While most Ukrainian Americans have been focusing on events in Ukraine, others have been concentrating their attention closer to home. This was true back in the day. It is true today.
Thanks to the pioneering foresight of Ukrainians of the second immigration and their offspring, Chicago’s Ukrainians have reason to celebrate this year. St. Nicholas School is commemorating 80 years of existence. A gala fund-raising banquet is planned for Saturday, February 25, at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare Grand Ballroom.
Many distinguished graduates have passed through the doors of St. Nicholas during the years, including Boris Lushniak, former acting U.S. surgeon general, Illinois Sen. Walter Dudycz, as well as Boris Antonovych and Myron Kulas, both of whom served in the Illinois General Assembly.
While Ukrainian ethnic heritage schools existed since the 1890s, there were no day schools until Father Pavlo Tymkevych, a member of the famed “American Circle” of Ukrainian Catholic priests, established a dormitory-type “bursa” in 1904. It failed, as did similar efforts that followed.
Education remained static until the arrival of Bishop Constantine Bohachevsky in 1924. The first permanent parochial day school, St. Joseph’s, was established in Philadelphia in 1925. The name was later changed to St. Basil’s to avoid confusion with the many Roman Catholic schools named St. Joseph that existed at the time.
Bishop Bohachevsky, considered by many as the “father” of Ukrainian Catholic education in the U.S.A., initiated a nationwide campaign of school building. Under his leadership accredited full-time schools were founded in Pittsburgh (1933), New Kensington, Pa. (1936), Chicago (1936), Hamtramck, Mich. (1936), Newark (1939) and Watervliet, N.Y. (1940). Of the three schools founded in 1936, only Chicago and Hamtramck are still up and running in 2017.
I spoke with Roma Tobiansky, principal of Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic School in Hamtramck, and she informed me that they too plan big fund-raising festivities for this year. I asked where Fourth Wavers send their kids, and guess what – many send them to a tuition-free charter school.
Surviving since 1936 hasn’t been easy. The population of Chicago’s Ukrainian Village has changed over the years. At one point, the eparchy considered selling the school to the Chicago Public Schools. Fortunately, this didn’t happen. A cadre of younger Ukrainian professionals came to the rescue. Today, St. Nicholas has a new principal, a new school board, a STEM program affiliation and expanding technology offerings. Given that a large number of students are Hispanic, there are two language offerings, Ukrainian and Spanish.
When Lesia and I were members of the first board of education, tension existed between St. Nicholas and Ss. Volodymyr and Olga, a Ukrainian Catholic parish down the block. A truce of sorts was reached during the episcopate of Innocent Lotocky, a saintly man who did his best to heal the wounds of the past. Unfortunately, even today most “V and O” parents prefer to send their children to tuition-free public schools.
Catholic schools have a long history in America. The mission of Catholic education originated in the evangelical mandate of Christ: “Go and teach all nations.”
The first parochial school in the United States was St. Mary’s in Philadelphia, founded in 1783. Overcoming a host of obstacles, American Catholics eventually built the largest private school system in the world. At its height in 1965, there were 13,500 schools serving 5.6 million students of which 4.5 million were primary.
The Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965 was a watershed in Catholic history that breathed fresh air into a Church that had become defensive and immovable. Included among the many reforms were the expansion of the missionary role of the laity, the increased significance of local bishops, and the clarification of the position of Eastern-rite Catholics by Pope Paul VI, who promulgated “Orientalum Ecclesiarum” during the conclave. Today the universal Catholic Church breathes with two lungs, one Western, one Eastern.
At the same time, unfortunately, Vatican II had a profoundly negative impact on many priests and religious who lost their way. They exited the Church in alarming numbers. In 1965 there were 180,000 women religious in America, most of whom taught in Catholic schools. Today, fewer than half that number are active. Nevertheless, dedicated laypeople alongside religious maintain distinctively Catholic schools characterized by mutual respect, sound academic and theological instruction, provision of the sacraments and diversity. Such is the case in Chicago. Attend a liturgy at St. Nicholas and you will often hear Hispanic altar boys responding in Ukrainian.
St. Nicholas Cathedral School is not out of the woods. Our eparchy is currently without a bishop. We sorely need a dynamic prelate who can set our people on fire. We need more people like the wonderful young men and women who took it upon themselves to save the school.
The St. Nicholas Cathedral School banquet on February 25 promises to be a spectacular affair for alumni and its loving flock. It should be a fitting tribute to the pioneers who built the school and to those who sustained it. The banquet will either signal a renaissance for Ukrainian Catholic education in Chicago or a last hurrah. Lesia and I will be there. Please join us.