VHL draft hopeful Joseph Lenin is often asked how he got his name. “It’s normally the first question I’m asked,” he says with a chuckle, “It’ started when my family left Russia in 1917.”
Soon after the Bolshevik Revolution began in Russia, Joseph’s grandfather Nicholas chose to leave the country of his ancestors rather than be enlisted into the army once he became of age. Nicholas Lenin was worried that sharing a last name in common with the leader of the revolution would put his life in danger, as well as the life of his girlfriend, and future wife, Greta. With the great war raging across the continent, Nicholas hoped to find refuge on a ship departing through the Black Sea. Nicholas was able to secure passage, for a hefty fee he always said, aboard a commercial ship. He did not know where it was headed. The captain spoke English, and almost no Russian, and Nicholas believed he would be headed to England. The trip to England should have taken a little over a week, but after two weeks, Nicholas and Greta became alarmed. They had no idea where they were headed, and no one on the ship could communicate the destination to them effectively. After twenty days at sea, they arrived at their destination. It didn’t take long for the couple to discover that they were not in England, but instead had arrived in the United States. The ship had traveled to the port city of Brunswick, Georgia, and this was where the couple would lay the foundation of their soon-to-be family. The two would eventually find work, buy an apartment, learn English, and start a family.
Joseph Lenin did not grow up in a typical sports home.
“My parents actually hated sports when I was very young. They were never on in my house and I knew very little about any sport. It wasn’t until I was about 12 did I begin to get exposed to sports as I spent more time with my grandpa, and things exploded from there.”
After his parents split, Lenin’s father, Alan won custody of Joseph and his sister Anna. His father, Nicholas moved in to help raise the two. Nicholas played some baseball and soccer with people in his neighborhood growing up.
“My grandfather felt that he was able to learn more about the country and its people from playing sports with them. Even without knowing how to play at first, he learned the sports, and English through his neighbors.”
Nicholas loved watching sports. He loved baseball and enjoyed American Football, but knew nothing about basketball or hockey.
“I would sit with my grandfather after school and watch baseball. We would watch the Braves every evening, and he would tape any day game I missed and we would watch it that evening.”
Joseph developed a passion for sports quickly, and looked to get involved in any sport he could. His former middle school coach, Kyle Kluber, recalled the day he came to the gym after school asking to get involved, “He was so eager! I saw him by the sign-up boards and he didn’t seem to know what to do so I approached him and asked him what sport he was interested in.”
Joseph remembered that day, “I told coach Kluber I wanted to play them all. I had never played any sport yet and I wasn’t really sure which I would like most, so I wanted to try them all!”
Try he did. Joseph practiced and played baseball, basketball, and soccer over the course of the next few months.
“I didn’t really like playing baseball. I loved watching it, but I felt I wasn’t nearly as good as any of the other boys who had been playing for years. I was fast though, and I picked up soccer easily. However, there was something about basketball that stuck out to me. I liked the way that plays were called to pass the ball around the court. It was a lot of fun for me.”
The following school year, Joseph stopped doing any other sport, and focused only on basketball. He would become the school’s backup point guard but would see limited action. His coach recalled how much that bothered young Joseph, “He wanted to play so badly. He was always asking me he could be subbed in. He was just so raw. He had only been handling a basketball for a few months and even at twelve or so years old, there were kids who were just better then him at the time.”
Joseph was determined to become better. His grandfather took him to the local library where they found books on basketball. Nicholas Lenin was determined to learn the sport and help his grandson get better at it. It paid off. He would become a starter, and was set to become the youngest starter at his local high school once he entered it.
However, in the summer before he would begin high school, an ice rink would open in his neighborhood. He went on day with some of his friends, and caught his first glimpse of hockey.
“I had never seen hockey growing up. Growing up in Georgia, hockey wasn’t that popular. There were the Thrashers in Atlanta, but that was across the state. Hockey stood out to me that day. The way the players glided across the ice, sometimes backwards, and passed the puck so effortlessly, I was hooked. I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen ice skating or hockey at this point in my life, and it was a whole new world to me.”
Joseph abandoned basketball and wanted to learn hockey. His high school did not have an ice hockey or field hockey team or club, so Joseph had to look elsewhere.
“The only place that offered youth hockey was a rink which was twenty miles away. My grandfather was the best. He didn’t object when I dropped basketball and started hockey suddenly. He just agreed to help me. He would drive me to the local rink every day so I could learn to skate, and would drive me to every practice and game the following year once I was capable enough to join the team.”
Joseph and his grandfather would practice every day. Nicholas picked up anything he could find in the library about hockey, in order to help his grandson learn the sport.
“There weren’t a lot of books or resources available to learn hockey in Brunswick. The books he did find were actually on figure skating. He used those books in order to teach me how to skate, even though he had no idea how to himself. He had a bad hip and was too afraid of falling, but that never stopped him from yelling at me from the stands about my form.”
Joseph would play hockey for all his four years of high school, even after his grandfather passed his junior year. He decided to forgo college and enter the draft.
“My grandfather helped me so much in my life. He’s the reason I’m here. Without him I would have never gotten into any sport, or discovered my passion in hockey. I wanted to reward his efforts as soon as I could, so I have chosen to enter the VHL draft.”
But how did he get his name?
“My father always viewed our last name as a joke. We shared the same last name as Vladimir Lenin, and he thought it was just hilarious to name me after Joseph Stalin as well. My grandfather never found my name nearly as funny as my father, but he never told my dad that.”
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[S58] - C - Joseph Lenin
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Joseph Lenin: The tale of a grandfather and grandson discovering new worlds together. [1/2]
I'm going to start some other works tomorrow. Once the draft happens I'll do some media posts as well. I guess my only question right now is does this mean I get 10 points for this? And how exactly do I go about adding them to my character?
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Introducing myself!
