Irina Belotelkin - Young Lady

Young Lady

Irina (her early transcription was Irene) lived with her brother in Hartford, Connecticut, attending post-graduate programs at Hartford Public High School in 1931. Her status as a visiting student was threatened when a spurned suitor reported her for working as an artist. She was returned to Ellis Island. Through the intercession of, and personal interview with, Fannie Perkins (then New York State's industrial commissioner and soon to become the first woman to serve as Secretary of Labor) Irina won a reprieve. Later, in a ceremony conducted by Chief Justice Hughes, she became a naturalized citizen. She studied voice, drama and opera. She finished fashion design school in New York City. She served one season as social director at the Sagamore Hotel, where one day her fast action saved the life of the senior Bechtel, Warren A. Bechtel, cementing a life-long friendship with the family.

She was an avid, and ultimately champion, fencer. In one match, January 7, 1934, reported in the New York Times in which her brother, Paul Roudakoff, also competed, the New York Times reports: The Hartford Fencers Club women's team upset New York University's intercollegiate championship women's fencing unit, 10 to 6. Miss Irene (sic) Roudakoff, Hartford, in foils, defeated Miss Seiden, 5-4, Miss Suskin, 5-4, and Miss Mildred Atlas (substitute for Miss Hurwitz), 5-2. She lost to NYU's Miss Harriett Graver, 5-4.

Later she was awarded first prize, in foils, at the 1937 N.E. Women's Championship.

She gave fencing lessons to Amelia Earhart, who offered to give Irina flying lessons in return.

At one point engaged to Katharine Hepburn's brother]] (Irina gave Russian lessons to their mother), ultimately, on September 17, 1942, Irina married Konstantine Belotelkin (May 18, 1905 – July 7, 1996), a classmate of her brother's from the Corps des Pages, a graduate of Yale (MS Forestry '35), and a fellow member of the Russian Ancien Régime. They lived in Hartford, Connecticut and New York City, before settling in San Francisco, California.

Irina was a masterful hostess, a discipline developed through years of dedicated practice. Here is an early example (May 5, 1943, New York Times) of what became her typical pattern of combining high-entertainment and worthy causes:

Members of the Strykers Lane Auxiliary, Inc., have arranged a Russian supper party in behalf of the Strykers Lane Community Center ... In charge of the arrangements is Mrs. Konstantine Belotelkin, whose aides include Mrs. Morris Ketchum, Mrs. Alistair Cooke, Mrs. Robert Crane Jr., Mrs. Walter Moffitt, and Mrs. Charles Tilton.