Larisa Mitrofanova's Obituary
Larisa Vasilyevna Mitrofanova, 91, passed away peacefully on May 25th in Honolulu. She was born on March 22nd, 1935 in Kharkiv, former USSR. Though her early childhood was in ways tumultuous and unstable due to the devastating effects of WW2, Larisa, her mother Elizaveta, and her two brothers, Yuriy and Boris, shared an incredibly deep familial love and continued to be one another’s support systems throughout their lives.
Anyone who knew Larisa could speak to her great love of two things: family and literature. Larisa was always an intellectually curious and empathetic person, and thus her decision to pursue library studies was an easy and natural one. She married her husband (they had been friends since middle school!) Vladislav (Slava) Vladimirovich Mitrofanov in 1958. Together, they were among the founding members of a scientific community in Novosibirsk called Akademgorodok (literally ‘Academic Town’), established in 1957 under the USSR’s Academy of Sciences to become one of the leading scientific and research centers in Russia. There, she served as a scientific librarian at the research institute that her husband worked at–beloved by all members of the community.
Larisa and Slava had two children, Katya and Dima. Larisa passed down her love of reading and literature to them both, and eventually to all five of her grandchildren, each of whom she helped to raise (Sveta, Artem, Liza, Ilya, and Ksenia). In her last days, she shared a last call with all of them, beaming brightly at her self-described “golden family.”
Larisa moved to Hawaii to live with her daughter Katya and her family several years after Slava passed away. Her time in Hawaii, as was her time in Russia, was filled with bright smiles. She loved to walk along the beach and prepare her famous eggplant caviar for guests. Though there were little Russian speakers around, she still touched so many people with her beautiful smile and radiantly positive attitude. She was a phenomenal mother, grandmother, and friend. She will be greatly missed.
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