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C00002 00002		Vera was born in Dairen in north eastern China.  Her family
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	Vera was born in Dairen in north eastern China.  Her family
was one of many that left Russia.  Russian was her first language,
but she learned English in a school run by American missionaries.
World War II under the Japanese was a time of great hardship
and so was the subsequent Russian occupation.  After the return
of Chinese sovereignty in 1952, Vera and her mother emigrated
to Brazil.  There she married and was subsequently separated and
moved to Canada in 1959.  In 1961 she moved to New York and went
to work for IBM, supported her mother and became interested in
hiking and mountaineering.  Her mother died in 1970, and in 1973,
Vera moved to California continuing with IBM.  She began to climb
higher mountains in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Alaska, Afghanistan,
the Caucasus and in South America.  Her most notable climb was
a solo ascent of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the western
hemisphere.  It was not intended to be solo, but everyone else
in the party dropped out from fatigue, altitude sickness and
discouragement, and Vera finished the climb spending about a week
alone.  In 1977 she and Margaret Young climbed Sajama, the highest
mountain in Bolivia, finishing the climb in the dark.  The Annapurna
climb, of which she was one of the original organizers, was the
to have been the climax of her climbing.  When she began climbing, she
already thought she was starting at too late an age and never expected
to climb on such a high mountain.