Galina Tokmakoff

Galina was born in Harbin, China in 1923. She was the daughter of Ekaterina Stanislava Kolpakova of Poland and Victor Vasilivitch Iskvorin of Uzbekistan/Russia. Her mother died in childbirth and her dad two years later. An orphan at age four, she went to Shanghai to live with her aunt Julia Vasilvitch Fayeshevitch (Iskvorina) who adopted and raised her. She attended Shanghai Public School Number One.

In 1944 she married Andrew Tokmakoff in Shanghai. Her marriage was blessed by Archbishop (later Saint) John of Shanghai and San Francisco. Her marriage lasted 67 years. Her daughter Veronica was born in Shanghai in 1945. In 1949 the family immigrated to Tubabao in the Philippines. The family ended up in San Francisco in 1951. Andrew’s Uncle Mitrophan Tokmakoff (Walter Norton) was one of the founders of the Church of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in San Francisco in 1949. In this church, their second child, Mikhail, was baptized.

The Tokmakoff family moved to Los Angeles in 1965. The family belonged to Holy Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Cathedral, where they were very active. Andrew served as church treasurer and worked at the candle stand for any years. He also led the chess club, which met Sundays after services on the church grounds. Members of all three Russian churches participated in the club.

Galina was very active in the Sisterhood, Religious Books for Russia and President of the Russian Children’s Welfare Society. She also belonged to her children’s school PTAs and the Los Feliz Women’s Club where on weekends she would serve refreshments to Marines at the Hollywood USO. When the Marines would comment they had nothing to do, she would encourage them to write letters home to their mothers. Galina also was an active Bridge Card player.

In accordance with her membership in Religious Books for Russia, she took several bibles in 1990 to believers in the then Soviet Union. On the same trip, a lady at a church candle stand in a Sochi church gave Mikhail a Russian religious prayer book to take back to America.

In the early 1970s she encouraged her group to donate money to an American convert to Orthodoxy who was going to attend the Orthodox seminary. Galina said the student might some day return to Holy Virgin Mary. The student was Vincent Peterson, who is now Archbishop Benjamin of San Francisco.

Her husband Andrew preceded Galina in death in 2011. She is survived by her daughter Veronica Tokmakoff, of El Cerrito, California; her son Michael (Susan) Tokmakoff, of Glendale, California; three granddaughters Aliecia (John) of Rockwall, Texas; Marina (Vince) Erece of Ontario, California and Valerie (Jason) of Los Angeles; and 12 great-grandchildren.