Polovchak supports Elian (04/09/00)

Polovchak supports Elian

MIAMI - Once known as "the littlest defector," Walter Polovchak met with Elian Gonzalez on April 2 and said he understands how the 6-year-old feels, reported the Associated Press.

"I think he knows the difference between freedom and not having freedom," Mr. Polovchak said at the end of a 45-minute meeting. "You don't have to get hit by a car to know it's painful."

Two decades ago, Mr. Polovchak, then 12 years old, defied his parents and chose to stay in the United States while they returned to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.

Though he listed Jell-O and bananas as top reasons for wanting to stay in the United States, what he really was expressing was a love of freedom, Mr. Polovchak explained.

Mr. Polovchak's refusal to return to Ukraine with his parents set off a five-and-a-half -year custody battle that didn't end until he turned 18 and was granted U.S. citizenship. Now an office manager in Chicago, married and the father of a 6-year-old boy, Mr. Polovchak told the Associated Press he has been following Elian's case since the boy was found clinging to an inner tube off Florida's coast on Thanksgiving Day.

Mr. Polovchak said he volunteered to come to Miami and his way was paid by a California doctor with no connection to the Cuban exile community. Mr. Polovchak offered his opinion that the best solution for Elian might be for his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, to come with his wife and young son to live with him in the United States, rather than fighting to take him back to Cuba.

He said he understood the pressures of being a child caught in a tug of war between competing ideologies. "I was looked at as a traitor to my country," he said. "My father was under a lot of pressure to return. Elian's father is under tremendous pressure, too," he underlined.

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