1991: A LOOK BACK: UNA: looking toward Ukraine (12/29/91)

1991: A LOOK BACK

UNA: looking toward Ukraine

This was the year the Ukrainian National Association set up its Kiev Press Bureau to serve its newspapers, The Ukrainian Weekly and Svoboda, and through them the Ukrainian community and the public at large.

The UNA had begun efforts to open the Kiev bureau in October of 1990, when a delegation consisting of UNA Supreme President Ulana Diachuk, Supreme Secretary Walter Sochan and Supreme Advisors Eugene Iwanciw and Roma Hadzewycz (who also happen to be, respectively, director of the UNA Washington Office and editor-in-chief of The Ukrainian Weekly) met with officials at the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in Kiev. They discussed the UNA's intention of opening a press office with Valeriy Ingulsky, first secretary, and Volodymyr Chorny, head of the Ministry's Information Department.

After several months of anxious waiting, Marta Kolomayets, an associate editor of The Weekly, arrived in Ukraine's capital on January 13 to serve as the UNA press bureau's first Kiev correspondent. She traveled to Ukraine as a journalist on a visa issued by the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, and became the first accredited U.S. correspondent in Kiev.

During her pioneering six-month stint, Ms. Kolomayets provided information to both The Weekly and Svoboda and succeeded in finding accommodations to be utilized as an apartment/office for the UNA's Kiev-based correspondent.

On June 29, it was the turn of The Weekly's other associate editor, Chrystyna N. Lapychak, to leave for half a year at the Kiev Press Bureau. It was Ms. Lapychak's second posting to Kiev, since in August of 1990 she had worked for Rukh Press International, literally on loan from The Weekly.

While Ms. Kolomayets spent the bulk of her six-month tour of duty living in the Dnipro Hotel, Ms. Lapychak was able to move into the press office/apartment located just off the Khreshchatyk on Karl Marx Street.

Across the hall at Svoboda, Raisa Rudenko, a member of the editorial staff, headed for a three-month stay in Kiev in September. Mrs. Rudenko, too, filed stories from Ukraine bearing the UNA Press Bureau identification.

In other developments related to Ukraine, the Ukrainian National Association's Fund for the Rebirth of Ukraine began the year with just over $150,000. At year's end, the fund has amassed more than $250,000 in contributions from UNA members and the community at large. In addition, the UNA had pledged to provide a sum of $100,000 annually for the four-year period of 1990-1994.

During 1991, the UNA allocated grants and donations from the Fund for Rebirth to various projects. Among them were: assistance for a teacher of English as a second language (ESL) who used her expertise in Kiev; financial support for a law student from Lviv studying at Southern Methodist University; and grants to help Plast members from Ukraine, Ukrainians in Romania and the Kiev Polytechnical Institute. Furthermore, the UNA pledged to continue supporting ESL programs in Ukraine that will be offered by volunteers directed by two instructors from the United States.

In addition, the fund provided $50,000 for publication of 500,000 copies of a new primer and three readers for grades 2 through 4 in Ukraine. That project is being overseen by the Coordinating Committee to Aid Ukraine and has been joined by several other organizations, including the Educational Council in the U.S. and the "Thoughts of Faith" foundation headed by Pastor John Shep. A sum of $15,000 was donated to the Project on Economic Reform in Ukraine based at Harvard University, and $10,000 was allocated for the Sabre-Svitlo Foundation in Lviv, which works with the U.S.-based Sabre Foundation to supply books for Ukraine. The Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund of Pittsburgh received $4,000 to help provide treatment of children's eye ailments, and the Ukrainian Writers Union was granted $3,000 to publish a Russian-Ukrainian business dictionary.

The annual meeting of the UNA Supreme Assembly, held May 20-24 at Soyuzivka, approved a budget of $11.7 million for the UNA, including donations totalling $70,000 for various community organizations and projects. As well, the body allocated a sum of $120,000 for UNA scholarships for academic year 1991-1992. Discussions during the meeting focused on aid to Ukraine; the UNA's and Svoboda's upcoming centennials (respectively in 1994 and 1993); sites for the fraternal organization's centennial convention; and new insurance products, including universal life, disability income insurance and long-term care insurance, as well as revamping of the UNA sales force.

Soon thereafter, the UNA Scholarship Committee met to review scholarship applications and to make grants to UNA members in the U.S. and Canada. In all, the committee awarded $122,300 to 207 students.

In other benefits to members, the UNA paid out $1.2 million in dividends; sponsored the North American tour of the Yavir Vocal Quartet from Ukraine (in cooperation with Yevshan Communications); continued to upgrade facilities at its upstate New York resort, Soyuzivka; and purchased an additional unit for the press, enabling Svoboda to print as many as 12 pages and The Weekly up to 24 pages.

During 1991 the UNA honored its leading fraternalists - those persons responsible for making the UNA a true fraternal. In March, Estella Woloshyn of Youngstown, Ohio, received her award as Fraternalist of the Year for 1990. In November, Adolph Hladylowych of Montreal was honored as 1991 Fraternalist of the Year.

Ivan Kedryn-Rudnytsky, a former longtime editor of Svoboda who continues to this day to write articles for the daily newspaper, was honored in April by UNA and Svoboda Press employees at a luncheon on the occasion of his 95th birthday and the 70th anniversary of his journalistic activities.

In June, co-workers wished a fond farewell to Svoboda administrator Luba Lapychak-Lesko as she retired after 41 years of service. Forty-one years sounds pretty amazing, right? But one Melanie Milanowicz also retired this year after an astounding 62 years at the UNA, where she was employed by the Recording Department. Ms. Milanowicz was feted in November.

A celebration of a different sort occurred in May as the UNA hosted a book launch reception at the Ukrainian Institute of America for Dr. Myron B. Kuropas, a former UNA vice-president and now an honorary member of the Supreme Assembly, on the occasion of the publication of his long-awaited history "The Ukrainian Americans: Roots and Aspirations, 1884-1954."

The UNA Washington Office was kept busy throughout the year lobbying for bills to promote democracy and self-determination in the republics of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; on aid to the republics and the Baltic states; and on official U.S. recognition of Ukraine's independence. In addition, the office staffers were kept busy escorting and arranging high-level meetings for leading activists from Ukraine, among them Leonid Kravchuk, chairman of Ukraine's Parliament, and his entourage.

The fraternal activities coordinator, meanwhile, encouraged UNA members to write to Ukrainian Americans on duty in the Persian Gulf and exhorted branches to look into their individual histories as the UNA approaches the 100th anniversary of its founding.

Finally there was the annual Miss Soyuzivka pageant. This year's winner was Sophia Ilczyszyn, 23, of Brooklyn, N.Y., a former Soyuzivka employee who now heads the Svoboda Press administration. And, the UNA Seniors Association, meeting at its annual convention in June, reelected Gene Woloshyn of Poland, Ohio, as president. The association also collected $12,000 for the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund: $10,000 of that amount came from Dr. Alexandra Shkolnik of Akron, Ohio.

At year's end, the Ukrainian National Association and all its employees celebrated the overwhelmingly ratified independence of Ukraine by gathering outside the fraternal association's headquarters building in Jersey City and raising a new blue-and-yellow Ukrainian national flag to a rousing chorus of "Shche Ne Vmerla Ukraina."