Mychailo Grygorenko

Grygorenko, Mychailo MADISON The Service for the Dead will be sung for Mychailo Grygorenko, age 88, of Madison, at 11 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 29, 2008, at the ASSUMPTION GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH, 11 N. 7th St., Madison. He died on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008, at HospiceCare in Fitchburg. Mr. Grygorenko was born in the fall of 1919, near the city of Dnepropetrovsk in central Ukraine, one of the 10 children of Stepan and Maria. Several of his siblings and his mother died in the Ukrainian famines of the 1930s, but he survived to train as a mechanic and chauffeur. He went on to work on the construction of DneproGES. During World War II he fought on Ukraines Western front under Marshal Zhukov. Following the war, Mr. Grygorenko was interned at the Lysenko Displaced Persons Camp in Hannover, Germany, where he met and married his wife of 60 years, Pelahija Voroshylyn Grygorenko. He, his wife and daughter, his parents- and sister-in-law came to the United States on Memorial Day, 1951, sponsored as war refugees by the Methodist Church in Delavan. A second daughter was born in the U.S. Mr. Grygorenko has lived permanently in Madison since 1952, where he worked for Red Dot Potato Chips (later Frito-Lay) and Edgewood College. He was a member of the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church. Survivors include his wife, Paula, of the home; two daughters, Maria Carlson and her husband, Thomas, of Lawrence, Kan., and Anna Vanderhoef and her husband, Richard L., of Cottage Grove; three grandchildren, Rev. Dn. R. Michael Vanderhoef and his wife, Patricia, Melanie Heinrich, and Andrea Gersich, all of Madison; and two great-grandchildren, Brandon and Bryce Heinrich. Friends may call on Thursday, Feb. 28, 2008, at the GUNDERSON EAST FUNERAL HOME, 5203 Monona Drive, where the family will receive them from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m., with a Trisagion service at 6:30 p.m. The family suggests memorials to the Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, or CareWisconsin First Inc. sent in care of Gunderson Funeral Home.