“I was scared the first time I came to school,” remembered Nick Lekanoff. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t speak English…. The only thing I used to say was, ‘Yeah.’” Nick and his brother Steve stuck it out, however, and the records show that these fifteen and sixteen year old boys spent 173 days in first grade. Eventually, the teacher had had enough. “Your dad needs your help out there,” Nick was told.16 Simeon Lekanoff was ill. He had returned to Unalaska, the village of his birth, and been elected to the church committee. In 1941 both he and his brother Stephan, who had become a much-respected elder on St. George, died. ...
Nick Lekanoff was seven months older than Nick Galaktionoff. Both were born in 1925. Nick Galaktionoff’s mother was Parascovia Lekanoff, Nick Lekanoff’s half-sister. Although they were technically uncle and nephew, they were more like cousins. They were two of seven or eight children of about the same age who played, often barefoot, along the shore and in the high growth of grass and wild celery in front of the village and climbed the hills that rose around the village. Both boys had sisters. Molly was five years older than Nick Galaktionoff while Stepinida was a year younger than Nick Lekanoff. A favorite pastime was hide-and-seek, kuukala [or kuukaadali], in the high wild rye in front of the village. Yakeem Petikoff, tall and thin and 24 or 25 years older than the two boys, occasionally donned a disguise, complete with horns, and frightened them home. He didn’t want them down near the water too late. “We’d run like hell from the beach to home,” Nick Galaktionoff recalled. The boys played with the boat Pete Olsen had built for his adopted son, John, big enough to get into but never used on the water. They would sometimes go to Olsen’s pigeon coop and admire the birds. Olsen occasionally lined up the children and marched them down the short road that ran through the village and had them pull out weeds along it. Then he would turn them around, walk them back, and reward them with candy.
