way. I think the dog always got one too, just like in the old days.
The loss of my father in 2011 was a huge blow to my aunt, and I really thought she was going to die of grief at his funeral. She always said he was "true blue," which he was, taking care of his dead wife's sister for almost 40 years after her death, even when he was in failing health. I remember sitting in Bank of America for six hours with him the summer he knew he was dying, just so he could transfer her accounts to me and make sure everything was taken care of. His last act on this Earth was to finish her 2010 taxes, of which he was extremely proud. His wife, my stepmother Liz was also a huge gift to my aunt, going to almost every doctor's appointment and fastidiously keeping track of all the medical recommendations in elaborate notebooks until my dad got sick. When people asked how she was related to Vicky, she would just breezily say "She's my sister-in-law." It was all too complicated to explain. But I learned that family never ever gives up on each other, no matter what. Our job is to love and care for each other, even when it's difficult or inconvenient, or even if the person might have had a conflicted relationship with us at times. My dad used to say Vicky was "immortal" and we all started to believe it as she kept tricking death numerous times.
I personally owe Vicky a great deal. Not just for the many lessons she taught me, but for helping me to buy my first house in West Covina just days after my 23rd birthday and for always teaching me to be smart with my money. I once complained as a teenager that she had "ruined" me because I could no longer buy anything at full price! Certain expenses--like buying real estate or paying for education were definitely encouraged. Other expenses, like cars that wear out, expensive clothes or vacations--or basically anything that wasn't permanent, were discouraged. When I proudly paid Vicky back all the money she had lent me because I was a successful journalist, she got mad at me yet again. Although I wanted to stand on my own, she wanted to spoil me. She always said "You can't spoil a child with love." And yet, if you could have, she did it for me. She gave me money when I graduated high school that let me go to Europe for two months. I know she secretly wanted to go along and take Johnny too, but she also knew it was too much for her by then. The greatest lesson she taught me was to be like a reed and bend with the times. "Bend or you will break," she always said. Life hadn't always turned out the way she planned, but she always made the best of it.
I remember many car trips when I was little or a teenager, to Barstow to see her clients or to Yucca Valley to see Aunt Mary or to Arizona to see Johnny when he was sick with his heart surgery. Or flying to Johnny's 40th birthday that she threw for him and all his friends in Scottsdale. Or the ill-fated 80th birthday cruise to Mexico. But our last trip together was to Little Mitzi's wedding in Ohio, and this was when I truly learned to love and appreciate my culture and heritage. If you've seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," you will have a pretty good idea of what this was like. The ceremony at the Orthodox church began in the morning and then all the men got very drunk on Slivovitz plum brandy and cried and sang and kissed each other. Then it was naptime before the huge dinner feast in the banquet hall, complete with more crying and singing by all, along with a lot of eating and circle dancing. Mitzi had been baking home-pulled strudel and komat for weeks, it seemed, and the next day we all enjoyed the food greatly. But mostly I saw how loving this culture was, how inclusive. They truly were a circle of love. I was amazed that all the sisters and brothers and cousins were popping in and out of each other's houses every day. And once my cousin Sharon came with the clarinet from her band, played Macedonian songs, and we all danced through the house following Mitzi with her waving white hankie. We also got to see where my grandfather's furniture workshop had been, the house where my mother was born and the cemetery where Vicky's father and baby sister Sonia were laid to rest. My daughter Alison was only 4 at the time, but she soaked it all up like a sponge and refused to stop wearing her Macedonian wedding outfit until it fell to shreds.
I saw how rich Vicky's life must have been growing up in this circle of love, this family and this culture. I saw how they loved a party and could throw one like no one else. How everyone--young and old--could be in the circle dancing together. One of the hardest things I've ever had to do was clean out her house over the past year, where the curtains were literally falling to shreds as well. It felt like taking apart not just her life, but my own, with each object steeped in so many memories.
And yet the real memories are of Vicky as a strong person, a loving person and someone you could be proud to call your friend. Who would literally do anything for you, as she proved many times, caring for her friend Ann Bode at the end and rescuing the former tycoon from homelessness. Saving several stray cats at the meat company. Caring for her father, her three sisters, Maria Azadian and so many friends of hers whom she loved so deeply and who went before her.
For the past few months, it has been my job to care for her as she cared for me when I got the chicken pox at 21 and called her in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to come and help me. She found a shady all-night pharmacy, paid way too much and brought me medication. I've taken my duty to her seriously, and yet I have been fortunate to be able to go on with my busy life helping people with autism, and with my children's unfolding lives, because of the wonderful help I've received from Divina. I will be forever grateful to her, Lumen and Mary, the nurses who truly loved my aunt as their own auntie. And I know Vicky is too.
The night before my aunt died my best friend Lisa and I--who have so many memories of doing things with Vicky over the past 35 years--said goodbye to our "Tante Vicky," our "Tetka Vita." A few weeks back when I was alone with my aunt, I cried on her shoulder into her terry cloth bib as she napped, telling her how much I would miss talking to her, hearing her advice and hearing her stories. Even hearing her get mad at me. She was starting to grow silent and breathless, and I realized there were so many things that she had left to tell me, that she had promised to tell me when I grew up. As my husband Frank said, she died with many mysteries still inside her. And yet the night she died, Lisa and I told her that she should not be afraid, that it was time to go to the next party, the next dance and the next concert. To go where her sisters and father and mother were calling her to be. And to go dancing all the way into the great circle of love.