Peter Lysenko died on January 1, 2025, in Provo, Utah.
(The following was provided by Berg Mortuary on January 1, 2025:)
Peter Lysenko
Peter Lysenko was born on January 20, 1936, in Islam-Terek, Crimea, USSR, current-day Ukraine, the oldest child of Fedor and Bertha Lysenko. His childhood in Russia was interrupted by the German invasion and occupation during World War II. To escape the war, his parents left their home in Russia in 1943 when Peter was 7 with a mass of refugees and headed west into a Europe gripped by the terrors of the Nazi regime. In a defining moment of their journey in 1945 in Austria when Peter was 9, his parents sent him alone across a bridge to freedom. Then, later that night, through unexpected miracles, both of his parents also made it across the bridge.
The spirit of sacrifice, grit, and faith typified the next eight years of their lives in Europe as they focused on survival. They scratched-out a living in Germany and then Belgium where Peter’s sister Louise was born. Finally, in 1953 at the age of 17, Peter and his family were sponsored by the Tolstoy Foundation to fly to America and were also sponsored by the Ernest Wilkinson Family to live in Provo, Utah.
Upon arrival in America, Peter spoke three languages: his native Russian, German, and Flemish. None of these languages helped him on his first date when he took Janelle Brimhall to Junior Prom. Janelle remembered that though he couldn’t speak much English, Peter had a nice smile and was a good dancer. Peter’s story of that first date was “that’s when I met the angel that I married.” After five years of friendship, Peter and Janelle began a lifetime dance together when they were married in the Salt Lake Temple on June 24, 1959. They shared a marriage of over 65 years which included their five children: Michael born in Indiana, Jonathan born in Maine, David born in Utah, and Laura and Danny born in New York.
To a Russian boy raised in scarcity, America’s opportunities of education, growth and prosperity, beckoned almost without limit. And Peter embraced them to the full. As an undergrad at BYU, he was given permission by the administration to set up BYU’s first soccer club, a sport largely unknown in Utah in the 1950s. He decided on graduate studies in Russian at Indiana University. As a native-Russian speaking American in the 1960s, he found opportunities to translate for prominent global figures such as US Senator Gruening and USSR Ambassador Dobrynin. As a Russian professor, Peter started the Russian programs at Bowdoin College in Maine in 1962 and at BYU in 1963.
One of Peter’s defining qualities was his search to find and share the meaningful in life. He looked for moving experiences in science, art, literature, history, and popular culture. His office shelves have hundreds of cassette tapes – an early version of podcasts – and his library is full of Great Courses DVDs. Scraps of paper with ideas he jotted down are everywhere among his effects. Whenever he found a gem, he loved to share the idea, the quote, the article or the broadcast with family and friends. His teaching was memorable. Several of Peter’s Russian students who went on to impressive academic careers, looked back on their coursework, and they uniformly agree: Peter Lysenko was their hardest and best teacher.
By 1968, after five years of teaching Russian, the Cold War had ended America’s enthusiasm for Russian studies, so Peter switched careers. The late 1960s was the golden era of airline travel, so Peter joined TWA and began a career as a flight service manager, flying on the 747s from JFK to European cities every week for twenty years.
When the 1970s suddenly offered America a new world of convenience with McDonald’s and fast food, Peter’s discerning palate wanted more than just a burger with ketchup and pickles. So, he approached Burger King and was awarded the first franchise in Utah which he opened in 1975 in Provo.
Peter loved the grand dining experience and was drawn to fine culinary adventures: Lobster in Maine, Alfredo in Rome, and Crab in Miami. In any city he visited with a rooftop or revolving restaurant, he ate there: Chicago, New York, Frankfurt, and Munich and on and on. At home he sought to perfect his own recipes: “we have finally come up with a Salmon recipe that is worthy of our efforts”, or “your mother just made a phenomenal Borscht today, one of the best she’s ever made”. For Peter, a shared meal of high quality was among the highest expressions of life.
In the late 1980s, after eighteen years of flying and fifteen years of owning and operating four restaurants, Peter retired to focus on his personal interests, including opening a restaurant of his own, “Broiler Express,” at the age of 75. During these later years, Peter found chances to visit his five children, twenty-one grandchildren, and other loved ones across the country. In the 1990s, he started trading stock options which kept him alert and learning until his last breath. Finally in 2013, when Chevrolet introduced the C7 Corvette, a car that to him equaled Ferrari in design and performance but at 1/8th the price, he bought one. He put a “Made in the USA” sticker on his new C7 and proudly drove it across the US. He loved to share rides in his Corvette with his family and friends.
Of all the children born in 1936 in Crimea, USSR, and of all the people he crossed paths with along his trail, Peter considered himself the luckiest one in terms of how his life turned out. He came to America, lived the American dream, found the gospel of Jesus Christ, raised a family, and married and lived sixty-five years with the love of his life.