George Kuzmycz, U.S. nuclear engineer, killed in automobile accident in Mykolaiv (12/14/97)

George Kuzmycz, U.S. nuclear engineer, killed in automobile accident in Mykolaiv

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - George Kuzmycz, a nuclear engineer at the U.S. Department of Energy, was killed in an automobile accident in southern Ukraine on December 6. Mr. Kuzmycz, of Gaithersburg, Md., was traveling to Mykolaiv from the South Ukraine Power Plant when an oncoming vehicle crossed lanes and struck his car, killing him instantly. He was 53.

Militia in the city of Voznesensk reported that the driver of the oncoming vehicle apparently fell asleep at the wheel. He was killed, and his wife and two children were hospitalized. Mr. Kuzmycz's driver died in the hospital. The accident occurred at 3:30 a.m. in good weather on a clear road.

Mr. Kuzmycz had regularly traveled to Ukraine as part of the Material Protection Control and Accounting Program of the U.S. government. As program manager of the Ukraine Program on Nuclear Material Security Task Force in the Office of Arms Control and Non-Proliferation at the Department of Energy, he was responsible for nuclear research, nuclear power plant material safety and former Soviet naval fuel.

Andrew Bihun, senior U.S. commercial attaché in Ukraine, told the Kyiv Press Bureau that Mr. Kuzmycz had been working with the Ukrainian government on its nuclear energy facilities to shore up nuclear storage safety and accounting procedures.

Mr. Kuzmycz was born in Czecho-Slovakia on May 6, 1944. He attended Queens College in 1961-1965 and the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1965-1970, where he received a master's degree and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering.

"George singlehandedly built the Ukraine Program and made a terrific number of friends and contacts in Ukraine. He accomplished a lot in building the U.S.-Ukraine relationship and increasing the national security of the U.S," said Michael McClary, director of the Russia/NIS Nuclear Security Task Force in the Office of Arms Control and Non-Proliferation at the Department of Energy.

His is the second death in an automobile accident in the last month of a Westerner of Ukrainian descent working in Ukraine. Peter Roman Lishchynski, a Ukrainian Canadian who had been the director of NATO's Ukraine office, was killed on November 13 when a tractor-trailer hit the vehicle in which he was traveling in the Kirovohrad Oblast of Ukraine.

Mr. Kuzmycz was a longtime resident of the Washington area and very active in the life of the Ukrainian community there. He was a member of Plast-Pryiat as well as a member of the Ukrainian National Choir. The day after his death, the choir held its annual Christmas concert, which it dedicated to Mr. Kuzmycz's memory.

He is survived by his wife, Ksenia; two sons, Yuri and Danylo; mother, Valentina Kuzmycz; and sister, Yara Sydorak, her husband, Marko, and daughters Larissa and Daria.

Memorial services and meetings were held at the South Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, the Department of Energy in Washington and the Foreign Commercial Service in Kyiv. Funeral services were offered in Silver Spring, Md., on December 12; interment took place the next day at St. Andrew Ukrainian Orthodox Cemetery in South Bound Brook, N.J.

Roman Woronowycz in Kyiv and Khristina Lew in Parsippany, N.J., contributed to this report.

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