Dear Editor:
I read Andrew Fedynsky’s nostalgic and all-too-familiar piece, “With rue my heart is laden for golden friends I had…” (March 31) not wistfully, but with affection and admiration. What The Ukrainian Weekly reader doesn’t know is the profound influence Mr. Fedynsky and his fellow “Vovky” had on my contemporaries and me during our formative years growing up in the greater Cleveland area. As Plast counselors, Andrew, his brother Peter and the late Dr. Hruszkewycz brought a thoroughly humanistic and stimulating approach to scouting mentorship and character development. Being very young and clueless, I just didn’t know it at the time. Yet miraculously, it continues to instruct.
Fast forward to high school… Mr. Fedynsky reappeared to teach “kultura” (culture) during my final few years of Ridna Shkola on Saturdays. Not fully adhering to the curriculum de rigeur, he connected with and engaged us mischievous and “all-knowing” students through topical discourse on the nascent punk rock scene (he favored The Saints), the sober legacy left by the cultural and intellectual manifestations and subsequent persecutions of the Ukrainian “Sixtiers,” as well as the then current (mid- to late-1970s) political climate in Soviet Ukraine. The above introduced us to the vital import of social consciousness in the form of letter writing to locally and nationally elected officials, sit-ins, demonstrations and even hunger strikes in support of Ukrainian political prisoners.
Mr. Fedynsky reinforced the relevance of what I was already being exposed to by my parents at home with the significant publishing efforts of Smoloskyp and Suchasnist, among other like cultural organs. I continued to read their offerings in Ukrainian after high school and college, and today still manage to score and digest the rare out-of-print tome.
Although always present, at times on the periphery, much of my ethnocultural, social and spiritual awakening, if not re-awakening, came to me later in life. In fact, it shook me at the core of my being. Visceral quickening notwithstanding, select virtuous motions can arguably be traced directly to Mr. Fedynsky’s – and his generation’s – gifts of enrichment. I am grateful to have grown up in that milieu. Thank you “Vovky.” May your “vohnyk” (campfire) continue to enlighten and its sparks kiss the sky.
Verona, N.J.