Seven-year-old Aleksey Golesh and his family arrived in New York in 1991 with $400, a few bags of clothing and a work ethic. That was basically it. Fresh off a 747 from Moscow, they did not know English. They did not know the culture. They just knew that life was volatile and dangerous in their home country of Russia, and the U.S. was a place to start anew.
Aleksey’s grandfathers, both of whom were career military men, told the family repeatedly, “This is bad here. You need to leave if you can.”
