Eleonora’s extraordinary life began at birth on a military base in Orlov Region, Russia, where she was born to a major of the Soviet Russian army, Andrew Karaman, of Greek origin and a Ukrainian mother, Maria Tertyshinikova.

At age three, during a German attack, she was tossed onto a Russian plane in Belarus, and with the young daughter of a woman killed in the bombing, flown to Georgia, the girl becoming her sister; they and her brother, Volodya, survived the war as refugees. Her father was killed in the war.

Eleonora, with her mother’s wise and informed direction, became an honors student, finally winning the gold medal on graduation. She later graduated in math from Moscow State University. After graduation from an engineering institute and being a member of the first class graduating in cybernetics in Russia, specializing in computer programing, she worked in Kazan as a top programmer directing the plan for the Kamaz truck factory. She was recruited to head a computer lab in the Kremlin where she worked for over a decade, creating the computer archive for medals awarded by the government to those serving in the Great Patriotic War against the Germans and those achieving highly in other areas. She knew the Soviet government top personnel from the inside, but on constantly being asked to join the party, when she was young, she said she was “too young,” and when older, she said she was “too old to attend meetings”; she loved her work, not the politics.

Much of her later life and the heroics of her saving the life of her husband, Ralph, in Moscow, is told in his biography, A Rebel’s Ruba’iyat, (c2011, PSU Bk St). She leaves a son, Dima; and a daughter, Daria (Dasha) and her husband, Kostya; four grandchildren, Kate, Alosha, Misha and Dima, all of Moscow; and by marriage, Lee and her husband, Frank, Genji and his wife, Miori, Kenji and his wife, Monica; grandchildren, Bryson, Marcus, Jenni, Sho and Emma; and great-grandchildren, Chris and Benjamin. She also leaves a brother-in-law, Eldred; and his son, Ted.

The family wishes to recognize the fine service of Kaiser-Permanente and the extraordinarily sensitive help of their Hospice Service during the last five days of Eleonora’s courageous two and a half year battle against cancer and Parkinson’s. She died at home in her daughter’s embrace, her husband, Ralph, standing by.

In addition to a full professional life, Eleonora was an expert in ceramics, weaving beautiful wool sweaters, fashion design and gardening. Friends swore she could make billiard balls grow in potting soil; she didn’t celebrate these facts, but her friends did. Lastly, Eleonora believed that while you get your relatives without choice, you get the friends you earn; she had priceless ones, including, but not limited to the Silvermans, Chaffeys, Kristofs, Carpenters, Kimbrells, Whites, Lairds, Erdmans, Daileys, Nussbaums, Eatons and Neils that beautified the last two decades of her life in America which she loved and of which she became a naturalized citizen, having traveled through over half of its 50 states. Private memorials are being planned in Portland and Moscow.