Post War Career and Family
After his return to the Soviet Union, he studied at the Air Force Academy, where he graduated in 1954. Around that same time, in Moscow, he met an art student - Yulya Alekseyevna. Soon they began dating and going together to the Bolshoy Theater and others. In 1956 he got his first command duty as deputy commander of a regiment placed in Machulishchi, Belarus. In 1957 he proposed marriage to Yulya, and she accepted. Already married, that same year Kramarenko received his second command assignment - the 167th IAP in Georgia. Soon other commissions followed all over the Soviet Union, and he was also blessed by the births of his son Aleksandr and his daughter Nadezhda.
In 1970 he received a new appointment, this time on foreign soil: the Iraqi Air Force had bought brand new MiG-21s, and Kramarenko helped Iraqi pilots and officers to learn to operate the Soviet aircraft and trained them in tactics. A similar duty followed in Algeria in the mid-1970s. Finally, already a Major-General of the Air Force, Kramarenko retired in 1977.
Today Sergei Kramarenko is the vice-president of the Rossiskaya Assotsiatsya Geroev (Russian Association of Heroes, the War Veteran Association, named that way because many of his members are Heroes of the Soviet Union), author of his autobiography and collaborator in many other books where Russian pilots have openly described his wartime experiences. Sergei Kramarenko lives currently in his flat in Moscow together with his wife, receiving the love of his daughter and four grandsons.
Read more about this topic: Sergei Kramarenko
Famous quotes containing the words post, war, career and/or family:
“Fear death?—to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I doubt that I would have taken so many leaps in my own writing or been as clear about my feminist and political commitments if I had not been anointed as early as I was. Some major form of recognition seems to have to mark a woman’s career for her to be able to go out on a limb without having her credentials questioned.”
—Ruth Behar (b. 1956)
“Realizing that his time was nearly spent, he gave full oral instructions about his burial and the manner in which he wished to be remembered.... A few minutes later, feeling very tired, he left the room, remarking, ‘I have no disposition to leave this precious circle. I love to be here surrounded by my family and friends.’ Then he gave them his blessing and said, ‘I am ready to go and I wish you goodnight.’”
—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)