ANNISQUAM: Kira Volkoff Robinson, 99, died on November 7, 2008 of natural causes in her house in Annisquam. Born on May 31, 1909 in Riga, Latvia, the daughter of an Imperial Russian prosecutor, she spent her early childhood in Latvia, St. Petersburg, Russia and the family estates in the Ukraine. When the Russian Revolution broke out, her mother, Natalia Poggenpohl Volkoff, single-handedly brought her and her grandmother through the attendant political chaos to the Black Sea where she persuaded the commander of a small French naval vessel to take her small family to Constantinople. After two years in Constantinople, the family of three women arrived in the United States, settling in Schenectady, New York in 1921. Kira subsequently graduated from Cornell University with a degree in French literature and began graduate work at McGill University before marrying Howard A. Robinson of Schenectady.
In the course of the years Kira raised three children and accompanied her husband to Sweden and France where he served in the Foreign Service. In 1957 the family settled in Garden City, New York, where Howard was Professor of Physics at Adelphi University. Kira soon became Professor of Russian Language and Literature at Adelphi and for many years served as Head of the Department of Modern Languages. She and Howard retired in 1974 and moved to Annisquam. After Howard died in 1998, Kira remained in the community in the house that she would often say reminded her of the one in which she lived as a child in the Ukraine. The arc of her life thus allowed her to witness the birth and collapse of the Soviet Union.
She is survived by her three children Marina Huyler of Revelstoke, British Columbia, Peter of Minneapolis, and Holbrook of Cambridge, eight grandchildren, Frank and Scott Huyler, Esther, Alexander, Thomas and Benjamin Robinson, Philip and Lodovico Robinson-Ferlito and three great grandchildren Colin, Hannah and Chloë Huyler.
At her request there will be no funeral service. Donations in her memory may be made to Sawyer Free Library, 2 Dale Ave., Gloucester, MA 01930. There will be an open house on Tuesday, November 11 from 3 P.M. to 5 P.M. at her home in Annisquam for those who may wish to join in remembering her.