Nicholas Reswow was a man who loved his family and the new country that he made his home more than 60 years ago.
He died Monday at his Detroit home at the age of 93, a month shy of his 94th birthday.
Born in Pensa, Russia, on May 1, 1918, he was the youngest of five children and left school at the age of 8 to work on his father's farm and later worked for the district's phone company. He was drafted into the Red Army at the age of 18 and was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War II. He escaped and worked as a mechanic for the U.S. Army at a Munich displaced person camp where he met and married Nadejda Silos, a seamstress.
The couple, carrying a suitcase apiece, immigrated to the United States, sailing past the Statue of Liberty and their names appear on Ellis Island logs. They traveled to Versailles, Ky., where their U.S. sponsor, World Church Services, found them work on a horse farm belonging to a state legislator. Nicholas worked as a farmhand and his pregnant wife worked as a nanny, caring for the horse farm owner's young child.
The Tolstoy Foundation then helped the family move to Goshen, N.Y., where Nicholas found work on an apple farm. His wife's relatives, who also arrived in the United States, heard of job opportunities in Detroit and they moved to Michigan.
Nicholas and his father-in-law worked for many years at the Silvercup Bakery. On Saturday mornings, he would walk his children to Russian school at the Orthodox church. After the bakery closed its doors, he found a job with the Detroit Public Libraries as a handyman in their maintenance department. Many discarded books found their way from the garbage bins to his bookcase at his Detroit home, where he and his wife nurtured the love of reading to their children. He was proud of his four children, who all finished college.
Nicholas took English classes and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. applying for and receiving a passport.
When he retired from the Detroit Public Libraries, he loved to take the bus to Vic Tanny, swimming and exercising five days a week. He loved to read books in Russian. A self-taught musician, he played the balalaika, a Russian instrument. A video of him playing the balalaika in 2009 appears on YouTube. (Feb 08 2009 VID00028)
He never owned a car. He frequently rode his bicycle to his daughter's home some two miles away, until he turned 88 and started carrying a cane. He loved playing pool with his great-grandkids and spending time with his two dogs, Rasputin and Katya. A tinkerer, he enjoyed repairing old equipment, like lawn mowers.
A member of St. Peter & Paul Russian Orthodox Cathedral, he helped with bingo nights, visiting the elderly and sick at hospitals and nursing homes and later with making pierogi with his daughter, Vera Brewer and her husband, Deveran, as a fund-raising effort for the west side church. Prostate cancer and heart problems slowed him down during the past several years and he was lovingly cared for by his youngest son, John, during the past year.
His wife, Nadejda, died in 1994. In addition to his daughter Vera Brewer (Deveran) of Grosse Pointe Park and son John of Old Greenwich, Conn., he is survived by daughters Olga (Bruce) Griffin of Wadsworth, Ohio, and Luba (Dr. Donald) Miller of Shawnee, Kansas; sister-in-law Vera Glush and husband Nicholas of Detroit; grandchildren Tanya (Mark) Dely of Germantown, Tenn., Andrew Brewer of Grosse Pointe, Mich.; Byron Brewer of Atlanta, Ga., Natalie (Andrew) Delmege of Arlington, Va; Will Miller of San Francisco, Ben Miller of Corpus Christi, Texas, Anne Miller of Shawnee, Kansas, Andrew Reswow of Boston, Mass., and Sarah Reswow of Old Greenwich, Ct.; and great-grandchildren, Nicholas, Gregory, Catherine and John Theodore of Germantown, Tenn., and Abigail and Thomas Arthur of Arlington, Va.
Funeral services Friday at St. Peter & Paul Russian Orthodox Cathedral are being handled by the Salowich and Stevens Funeral Home (3833 Livernois Ave, Detroit, Mich. 48210.) Burial will be at Woodlawn Cemetery.
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