April 17, 2015

BOOK NOTE: An activist’s “progress report” and memoirs

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“Lesia and I: A Progress Report and a Ukrainian-American Love Story,” by Myron B, Kuropas.

“Lesia and I: A Progress Report and a Ukrainian-American Love Story,” by Myron B, Kuropas. Bloomington, Ind.: Xlibris, 2014. ISBN: 978-1-4990-6849-8, softcover, 347 pp., $19.99. (Also available in hardcover and as an e-book.)

Billed as “a progress report of the 50-year marriage of Myron and Lesia Kuropas” and “a Ukrainian-American love story,” the latest book by Dr. Myron B. Kuropas is also a memoir of his career, which included working as a school principal in inner-city Chicago, 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, Ill.

“Lesia and I” is also the story of Lesia Kuropas (née Waskiw), as well as of the marriage of Lesia and Myron Kuropas, which produced two sons and six grandchildren. As noted in the introduction, “Lesia and Myron were born on two different continents and grew up in different cultural environments,” but they were both Ukrainian and Catholic. They met and later married at Soyuzivka, the heritage center established by the Ukrainian National Association.

Dr. Kuropas covers the major events in his life, his studies, travels, and multifaceted community activity, including his role in the Ukrainian National Association and the Ukrainian American Coordinating Council, as well his activism in the defense of John Demjanjuk, involvement in the National Republican Heritage Groups Committee and promotion of Holodomor studies.

The book is at once an interesting memoir of a key personage in the Ukrainian American community and an invaluable gift to Dr. Kuropas’ children, grandchildren and succeeding generations of the Kuropases as a chronicle of family history.

“Lesia and I” is available from the publisher, Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com), as well as on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It is published in softcover and hardcover editions, and as an e-book.

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