Max Malyuta and his fiancée, Meghan Carr.

Courtesy photo

PAWTUCKET — When the Rev. Vasily Lickwar arrived to officiate at the funeral of Max Malyuta a week ago, he expected a handful of elderly Russian mourners, not the more than 200 people, many of them Americans, who packed the two big parlors of the Manning-Heffern Funeral Home.

Reverend Lickwar, who is pastor of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church in Cumberland, is accustomed to the funerals of immigrants whose lack of English has cut them off from the non-Russian speaking community and whose longevity has left few people behind to mourn them.

Malyuta was only 25 when he died of what doctors said was meningitis. Among the people at his funeral was Meghan Carr, his 22-year-old fiancée, and his father, Gennadi, 46.

An avid chess player, Malyuta had a passion for the game that enabled him to forge links with players all over the country. Arriving here with the smattering of English he learned in Russia, he wasted no time in becoming fluent in the language of his new home.

“Max was an expert. He was almost a master. He was working on becoming state champion,” said Frank DelBonis, who met Malyuta playing chess, and persuaded him to mentor students at Central Falls’ Calcutt Middle School.

Malyuta was very competitive, but he never crowed about winning, DelBonis added, and never groused when he lost.

“In a world of chess prima donnas, he was humble and an example to us all,” DelBonis said in the eulogy he delivered at the funeral. “Of all the people I met, I never saw him get angry, not once.”

Malyuta came to this country six years ago, emigrating from Birobidzhan, an autonomous Russian region that borders China. He followed his father here, and his uncles, Yurii, Mikhail, Vyacheslav and Sergei. He is also survived by his paternal grandparents, Rosa and Yefim Malyuta, of Pawtucket.

“When we left Russia, it was really hard times,” Malyuta’s aunt, Olga Malyuta, said. Jobs were scarce, and so was money.

Once here, Malyuta took multiple jobs, working as a security guard for U.S. Security Associates and as a chess coach at Barrington High School and the Sage School in Foxboro, Mass.

Tom Gingerella of U.S. Security Associates described Malyuta as hard-working and dependable. Carr, his fiancée, said it wasn’t unusual for Malyuta to put in a 75-hour work week — 60 hours as a security guard and 15 hours teaching chess.

A lot of his salary was sent home to support his mother, Galina, and pay tuition for his sister, Tatiana, who is studying business economics. While he planned to attend college himself, Malyuta decided to put his schooling aside, his cousin Yelena Malyuta said, until Tatiana’s studies were finished.

Malyuta and Carr met online more than a year ago. They went to a chess tournament on their second date.

Meghan’s father was protective at first. But it was clear, Larry Carr said, that Malyuta cared about her. He made sure her seatbelt was fastened when they went out for a drive together. He lifted her hood up when they walked in the rain.

On Christmas Eve, Malyuta proposed. They planned to marry in 2009. In the meantime, he would study to become a middle school math teacher. She would pursue her career in early childhood education. “He wanted to help me open my own daycare center,” Meghan said.

Then, on March 21, Malyuta came down with what he thought was a cold. He developed a fever and headache, but put off seeing a doctor, thinking the illness would pass.

“I got a call that he was in the hospital, dying, on Friday [March 23], and I went there and prayed for him” said Reverend Lickwar.

On March 25, when half a dozen of the young chess players he had mentored gathered for the Rhode Island Scholastic Chess League tournament in Providence, they were told that Malyuta had died the day before.

Malyuta’s students “honored him by playing their best,” DelBonis said in the eulogy. In Foxboro, the students he had coached at the Sage School won the state championship in grades 4 through 6. They took second place in grades kindergarten through 3, said Tiffany Wang, a parent organizer.

Wang said her daughter, Clara, 10, and son, Andrew, 11, were so upset about Malyuta’s death that she didn’t think it wise to let them attend his funeral, although she went herself.

This weekend, however, she, Andrew and Clara are going to visit Oak Grove Cemetery, where Malyuta is buried.

“We’ll go to his grave, tell him our results,” Wang said, “and they’ll say their proper goodbyes.”

jcastell@projo.com