Lesia and I: A Progress Report and a Ukrainian-American Love Story

By Xlibris US

Lesia and I is a progress report of the fifty-year marriage of Myron and Lesia Kuropas which produced two sons and six grandchildren, as well as a memoir of a Ukrainian-American whose varied career included working as a school principal in Chicagos inner-city, a regional director of a federal agency in Chicago, a presidential special assistant in the White House, a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate, and an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois. Dr. Kuropas reviews the major events in his fascinating life, his travels throughout the world, and his successes and failures in both his personal and professional life. Provided as background are historical sketches of the episodes that had a profound impact on Myron and Lesias life as well as the lives of their parents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499068474

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Copyright © 2014 by Myron B. Kuropas.

Cover Design by Natalie Olympia Kuropas

Library of Congress Control Number:         2014915568

ISBN:                  Hardcover                             978-1-4990-6848-1

                            Softcover                                978-1-4990-6849-8

                            eBook                                     978-1-4990-6847-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Rev. date: 10/24/2014

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Contents

Introduction

Growing up Kuropas: Memories and Reflections

Infancy

Stephen Kuropas

My Mother, Antoinette Kuropas (nee Mehal)

Childhood

Roosevelt Military Academy

Loyola University of Chicago

Roosevelt University

Europe and the University of Vienna

Noel and Jean Wright

Paul Bruns, Grosse Bakerei

The University of Minnesota

Limbo

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS)

The Ukrainian Youth League of North America (UYLNA)

The Young Ukrainian Nationalists (MUN)

Visiting Soviet Ukraine with Tato

Marriage and Family: The Early Years

Tato Honored

Growing up Waskiw: Remembering and Reflecting

Vera and George

Marshall Upper Grade Center and Faraday Elementary School

Our First House

Mason Upper Grade Center

The GOP and More

The Ukrainian National Association (The Early Years)

The Ukrainian-American Coordinating Committee

Back to Ukraine

ACTION and Project Senior Ethnic Find

The University of Chicago

The White House

Back to Limbo

The United States Senate

Rosette Middle School

Ukrainian Family of the Year

Harvard and Me

My Trip to Israel and its Aftermath

Northern Illinois University

Traveling Here, There, Everywhere

Worldwide Marriage Encounter

The National University of Ostroh Academy

Our Sons Marry

The Ukrainian National Association (The Later Years)

The Demjanjuk Debacle

Holodomor Education

Demise of the GOP Heritage Groups

Presidents Bush and Yuschenko

The Smear Campaign

Ukrainian Research Program at the University of Illinois

Helping Individuals from Ukraine

Chicago’s Ukrainians and More

Recent Awards

Kishwaukee Community College

A Note and Reminder to Our Children and Grandchildren …

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Fifty years ago, Myron Bohdan Kuropas married Alexandra (Lesia) Waskiw in a Ukrainian Catholic chapel on the grounds of the Ukrainian National Resort (Soyuzivka) in Kerhonkson, New York.

The time has come for an accounting of their triumphs, failures, joys, disappointments, and occasional heartbreak. This is their movie.

Lesia and Myron were born on different continents and grew up in different cultural environments. Fortunately, they had two institutions to sustain them. They were Catholic. They were Ukrainian. Both traditions have served them well.

In order to give their narrative some perspective and to provide a greater appreciation for their lives, certain antecedents need to be addressed.

We begin with Myron.

Growing up Kuropas: Memories and Reflections

I have lived a long and blessed life. I was born in the greatest country in the world. My grandparents loved me unconditionally. My parents were very supportive and taught me the importance of hard work, commitment to communal principles, and personal integrity. I married the right woman, a gorgeous, loving, and talented person who helped make my personal life pleasurable, productive, and a joyful experience. I am grateful to her for being my best friend and for being by my side during all the highs and lows of my life. We are enormously proud of our two sons, both of whom are successfully pursuing their career goals and raising their families in keeping with Christian principles and ideals. Our grandchildren are in school, doing well, and serious about their futures. They live near us and we are with them often. God has been good.

I was born at a young age. You heard that one, right? Well, what you probably didn’t hear was that I was born on November 15, 1932. Ukrainian Catholic Bishop Michael Wiwchar was born in 1932. So were Johnny Cash, Debbie Reynolds, Donald Rumsfeld, Omar Sharif, Ted Kennedy, and Elizabeth Taylor.

For millions of people worldwide, 1932 was a year of terrible tragedy. In the United States, the stock market crash of 1929 led to widespread unemployment throughout the nation. It reached 23.6 percent in 1932, the worst year of the Great Depression. A popular song of the time was Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

In 1932, the Great Famine/Genocide (Holodomor) was raging in Soviet Ukraine, orchestrated by Joseph Stalin, totalitarian ruler of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Between seven and ten million men, women, and children died of starvation. On the verge of bankruptcy, the Soviet government was literally stealing grain from the people of Ukraine and selling it on the world market in order to prop up its industrial base. The Holodomor was an artificial famine that could have been prevented.

Events in Russia had a profound effect on the United States. Emboldened by the success of the Communist takeover of Russia—and the failure of the original democratically inclined Russian revolutionaries—Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Russia—established the USSR. Lenin called for a global revolution under the banner of the Communist International (Comintern). Workers of the world, unite! was his clarion call in 1919. Socialists the world over responded. The Communist Party of America (CPA) was established in Chicago that same year. Revolution was in the air. Following a series of strikes (some three million workers were on strike at one time), a wave of bombings (eight cities were hit), other serious disturbances, and the discovery of a secret Comintern directive urging the CPA leadership to form a military commission, the United States established anti-seditionist laws which were vigorously enforced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). By January 20, 1920, there were over 5,000 arrests and hundreds of deportations. The first attempt at a red rebellion in the United States had failed. The CPA was forced go underground.

Believing that Lenin and his Bolshevik gang were thugs and thieves, four American presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, refused to formally recognize Lenin’s USSR. President Franklin D. Roosevelt changed all that by establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1932. Encouraged by this unexpected move, America’s communists quickly resurfaced and cooperated in the creation of an espionage network that infiltrated every facet of American life.

Infancy

I was born with pyloric stenosis, an ailment of newborns that results in vomiting. The disorder involves a narrowing (stenosis) of the first part of the duodenum due to the enlargement (hypertrophy) of the muscle surrounding this opening which then begins to spasm when the stomach empties. I heaved a lot and lost weight quickly, terrifying my parents, especially my mother (Mama). Our doctor couldn’t diagnose the problem, so Mama searched, finally finding a doctor who discovered the cause and offered to operate soon because he was going on vacation within a week. He asked for $500 in cash, an enormous sum during the Depression; my folks didn’t have it. My father borrowed some money from Ukrainian friends in Chicago, but it still wasn’t enough; so he drove his Model A Ford day and night to Cleveland and Detroit, hitting other friends for the rest. His buddies came through.

Stephen Kuropas

Stephen Kuropas, my father (Tato), was born on October 1, 1900, in Selyska, a village in western Ukraine, near what is today Peremyshl, Poland. Located on the Sian River, Selyska was first mentioned in the Rusyn chronicles in 981. Like many cities in Ukraine, it has a Polish period (1349–1772), and an Austrian period (1772–1918). Under the Austrian Habsburgs, Peremyshl became an important center of Ukrainian education. By the 1880s, it was the second largest center of secondary education in Ukraine after Lviv. A Ukrainian cathedral, built in 1630, and a seminary were part of the architecture of the city.

Tato’s parents, Dmytro and Maria (nee Pawlysh), were independent peasant farmers who owned ten morgi (approximately thirteen acres) of land. Tato had three older sisters and a younger brother Mykola. Maria, my grandmother, died of pneumonia in 1904 following a trip, in the dead of winter, to Peremyshl. My grandfather, Dmytro, eventually remarried. In his Ukrainian language Memoirs from Ukraine and sixty years in America, Tato described his stepmother as hardworking, of good temperament, and a person who loved cleanliness and order. Dmytro died in 1912, probably of heart failure.

Both the Habsburg and the Russian empires collapsed following World War I. The Ukrainian people, united for the first time in centuries, declared their independence in 1918 establishing the Ukrainian National Republic. The Russian Bolsheviks invaded Ukraine from the east, the Czarist (White) Russians from the south, and the Poles from the west. By 1923, Ukraine was no longer an independent state. Eastern Ukraine, now Soviet Ukraine, was incorporated into the Soviet Union. The peacemakers at Versailles divided western Ukraine among Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. Ukrainian language schools were permitted but closely monitored in all four nations.

Following Ukraine’s tragic loss of sovereignty, three political ideologies emerged among Ukrainians in Europe and the United States to explain what had happened and to propose a future direction for the Ukrainian people. The most popular paradigm was that of the communists who argued that Soviet Ukraine was a free state, the result of the will of the Ukrainian people. A second model was that that of the monarchists, led by Hetman (commander) Pavlo Skoropadsky, who contended that Ukrainians lost their independence because they were still nationally immature, incapable of living in a democratic society. They needed a hetman, a benevolent dictator at the head of the nation who could mediate all disputes. The third ideology was that of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which promoted armed revolution and the re-establishment of the Ukrainian National Republic by force if necessary. Founded in Vienna in 1929, OUN was headed by the charismatic Col. Evhen Konovalets, a former commander in the Ukrainian liberation army.

Tato graduated from the Peremysyl Gymnasium (academic prep school), the shortest member of his class. During World War I, he was drafted into the Austrian army along with the rest of his classmates. Their teacher jokingly commented, If they are taking men like Kuropas, Austria has surely lost the war. Attaining the rank of corporal in 1918, Tato served on the Albanian front along with his uncle, Mykola, age fifty-two. He recalled a night attack by black French-Senegalese troops during which his unit jumped out of the trenches running for their lives. They had never seen black persons before and thought they were being attacked by devils, Tato explained.

When the war ended, Tato joined the Galician Ukrainian liberation army as a second lieutenant fighting the Poles for Ukrainian independence. The Poles won, and Tato’s brigade found itself in the newly formed nation of Czechoslovakia where he was interred in a prisoner of war camp. The Czechs greeted Ukrainians as natural brothers. Tato wrote, Life in the internment camp was rather easy. There were curfews but internees could visit Prague and even enroll at the university. Tato decided to study agronomy in the fabled city that he came to love, and in 1924, following an internship on a dairy farm in the country of Liechtenstein, he completed his studies in Prague. Tato returned to western Ukraine, then under Polish occupation, where he became involved in the publication of New Word, an OUN gazette in Lviv. The next thing he knew, he was drafted into the Polish cavalry. During his service, a horse accidentally kicked him in the head leading to some hearing loss in his right ear later in life.

Completing his service, Tato returned to Selyska looking for work. Finding none, he went back to Prague and learned that a second cousin, also named Stephen Kuropas, lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan; so he left for the United States, arriving in 1927, practically penniless. His cousin, who worked in a furniture factory with aspirations of becoming a foreman, urged Tato to settle in Grand Rapids. When the job market didn’t improve, Tato considered moving to Canada to look for two of his Ukrainian buddies from Prague, Wolodymyr Kossar and a man named Pechyniuk, but decided instead, to seek his fortune in America. Tato writes: I went to the railroad station and met up with a group of homeless, unemployed men who were boarding box cars. I entered one car and asked my neighbor, where were we going? ‘West’ was the answer. I traveled around for two months: Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri, and, finally, Illinois. In Chicago, I searched for another buddy from Prague, John Pobutsky. Learning of a Ukrainian Catholic church (St. Nicholas at Rice Street and Oakley Blvd.), Tato visited the pastor. John Pobutsky’s brother was a priest in the United States, and Tato figured the pastor would know where his brother resided and lead him to John. The pastor, Fr. Philemon Tarnawsky, agreed to help Tato and gave him this advice: The saying here is ‘help yourself’ … you will find work now or Thursday. This last phrase was from a well-known Ukrainian folk song meaning sooner or later. When Tato wondered whether he should return to Ukraine, Fr. Tarnawsky advised against it. You will end up on top, just like a piece of wood in water, which even a storm cannot sink, he said. It was the advice Tato never forgot. I know because he repeated it often.

John Pobutsky was found working as a chemist; he suggested that Tato could find work in that profession. In the meantime, Tato labored at various jobs: in a candy factory mixing caramel in a huge vat, at the Chicago Stock Yards stacking decapitated cow heads, and finally at International Harvester where he learned a Spanish phrase he also repeated often: Mucho trabajo, poco dinero (Much work, little pay). It was all hard labor, and Tato hated it.

Fortune smiled on Stephen Kuropas when, thanks to friends at the Czech Society of Engineers, he was introduced to the Czech Consul General in Chicago who in turn introduced him to Frank V. Martinek, a former officer in the Austrian army, and later, a member of the Czech Legion fighting Bolsheviks in Siberia. Immigrating to the United States, Martinek became a U.S. naval intelligence officer, and, believe it or not, the creator of a popular comic strip, Don Winslow of the Navy. Most important of all, Frank Martinek was also a vice president of the Standard Oil Company of Indiana, headquartered on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Meeting with Tato in his ninth floor office, Martinek suggested that he might eventually find work for him as a chemist at the Standard Oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana. In the meantime, Martinek suggested that Tato perfect his command of English, offering him a job as a gasoline attendant at a Standard Oil service station. Tato worked for the Standard Oil Company for the remainder of his life. He was once an attendant at a Standard Oil station located at Chicago Avenue and Oakley Blvd., now a parking lot for Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church in Ukrainian Village. Tato ended his 40-year career with Standard Oil as the manager of a service station at Chicago Avenue and Orleans Street, a few blocks from Chicago’s loop, where he spent 35 years.

John Pobutsky became my godfather. He and his gorgeous daughters, Gloria and Vera, lived in a house on Chicago’s South Side, in the Beverly Hills area, which we would often visit. The Pobutskys eventually moved to a farm in Michigan, in the Benton Harbor area.

Tato became a member of the editorial board of Ukraina, Chicago’s first Ukrainian language newspaper, edited by Dr. Volodmyr Siemenovych who settled in the city in 1893. A graduate of John Hopkins Medical School, Dr. Siemenovych was the first ethno-nationally conscious Ukrainian to arrive in Chicago and a legend in his own time. He was a founding member of St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic parish and the person who urged fellow Ukrainians to buy lots closer to the city limits, where lots were cheap, and build homes. Ukrainians heeded his sage advice and created what is today officially known as Ukrainian Village.

Meeting with some Ukrainian army veterans in Chicago, Tato helped organize the Chicago branch of the Ukrainian Veterans Organization (UVO), a precursor to OUN. After OUN leader Colonel Evhen Konovalets met with UVO members in Chicago, Tato participated in the creation of the Chicago contingent (Branch 2) of the Organization for the Rebirth of Ukraine (ODWU). ODWU became an affiliate of OUN, committed to the re-establishment of a free, sovereign, and independent Ukrainian state. When the editor of Samostina Ukraina (Independent Ukraine), the ODWU house organ, resigned, Tato assumed the editorial duties, remaining a loyal ODWU member until the day he died.

At about the time I was born, Tato was involved with the Ukrainian pavilion at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. He served as secretary of the organizing committee that raised money to finance the erection of a Ukrainian-style structure on the fair grounds. The only national pavilion not funded by a foreign government, it included a cultural museum, a restaurant, and a meeting hall. Soviet Ukrainian officials protested the planned pavilion claiming that only the Soviets were the true representatives of the Ukrainian people, but the Chicago Fair leadership ignored the protest.

Another organization to which Tato devoted his entire life in the United States was the Ukrainian National Association (UNA), a fraternal insurance society founded in 1894. Originally established by Ukrainian Catholic priests as a burial society for Ukrainian coal miners in western Pennsylvania, the UNA evolved into a mutual benefit society committed to the enlightenment and betterment of Ukrainian Americans. Currently, the UNA publishes Svoboda in the Ukrainian language and the Ukrainian Weekly in English, two of many UNA sponsored Ukrainian cultural activities made possible by profits from the sale of UNA life insurance policies.

Elected a UNA supreme auditor in 1937, Tato remained in that position until elected national vice president in 1961, an office he held until 1970. For many years he authored The Chicago Chronicle, a regular column in Svoboda.

The UNA annual supreme assembly sessions were held in Jersey City, New Jersey, right next door to New York City. When I was a young kid, I remember going to Chicago’s Union Train Station to see my dad off to NYC, thrilled to see Tato and his fellow assembly members standing around with their stylish fedoras waiting to board their train. One time Tato took me on board his railroad car to briefly observe one of the most luxurious trains of its day. I looked forward to Tato’s UNA trips because he would always come back with Ukrainian bedtime stories that he shared with me on many nights. The UNA became a magical place for me. All the stories were made up by Tato, of course, but I believed all of them, especially those starring Taras Bulba, a heroic Ukrainian Kozak, and Lys Mykyta, a clever red fox. Two stories stand out in my memory: Taras Bulba and the Merry-Go-Around and Lys Mykyta on a Horse.

One of the joys of my childhood was to take a Sunday drive west on North Avenue to Maywood, Illinois, to ride the carousel at Kiddieland, an amusement park for kids. Tato had a Ford Model A coupe, and I got to ride in the rumble seat. Once we got there, it was a real treat to have Tato give me a nickel to ride the merry-go-around. He knew that I was enchanted by the carousel so one night he told me a story that was all dragged out, of course, but the condensed version ran something like this:

Taras Bulba was riding on the Ukrainian steppe one day, a very worried look on his face, Tato began.

What was he worried about? I asked, intrigued.

Wait. Tato said. I don’t know … Taras Bulba was thinking. Thinking about all the Ukrainian kids in the United States who weren’t speaking Ukrainian at home. But there are many more who do speak Ukrainian, Taras Bulba thought. Hmm. There must be some way to reward them for their loyalty to Ukraine. I’ve got it, Bulba concluded, I’ll build them a merry-go-around at the Sich, the Kozak fort."

Taras Bulba could do that? I asked excitedly.

Taras Bulba could do anything, my dad assured me. "So he spun his horse around and headed for the Sich. Calling together all the Kozaks, he shared his plan. ‘Let’s build the biggest merry-go-around in the world,’ Taras Bulba said. And so they did. It was enormous, many miles in circumference. Invitations were sent out to all Ukrainian children in the United States. Soon they were boarding ships to cross the ocean. Once they arrived on the shores of the Black Sea, they were greeted by a Kozak