While I will certainly do my best to enjoy the day, my feelings will be overshadowed by memories of my father whom I saw for a few hours for the last time while I was a 16-year-old lad.
While attending high school in the not-too-distant city of Drohobych, I did not visit my parents and my siblings very frequently, and after visiting them July 7, 1944, I had no idea that that visit was to be the last one with my father.
The war was on, the Soviet Russian army was advancing, Nazi German forces were retreating, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was fighting both invaders, Russian Communists and German Nazis, and the people in the countryside, without access to media, wanted to believe that the war would soon be over, and both tyrannical dictatorships would collapse. Considering all this, my absence following departure from my parental home on that July 7, 1944, was to be of several weeks, maybe months, duration.
As it turned out, I was soon separated from my family, and for many years did not know anything about them, and vice-versa.
Many years later, I found out that, on Stalin’s orders, my parents, my younger brother and my two sisters — one only 9 years old, were deported from Ukraine to the Ural Mountains area in northern Russia, together with other relatives and hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainians. My father, in poor health since the lost War of Ukrainian Liberation following World War I, with no medical help during the trip to the Urals, died a month after arrival there. His remains were taken by the local authorities and disposed of without telling my bereaved mother where and how.
With God’s help, and I believe as a result of my mother’s prayers, I managed to survive the adversities of being an unwanted lost youth in foreign lands in Europe, and after eventually arriving in the United States, to establish a family, obtain an education and feel at home.
In memory of my father, who always emphasized the value of education, I dedicated my Niagara University master of arts dissertation to the memory of my father, “Whose Resting Place is Known Only to God.”
I will say a prayer and light a candle in his memory, and in memory of my late father-in-law, this coming Sunday.
•••
The Ukrainian American Catholic community of North Port and vicinity, led by the Rev. Vasyl Petriv, pastor, and many friends of the community, gathered Sunday at the Ukrainian Catholic Parish Center in North Port to honor a popular retired pastor, the Rt. Rev. Mitrat Archpriest Wolodymyr Woloszczuk, on his 90th birthday and 35th year of priestly service.
Rev. Woloszczuk was presented a certificate of appreciation for his service from His Holiness Patriarch Svyatoslaw (Shevchuk) of Kyiv, Bishop Bohdan (Danylo) of Parma, Ohio, and a plaque by Col. Roman Rondiak, commander of Post No. 40 of the Ukrainian American Veterans.
Greetings were delivered by Roman Radzykewycz, Ann-Marie Susla on behalf of “Soyuz Ukrayinok,” Zina Ferenc on behalf of Sisterhood, and Daria Tomashosky delivered greetings from the mayor of North Port.
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
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