TRIBUTE: Dr. Sofia Parfanovych, physician, activist and writer, 1898-1968 (06/13/99)

TRIBUTE: Dr. Sofia Parfanovych, physician, activist and writer, 1898-1968

by Dr. Pavlo Pundy

CHICAGO - On June 7, 101 years passed since the birth of Dr. Sofia Parfanovych - prominent Ukrainian physician, writer, community activist and Ukrainian patriot. She lived only 70 years, but accomplished enough to fill three lifetimes.

Her life can be divided into two periods. Prior to the second world war, she completed her medical studies and specialization in gynecology. She actively participated in activities of the Ukrainian Medical Association and in the Ukrainian Women's League. She was involved in public health activities, including anti-alcohol and anti-smoking campaigns in her native Halychyna (western Ukraine).

The second period, or post-World War II, encompasses Dr. Parfanovych's her medical and educational activities in Germany and later her medical, social and writing activities in the U.S.

She was born in Ukraine into the prominent Parfanovych (Parkhomenko) family, many of whom were clergy and army officers.

Her father, Mykola, a railway operator, was a socialist and organizer of Ukrainian laborers. A talented writer, he published several works.

There were five children in her immediate family, all of whom received university degrees: Constantine, Sofia and Theodore became physicians; Julia and Olga - teachers. Sofia graduated from the girls' high school in Lviv in 1916 with honors. During World War I her family moved to Vienna.

In 1917 Sofia began her medical studies at the University of Lviv. During her second year, as a result of the war between Poland and Ukraine, she was forced to emigrate to Prague, where she continued her studies in 1923-1925. In 1925 she moved back to Lviv, where she graduated in 1926 as a doctor of medicine. Dr. Parfanovych was active as a student in medical organizations in Lviv, and in the Ukrainian Academic Group and in the Women Students' Association in Prague.

In 1926 Dr. Parfanovych became a member of the Ukrainian Women's League (Soyuz Ukrainok), with whom she continued to work for the remainder of her life.

Since 1926 she was also a member of the Ukrainian Medical Association. She gave lectures at the association's meetings and conferences, and published papers in its journal, Likarskyi Visnyk (Physician's Newsletter).

Dr. Parfanovych established a private practice as a gynecologist in Lviv and volunteered her services to the Narodna Lichnytsia Public Hospital clinic. She was one of founders of the Ukrainian Hygienic Society in Lviv and in 1929 was head of the society's anti-alcohol section.

In 1929 she joined the anti-alcohol and anti-nicotine Vidrodzhennia (Rebirth) Society and became editor of its journal in 1930.

In 1934 Dr. Parafanovych married banker Pylyp Volchuk. The couple was bound by their common interest in social services and in the anti-alcohol campaign. During their marriage Dr. Parfanovych authored many articles and books on medical and anti-alcohol topics for the Ukrainian press.

Her faithful friend and loving husband, who published many of her works, died in Augsburg, Germany, in 1946.

During the first Soviet occupation of western Ukraine (1939-1941), all Ukrainian organizations were ordered to disolve, and consequently ceased to function.

Dr. Parfanovych closed her private practice and worked as an assistant physician in the department of gynecology at the Lviv Medical Institute. In 1941 she completed her doctoral thesis, "Metastasis of Malignant Primary Tumors of the Ovaries to the Central Nervous System." This work secured her the position of a docent at the Lviv Medical Institute.

At the same time she devoted even more energy to her position as the director of the medical technology school (medical nurses aide program).

In 1940 she was sent to Kyiv to observe a school for nurses and midwives. There Dr. Parafanovych encoutnered Soviet reality, which dampened her enthusiasm for socialism. Her account of her experiences in Kyiv was published in Augsburg, Germany, in 1950.

During the German occupation of western Ukraine (1941-1944), Dr. Parfanovych reopened her private gynecological practice and worked as chief gynecologist at the Narodnia Lichnytsia clinic. Simultaneously she wrote articles to the Ukrainian press and worked on her literary works, which were later published in Augsburg (1948).

Near the end of World War II she began her long journey to the West: first to Austria, where she worked as a physician in Kufstein, later at a factory in Tyrol, where she supervised young girls who had been transported as forced laborers into Germany from Eastern Europe, especially from Ukraine.

After the American occupation of Germany she moved with her husband to Augsburg, where she worked as a gynecologist in the international displaced persons hospital from 1946 to 1949.

In 1949 Dr. Parfanovych emigrated to the U.S.; at first she lived in Ohio, where she worked in a hospital. Later she settled in Detroit, where she passed the national board exams in 1956 and became a licensed physician. She opened a private practice, but was forced to close in 1959, due to a detached retina in her left eye and unsuccessful surgery.

Between 1959 and 1962 she worked at a state psychiatric hospital in Lapeer, Mich. In 1962, ended her medical career and devoted herself to writing.

Dr. Sofia Parfanovych died during the night of December 27, 1968. A Ukrainian physician, writer and community activist, the 100th anniversary of her birth was celebrated at Chicago's Ukrainian National Museum and in Lviv, where a monograph about her life and work was published by Shevchenko Scientific Society and a scholarly conference in her memory was organized by the Ukrainian Medical Society.

An activist in anti-alcohol campaigns

Dr. Sofia Parfanovych's literary legacy

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