FACES AND PLACES: An immigration celebration! (05/22/05)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

An immigration celebration!

The events surrounding the retirement of American history Professor and Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) Director Rudolph J. Vecoli at the University of Minnesota represented an immigration celebration of extraordinary accomplishment. It was a tribute to personal dedication and perseverance.

The festivities began on Thursday, May 12, in the Elmer L. Anderson Library with a welcoming reception, and ended with a gala banquet on Saturday, May 14, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Center. Friday and Saturday were devoted to seminars, films and commentaries on the theme "Where We've Been, Where We're Going."

Prof. Vecoli directed IHRC for 38 years, and it was largely under his leadership that the center became the leading repository of immigration archives in the United States. Ukrainians can take pride in the fact that of the 25 ethnic groups with historical materials at the Center, the Ukrainian collection is the largest.

Lesia and I spent many happy days at IHRC during the past 30 years. I did most of the my doctoral and book research there. Lesia's IHRC research on the role of Svoboda in Ukrainian American education led to her MS. Ed.

During many of our visits to IHRC, we would run into Dr. Alexander Lushnycky who, while always friendly, was somewhat secretive about what he was doing there. One of the highlights of the weekend for me, therefore, was Dr. Lushnycky's presentation. In describing how he and Senior Assistant IHRC Curator Halyna Myroniuk created and will soon publish an expanded version of their 1998 Guide to Ukrainian American Newspapers in Microfilm, he mentioned "intrigue, mystery and foreign travel." Remembering our previous meetings, I was fascinated.

With our community now approaching its 125th year of existence, Dr. Lushnycky explained, copies of early Ukrainian American publications were becoming too fragile for personal handling by scholars. Original copies of various publications, moreover, were scattered throughout Europe. The need to find and persevere them led to the Lushnycky/Myroniuk project. Ukrainian American periodicals from 1886 onward have now been preserved forever and will soon be available for scholarly research.

To gather his materials, Dr. Lushnycky traveled to London, Paris, Vienna and Prague, and cities in Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine. At the time, there were certain sensitivity issues associated with archival research, especially in Ukraine. To preserve the integrity of the project, therefore, it was necessary to maintain a low profile leading, of course, to mystery and intrigue.

Financing for this ambitious undertaking was provided by John Hynansky, president of Winner Automotive Group, the largest American automobile dealership in Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Heritage Foundation of NB Bank in Chicago, headed by Julian Kulas. Both gentlemen were later honored at a Sunday afternoon reception at St. Katherine's Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Arden Hills, Minn.

"History matters," declared Prof. Vecoli during the Saturday evening banquet. "Our history might have been lost had it not been for IHRC. We [ethnic Americans] were invisible men and women in America. Even today, we are largely invisible. Our purpose at the institute was and continues to be to make our people visible."

IHRC was founded in 1965, Dr. Vecoli explained. "I came in 1967 and had to work with an annual budget of $1,000. During my early years here I was obsessed with archives. I emptied out basements and attics in various immigrant homes and brought them to the university." At the time, immigration studies were not perceived to be of significance by mainstream American historians, Dr. Vecoli reminded us. Thanks largely to Dr. Vecoli's efforts, the annual IHRC operating budget today is $430,000 - $80,000 of which comes from public and private grants. The archives are housed in a new, temperature-controlled, underground, state-of-the-art facility in the Anderson Library.

Among those who labored to put IHRC on the archival map during its early years was the late Dr. Alexander Granovsky, a tenured professor of entomology at the University of Minnesota and the president of the Organization for the Rebirth of Ukraine during the late 1930s and 1940s. It is largely as a result of Dr. Granovsky's efforts that the Ukrainian collection at IHRC is so large. Today his work is being continued by the Friends of the Immigration Research Center which includes, among others, Walter Anastas, a retired Ukrainian attorney in Minneapolis.

The "melting pot" paradigm, popular early in the century, once dominated the field of immigration studies. During a period of intense "Americanization," immigrants were expected to shed their heritage and cultural traditions as quickly as possible. During the ethnic renaissance of the 1970s, Dr. Vecoli and others rejected this approach, supporting instead the concept of "cultural pluralism." American ethnic groups were now to be perceived as "Americans Plus," that is, loyal citizens who loved the United States while treasuring their rich ethnic heritage. During this era in American history, Congress passed the Ethnic Heritage Act, Michael Novak published "The Unmeltable Ethnic," the Ford Foundation funded three multi-ethnic centers, and the president of the United States appointed a special White House assistant for ethnic affairs.

Prof. Vecoli is right. History does matter. History provides us with our identity and a road map for the future. The late Daniel Boorstin, renowned American historian and librarian of Congress, once said that trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers. Because we Ukrainians have yet to fully investigate and comprehend our past, both here and in Ukraine, our future appears murky. We have been planting cut flowers for far too long. Fortunately, dear reader, that is beginning to change. Rejoice.

Myron Kuropas's e-mail address is: [email protected].

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