PERSPECTIVES: The community and belonging (12/10/06)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

The community and belonging

It's nice to belong to a community - indeed, it's essential, as far as I'm concerned. Engaging its members in an annual calendar, the community taps into the same cycle that gives us the seasons and in the process, provides an anchor and a sense of identity. There are many communities where you can belong - mine happens to be Ukrainian American and, if you're reading this, there's a good chance you belong to that group as well, through birth, marriage, adoption or choice.

I became a full, active member of the community when our family moved to Cleveland on Labor Day weekend in 1954 - my seventh birthday. A week later, I was going to Ukrainian School on Saturday mornings, Plast scout meetings in the afternoon and church in the shadows of the industrial valley the next day. In the years and decades that followed, I attended many an Independence Day commemoration in January, Shevchenko concerts in March, Captive Nations Weeks in July, sporting events and debutante balls. In the spring, there's Easter and in December St. Nicholas' eagerly awaited visit. There's borsch, kutia and Holy Christmas Eve a couple weeks later, until the cycle begins all over again with a cross carved from ice on Epiphany ("Jordan") in mid-January. I also remember one-of-a-kind celebrations like the Millennium of Ukrainian Christianity in 1988 and the exuberant gathering at St. Josaphat's Church Hall in December 1991 when Ukrainians in Ukraine overwhelmingly ratified their country's independence.

Over the course of a lifetime, I've accumulated many friends with whom I've shared these and other experiences. Years later, at liturgies, concerts, dances, parties, weddings, christenings and funerals, I see the men and women I grew up with, looking eerily like their fathers and mothers of 40 years ago; and young people at Kashtan Dance School and Ridna Shkola are very much like the boys and girls I knew growing up.

At home, many of us choose to celebrate holidays like our ancestors did. I measure our children's growth and my own inexorable aging in the pictures we take each year in front of a Christmas tree or at the blessing of Easter baskets.

The community is diverse and mobile; not all my friends are parents, married or living in Cleveland - many have scattered to different cities, some to Europe; several are in Ukraine. And that's a source of joy, as well; on more than one occasion, someone I haven't seen for a decade or more has greeted me as if we'd shared a drink and a joke yesterday.

The community that runs on an annual calendar also moves relentlessly through time. Sadly, nearly everyone who taught me at Ukrainian School, counseled me in Plast or coached me in sports is now gone. So too is the little boy I knew, who reaped their generosity. Now I drive my own children to events on the rare occasions my wife isn't able to.

It's nearly 20 years now that I met Chrystia at a zabava and, like others in the community, we're repeating the routine of church, youth and culture groups, three weeks of summer camp and Soyuzivka in August. Some of those my wife once tucked into sleeping bags when she was a camp counselor have counseled our own children. At Ridna Shkola a new immigration replenishes the ranks of teachers.

These reflections come to mind as I flip through the pages of "Ukrainians of Chicagoland" by Dr. Myron Kuropas, who shares the space on page 7 of The Ukrainian Weekly. The 128-page book is jam-packed with photographs spanning a century in America's Second City. The book starts with "God and Country" - immigrants building their churches in a new land and sacrificing in the country's wars - and ends with "Bridges to Ukraine," describing how the community is reaching out to the home county in this era of jet travel and instant communication.

In between, Myron chronicles the academic, cultural, economic and political life of the community. Perforce, he includes the Kuropas clan - his late father, Stephan, wife, Lesia, and sons, Stefko and Michael - who all provided tireless service to the community, particularly the Ukrainian National Association. Myron also served on the staff of Sen. Bob Dole and President Gerald Ford. Leafing through the book, I recognize others from political life: Democratic activist and philanthropist Julian Kulas; his brother and State Rep. Myron; State Rep. Boris Antonovych; Kateryna Chumachenko-Yushchenko, first lady of Ukraine.

Of course, the book features generous offerings of choirs, orchestras, dance ensembles, artists, galleries, museums, schools and a brass band from 1917. Scanning the faces, I see a good many I've met and recognize restaurants, shops where I've bought books and the Ukrainian National Museum. Mostly, though, the photos are of people long gone, who worked anonymously to enrich the community and support the homeland: women marching in 1930 to protest Polish policies in western Ukraine; a column of citizens in 1963 commemorating the Famine-Genocide; a float rolling at a downtown Chicago parade in 1976 supporting political prisoners in Soviet Ukraine; and, yes, a group making pyrohy to help raise funds for the parish church - with no year, names or location, it could have been yesterday or a hundred years ago, in Chicago, Cleveland or St. Louis.

As we go through life, we seldom see changes from day to day, yet over the course of five or 100 years, everything seems astonishingly different. "Ukrainians in Chicagoland" chronicles that process, documenting the community within the context of its annual calendar over the course of four generations. What's striking is how much endures.

Consisting almost entirely of photographs, the book is easy to read and fun to browse. There are hundreds and hundreds of people I never met or heard of, yet I feel as if I know them because in a way I do - they're so much like those who helped educate me and those I've taught; those who mentored me and helped me get jobs or asked me to help with their own employment; people who've invited me to graduations, weddings, christenings; people whose articles I've read, whose concerts I've enjoyed, whose funerals I've attended.

Ukrainians have a longer Christmas season and more extensive gift list than most. If you're looking for gift ideas, may I suggest gift subscriptions to The Ukrainian Weekly and a copy of "Ukrainians in Chicagoland" by Dr. Kuropas (www.arcadiapublishing.com; 1-888-313-2665)? Give "Sviatyi Mykolai" a hand.

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

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