The News of a Century!

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By: Fr. Andrew Smith of Nativity of the Holy Virgin Orthodox Church in
Menlo Park, CA | May 15th, 2021

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Nativity of the Holy Virgin parishioner Eroeda Luck turned 100 on Friday, February 5th. On Sunday the 7th, the parish, along with ‘Eda,’ gathered on Zoom for a centennial celebration. Parish council member Eugenia Orlova and choir director Olga Vasilieva found out Eda’s favorite songs from her childhood and assigned their performance to various talented parishioners, including ‘Moscow Nights,’ which the birthday girl’s father used to sing to her when she was a little girl. In addition to the musical numbers were a few thematically appropriate poems in Russian, and even a rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ sung by Romanian parishioners, the Cosovanus.

The strength and determination shown by Eroeda in (easily and robustly) living to 100 and beyond is not surprising in the least to those who know her. Born Eroeda Nicholayevna Sinitskaya in Harbin, China in 1921 to Russian parents, she was the first of her family to make a new home in America, eventually securing passage for her sister and mother (her father already being deceased). She married Stanford University Chemistry Professor James Murray Luck in 1947. But from our perspective, the most impressive part of Eda’s life has been her steadfast dedication to the St. Elizabeth Sisterhood, an auxiliary organization within the parish. For decades she has consistently come to the parish hall on Saturdays to prep the Sunday fellowship meal, eventually arriving by electric wheelchair once her legs began to fail her. The classic Russian recipes she developed are still the only ones followed in the church kitchen!

The Nativity of the Holy Virgin Orthodox Church was founded in 1952, meaning it is a good deal younger than its most senior parishioner. And yet, there is one important part of the parish that is a good deal older — the church building itself, established in 1886!

Well-to-do Episcopalians in the towns of Menlo Park and Atherton got tired of traveling 4 miles each way to Redwood City on Sunday mornings to attend church. In the Summer the dusty dirt road ruined their Sunday best, and in the Winter it took hours for the bogged down carriages to be pulled through the sloppy mud. So eventually they pooled their resources and built Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, where even Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University, once worshipped.

The little church was still in use when our parish was founded in ‘52 by Prince Vasily Romanov and other Russian expats, many of whom, like Eroeda Luck, hailed from China. The orthodox community rented the space from the episcopalian parish for $25 a month and held liturgies later in the morning, after it had already been used for the Protestant worship service. By the mid 1950s, Holy Trinity parish was too large for the church built for it some 65 years earlier, but instead of expanding the existing building, it was decided to build a brand new church. Rather than raze the historical structure that had served them so well, they donated it to the ‘Russian Parish’ for free – but with one caveat – it had to be moved!
So in October 1957 the whole church building was moved across the train tracks and the El Camino thoroughfare to its new home at Crane St and Oak Grove Ave, where it remains to this day beside a majestic oak tree. However, this being the fourth location of the church (Holy Trinity parish had it moved twice), it gained the moniker of ‘the movingest church in town.’ Now with its very own worship space, the parish spent the next decade establishing a rectory on the property and building a parish social hall.

In the 2000s Parish Council Vice President Vladimir Ermakoff and his wife Natalia commissioned local iconographer Vladimir Krassovsky to write icons for the entire interior of the church building. Now complete, this project transformed the worship space’s white-washed protestant aesthetic into a very beautiful, and very orthodox, jewel box.

American on the outside, but thoroughly Russian on the inside, this church building quite appropriately reflects the character of the parish that calls it a spiritual home. While belonging to the Orthodox Church in America, subsequent waves of Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian immigrants to work in the technology fields of Silicon Valley have preserved the community’s Russian roots, and not just in its iconography. Church Slavonic is still used (along with English) in liturgical services, and the parish is one of the few in the diocese that still observes the Old Calendar.

But no matter the demographics, no matter how old or how young, the parish of the Nativity of the Holy Virgin strives to welcome all who enter its doors. And whether we say it “многая лета” or “la mulți ani” or any other way, the parish once again prays that God grant Eroeda MANY YEARS!