The Person I Admire

My father Vladimir is the person who had the greatest impact on me. He inspired me to do two easy things. First is to study always and everything. Second is not to be afraid of any work.

My father wanted to study all his life. He was born in a little town in Belarus in 1921. His family was poor. When he was 14, he studied at middle school. After school, he went to the locomotive depot and worked there. Ater middle school graduation, he went to Kiev and studied in College of Armed Forces from 1939 to 1941. During World War II, he served as a tank commander in the Far East of the USSR and participated in the liberation of China. In 1950-1955 he studied at Moscow Academy of Armed Forces. Why am I writing about that? My father said to me: “The way to knowledge is hard, but knowledge doesn’t have a weight. You won`t need to carry it on your back”. I am remembering these words always.

Also, I got one more lesson from my father. My father Vladimir didn’t like to sit idle. He especially loved to repair some mechanisms. When he fixed my bike, he explained to me the functioning of the brakes or gear shift. He made me clean and wipe down my iron horse after every ride. In the middle of the 1970s, he bought a bad car. Despite problems with spare parts, he repaired it in less than one year. In 1981, when he was 60 years old, he bought a plot of land and built a two-story house, sauna, gazebo and barn. Helping him I learned to use different tools from hummer to lathe. I’m not afraid to use metals, wood, glass, stone or bricks. My knowledge and skills are helping me to do any job in my son`s house or yard.

To summarize, my father convinced me that knowledge is a basis of skills, and any goal can be achieved with hard work. I admire my father for his lessons. I’m glad that my children learned this experience from me.