Tamara spent her entire career working on the structural engineering of Ukrainian cities, progressing from a technical drawing copyist to a first-category structural engineer. In recognition of her professional achievements, she was awarded the Medal of a Labour Veteran.
Now retired, she looks back warmly on her working years and the wonderful team she was part of. Over almost four decades in civil engineering, she witnessed a changing world: countries disappeared and new independent states emerged, while buildings were constructed and cities continued to grow.
Today, when she walks through her hometown Lutsk, there is hardly a day when a familiar building does not bring back a memory of her professional life. She can look at a building and remember working on its structure; looking at another, she can almost see through it as if it were an X-ray, knowing where the beams are, where the pipes run and how the different elements fit together. She is proud of the contribution she made to the city she lives in through the buildings she helped engineer, many of which have stood for decades and are likely to remain for many years to come.
In retirement, Tamara enjoys tending to her garden and growing flowers and vegetables. Together with her husband, whom she met when they were both young engineering students, she can look back on more than 50 years of building their hometown, brick by brick, while raising a strong and loving family of their own.