Active community member also an artist

      One of the participants in an outstanding art event, the First Friday Art Walk at the historic Roswell Art District in Roswell, Ga., was Pat Zalisko, active member of North Port Branch 56 of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America and of the Presentation of the Most Holy Mother of God St. Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Church in North Port. Pat Zalisko’s artwork was exhibited last Friday at Muse & Co. Fine Art, one of several galleries in the art district.

    On the first Friday evening of every month, the eight galleries of the Roswell Art District, including Muse & Co., open their doors to self-guided, walkable tours of art exhibits, art talks and music at various galleries. Over the past several years, Pat’s art has regularly appeared in art exhibits and in major public and private collections in the United States and abroad. Pat retired from a successful legal career, and after moving with her husband Walter to Florida, fully embraced her passion for painting, which began with her painting, as a young girl in New York City, intricate Ukrainian Easter eggs known as “pysanky” (from the word “pysaty,” to write).
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    An email from Europe informed me that Olena Pavlivna Ott-Skoropadska, 95, daughter of the last “Hetman” of Ukraine (a title used by Ukrainian heads of state prior to the elimination of both the title and the position by the Russian empire, which was restored in 1918), Pavlo Skoropadskyi, passed away Monday in Zolikerberg, Switzerland. She was born July 5, 1919, in Berlin, Germany, where her parents settled following the conquest of Ukraine by the Russian Communists.

    Her father, Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi, was a descendant of Hetman Ivan Skoropadskyi, who ruled Ukraine from 1708 to 1722. The monarchist movement in Ukraine and in exile had hoped to restore the “hetmanate” form of government in independent Ukraine.

    The late Olena’s memoir, “Last of the Skoropadskyi Clan,” published in German and Ukrainian, describes the trials and tribulations of Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi and his family while living in exile. She meticulously collected and saved information and documents about her family’s traditions, and after the restoration of Ukraine’s independence in 1991, arranged for the transfer of all documents to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
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    While Western Europe commemorates the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I, Ukraine is engaged in a bloody struggle to get rid of the terrorists trained and armed by Russian president Putin, who terrorized several cities and towns near the border with the Russian Federation. Up until recently, the Ukrainians, with assistance of some foreign agencies, kept searching and discovering unmarked graves of soldiers of various armies who fought and died on Ukrainian soil in WWI.

    Some of the fiercest battles in both WWI and World War II were fought on the territory of Ukraine, and many soldiers of Austrian, German, Hungarian and other armies were killed in these battles and buried in the places where they died. The Russian Communist regime did not pay attention to these unknown fallen soldiers. They even razed some cemeteries of fallen Ukrainian and other soldiers. After the restoration of Ukraine’s independence, the local communities made a concerted effort to find, identify and repatriate, or properly reinter, the remains of these soldiers.

    Atanas Kobryn covers the Ukrainian community for the North Port Sun. He can be emailed at atanask@aol.com.

Our Neighbors — The Ukrainians 

by Atanas Kobryn