The time has come to tell a story about my grandfather's brother, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, the heroically deceased Ivan Akimovich Tikhonov. Tikhonov Ivan Akimovich was born in November 1924 into a peasant family who lived at that time in the village of Maryevka, Nikolsky district, Penza region. Since 1931, the family had lived in Poshatovo, Arzamas District, Gorky Region. In 1939 Ivan graduated from the 7th grade of the Chernukhinsky Secondary School and entered the Gorky Forestry Technical School. _x000D_ In August 1942, from the third year of the Technical School, he was drafted into the army and studied for two months at the Arzamas Military School. In October 1942, he sent the only letter that he was going to where there were strong battles. There were no more letters. In March 1943, a death notice came that the guard soldier Ivan Akimovich Tikhonov died heroically and was buried in a mass grave in the village of Donskaya, Tarasovsky district, Rostov region. Unfortunately, this death notification has been lost. _x000D_ In 2015, his own younger brother, Alexander Akimovich Tikhonov, together with his children and grandchildren, erected a monument at the village cemetery in Poshatovo, Arzamas district of the Nizhny Novgorod region, next to his father's grave. Now the hero has finally found peace with his loved ones. _x000D_ The story of Ivan Akimovich Tikhonov is similar to the millions of stories of other dead soldiers of the Soviet army. But for each family, its own story is the most valuable and important! And as long as we remember these stories, as long as we remember their heroism, as long as we pass this history from generation to generation, we will exist as a nation, as a people who have not been broken. I am happy that I was able to tell and honor the memory of a simple Russian guy, a simple Russian hero.