Life story
Lana (Sveta for close friends and family) was born 3 February 1977 near Kiev, Ukraine in a family of teachers. She was very bright, intelligent and beautiful girl, very kind and considerate to others, loved by her family and everyone who knew her. One of the best pupils at school and very talented artistically, she decided to become an artist and went to study art at Kiev University. However on 3rd year of her study she decided that this was not enough, and in the end of 2000 she came to London to study English.
While studying in different English colleges, she started working in the evenings in Silver Service in Grosvenor House Hotel serving high profile parties and ceremonies of awards. At work she met several Russian and Ukrainian speaking girls who were students in London as well. They became friends and were as close as family to each other, because all of them came to London and left their families back in their countries. They helped each other, supported each other, spent together a lot of time going out, to the cinemas, theatres, exhibitions, celebrating each other’s birthdays. She became very close with a Russian girl called Natasha who came from St. Petersburg, Russia and was the youngest person working there, being just 18 at the moment. They started working together all the time and even more time they spent together going to the galleries, theatres or in parks to doing their drawings and paintings. Sveta was like an older sister and adviser for Natasha, helped and supported her in her art studies.
Natasha was the only one girl in their group of friends who lived with her parents, so Sveta met Natasha’s parents and brother and was really loved by them. During those 10 years since they met, the girls studied in different schools and universities, but were always close to each other until the day of Sveta’s tragic death. All friends from Grosvenor House were absolutely shocked by this terrible loss of their favourite friend . Natasha and her family were devastated. This memorial site was built by Natasha and her family in order to tell all the people who knew Sveta during her London years how wonderful she was and to celebrate her short but very bright life with the people who knew her, loved her, to whom she was close during 10 years of her life in London.
After she achieved advanced level in English 1n 2004, she went to William College to study Business Administration (ABE) and graduated with Advanced Diploma. In 2009 – 2010 she went to the University of Gloucestershire (UOG) and graduated with MBA (Finance) with distinction.
During all these years of studying she was working hard supporting herself and her mother back in the Ukraine.
Hard-working, respected by everyone at work and in colleges, she was a fun-loving and outgoing person, loved travelling, sports, meeting new friends – although she always kept in touch with old friends as well.
And of course she loved cycling. She was very considerate and caring person. She really cared about environment and thought that she was doing very good thing cycling to and from work instead of using public transport. Unfortunately, London roads are not very safe for cycling and11 November 2011 she was hit by a truck on notorious Bow roundabout being 2nd cyclist to be killed on this roundabout within 3 weeks and 16th cyclist to be killed on London roads.
She was buried on Central London Cemetery. Hundreds of people came to say farewell to her on the day of her funeral. Hundreds of people who still could not believe that Sveta, Svitlana, Lana is not with us any longer. Her friends and family still feel an empty space in their souls after she was taken from us by this tragic accident. But she is never going to be forgotten. She was like a bright little star in lives of the people who loved her. And now she is going to live forever in our hearts and our memory.
Rest in peace our dear beautiful friend!