George Kanakoff, a brief memoir

[ameliede at EARTHLINK.NET]

         I met George Kanakoff [his American 
professional spelling] when I became a high 
school student volunteer in the Los Angeles 
County Museum of History and Science Invertebrate 
Paleontology Lab, around 1955.    He was a short 
wiry man with a wonderful waxed handlebar 
moustache.  We volunteers­his willing slave 
workers­called him Uncle George.  But his real 
name was Yuryi/Georgii Pavlovich Kanakov, and he 
was a White Russian, as they were known.  In 1914 
he had graduated from a military academy, and 
also, perhaps from the same institution, had a 
specialty in Middle Eastern Languages.  In World 
War I he was an artillery officer, and he also 
fought in the Civil War.  From the fact that he 
escaped through Turkey (his Turkish came in 
handy) I assume he was in Wrangle’s army, which 
evacuated to Turkey in November, 1920.  Exactly 3 
years later, a 25 year old Youri Kanakoff arrived 
at Ellis Island on a ship out of Constantinople.
         Some time in the 20’s he came to Los 
Angeles, and began working as a common laborer I 
believe, for George C. Page, the excavator of the 
Tar Pits and the father of Southern California 
paleontology.    Purely from on-the-job training, 
and his amateur’s interest in mollusks, he 
eventually rose to the position of Curator of 
Invertebrate Paleontology at the County 
Museum.   Some idea of his many scientific 
publications can be gleaned by googling his 
American authorial name:  George P. 
Kanakoff.  Over the years he amassed a very large 
collection of mollusca and other phyla for the museum.
         He was active in the first wave Russian 
emigre community in Los Angeles.  For many years 
he published a mimeographed newsletter “Soglasie” 
for the Russian community.  UCLA still has a run 
1953-1992.   He also opened a bookstore on 
Western Blvd called “Izboushka”.   And he also 
taught Russian, and for that course he prepared 
the handwriting sheets that I have 
distributed.  At the bottom of one sheet is his 
“real” name: Yu[rii] P. Kanakov.  I do not 
remember where he taught the course; my best 
guess is either at LACC night school or the 
Russian Church, where he was a member.  He 
originally prepared the calligraphy sheets for 
the course, and if I remember correctly, when I 
told him I had started Russian (1958) and showed 
him my Lunt grammar, and he saw the handwriting 
exercises therein, he handed me his writing sheets.
         On Saturdays, working in his lab, I 
learned much about his background.  His most 
dramatic story was that his father 
(grandfather?), on a visit to England, had met 
the wife of an English aristocrat, swept her off 
her feet, and took her back to Russia as his 
wife.   He also claimed to have some Tatar blood, 
which was easy to believe.  On paleo digs, he 
wore his WW I olive-brown uniform knickers tucked 
into knee-high boots.  He was tireless in the 
field.  He was like a living Russian novel to 
this high school student, before ever reading a Russian novel.
         When it came to the lab work (mostly 
sorting through buckets of sand and fine gravel 
looking for millimeter-sized shells and bones.), 
he was a stern overseer.  But he would take his 
volunteers for lunch in the basement museum 
cafeteria, with its classic WPA murals.   The 
level of care he expected can be seen in his 
handwriting sheets, which really are guides to 
Cyrillic calligraphy, with their attention to 
thicks and thins, and even the direction of 
strokes.   For me this craft, requiring an ink 
pen capable of either thick or thin lines, is a lost art.

I beg the indulgence of my SEEJ colleagues in sending this little memoir.

Jules Levin
Los Angeles

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