PERSPECTIVES: For fathers - all of them (06/20/04)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

For fathers - all of them

One of my most gratifying moments as a father came when my son was 7 years old and I overheard him telling his 3-year-old sister, "Olesia, you can't do that."

"Why not?" she asked.

"Because Tato said so," Mykhas explained.

"Hooray!" I cheered silently. "Now remember that when you're 18."

To judge by my own experience, though, there may come a time when early lessons are forgotten, disregarded or deliberately flouted. In my case, I was in my early 20s when I turned rebellious. It was the late 1960s and early '70s, when Baby Boomers were encouraged to be difficult.

"The times," Bob Dylan announced, "they are a changin'," warning "mothers and fathers throughout the land" that "your sons and your daughters are beyond your command..."

The stage had already been set in the 1950s with movies like "Rebel Without a Cause" and the "The Wild One," where a small town girl asks a sneering, irreverent Marlon Brando, "What're you rebelling against?"

"What've you got?" he replies.

Well, in my case, there was plenty. Besides the normal generation gap that separates parents and children, there was a profound cultural divide. My mother, father and all their friends lived in America, but their hearts were in Ukraine. Every day they missed their homeland and the schools, churches and youth groups that defined them. Together, they had all gone through the displaced persons camps of Austria and Germany and sailed across the Atlantic before disbursing to New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Cleveland. Afraid of "drowning in a foreign sea," they recreated the world they had left behind. We spoke Ukrainian at home, went to Saturday school, joined Plast, SUM, dance ensembles and choirs, and endured endless requiem masses for fallen heroes an ocean, a continent and at least a generation removed. Eventually, I came to look upon their overriding objective, the liberation of their homeland, as a lost cause: Don Quixote tilting at windmills. How did that involve me?

And so, having successfully graduated from college, I rebelled. "This is America!" I said and walked away from the things my parents held dear. Never mind that they had paid a hefty tuition. I was entitled. That's America; that's youth.

The early '70s was a turbulent time with a widely touted Generation Gap, presidential credibility gaps and a vast cultural conflict. It was a time of tremendous energy, lots of fun and, for many, tragedy: Kent State, Charlie Manson and 58,245 of the Fallen, their names now chiseled into the Vietnam War Memorial.

Nothing lasts forever, though. By the mid-'70s the war was over and my rebellious phase had passed. One evening over a glass of beer at the Lys Mykyta Lounge in Parma, I happened across Hryhoriy Golembiowsky, a straight-talking, chain-smoking professor who just a few years before had regaled my Ridna Shkola classmates and me with fascinating stories about poets, politicians, revolutionaries and spies. He suggested I might want to fill in for him at Ukie School from time to time. Before long, under his guidance, I was teaching there every Saturday.

Not long afterward, I met Osyp Zinkewych, head of the Smoloskyp publishing house. Having closely analyzed Ukrainian issues, he rejected the prevailing sense of hopelessness and futility. This is an era of media events, he said, and we have to engage Ukrainian issues in the news of the day. Applying formidable organizational skills, Mr. Zinkewych enlisted young people in a dozen different cities to defend Ukrainian prisoners of conscience and ask questions about Ukraine's exclusion from the Olympic Games, the Helsinki Accords, women's conferences, etc. One of those he enlisted was me, and before long I was attending college teach-ins, hunger vigils, sports events and international conferences.

One thing leads to another and I was approached by Taras Szmagala, a savvy political operative who used his skills to lobby on behalf of Ukrainian human rights, and by Prof. Michael Pap from John Carroll University. Dr. Pap arranged a teaching fellowship and graduate school scholarship, about the same time that Mr. Szmagala was steering me toward political activism. Eventually I got a job on Capitol Hill and worked on issues important to my Ohio congressional boss, but also those involving Ukraine: the Congressional Famine Commission, human rights, Chornobyl, recognition of Ukraine's independence, post-Cold War assistance, etc. It was a privilege and a thrill.

So where am I taking this? I was fortunate to not only have a wonderful biological father, but also fathers who chose me. I rebelled because that's what young people do: "What've you got?" With the guidance of men like Golembiowsky, Zinkewych, Pap, Szmagala, Vasyl Liscynesky, head of Greater Cleveland's United Ukrainian Organizations, and others, I got back on the track my parents and their generation had set.

I'm sure our parents would be gratified to see that my brothers and I turned out to be pretty much as they had hoped: good parents, active members of the Ukrainian community and good citizens of the country that had adopted us back in 1948.

As my rebellious phase passed, I came to understand the interplay between Ukraine's tragic history and her difficult present. As an American, I've come to appreciate that the Ukrainian immigrant experience is just as vital as the story of the Mayflower, that Ukrainian culture is just as authentic as St. Patrick's Day, 'Fiddler on the Roof,' soul music or salsa, that the political concerns of our community are as valid as those of American Jews, Armenians or Christian Fundamentalists.

And so, my wife and I are giving our children something to rebel against: Saturday School and scouts, Ukrainian dancing with Kashtan, piano lessons, sports, church. We use this framework to organize our family life: the payoff is in meaningful values, lifelong friendships and something to return to, like I did.

Our son is now a teenager, our daughter is being fitted for braces and several of my adoptive "fathers" have become more like older brothers. Sadly, my real father and my mother left us far too early, but I've been partially compensated by closeness to my wife's father, Dr. Jaroslav Panchuk from Chicago, who's become a friend as well as a father-in-law. So to him and to all those who helped steer me back to the right direction, Happy Father's Day!

Andrew Fedynsky's e-mail address is: [email protected].

| Home Page |