OBITUARY: Danylo Husar Struk, encyclopedia editor, university professor, poet, translator, 59 (06/27/99)

OBITUARY

Danylo Husar Struk, encyclopedia editor, university professor, poet, translator, 59

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - Prof. Danylo Husar Struk, the Toronto-based editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, professor of Ukrainian language and literature, poet and translator, died of a massive heart attack during a sojourn in Europe. Prof. Struk was pronounced dead at the Bogenhausen Hospital in Munich in the early morning of June 19. He was 59.

Prof. Struk was born in Lviv on April 5, 1940. His father, Evstakhiy (Ostap) Struk, director of the Lviv Medical Institute, was brutally murdered by the Soviet NKVD the following year. In 1944 he emigrated with his mother, Daria, to Germany, where she was remarried to Wasyl Husar.

Prof. Struk's family emigrated to the U.S. in December 1949, settling in New Jersey. He was accepted to Harvard University on a scholarship and his bachelor's thesis on the works of poet Pavlo Tychyna was the first on Ukrainian literature to be accepted at Harvard. He graduated in 1963, earning a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for 1963-1964.

Prof. Struk earned an M.A. in Ukrainian literature at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1964. In 1965 he entered the doctoral program at the University of Toronto and in 1967 began teaching Ukrainian language and literature at the School of Graduate Studies, successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis in 1970. This dissertation, titled "A Study of Vasyl Stefanyk: The Pain at the Heart of Existence," was subsequently published in 1972.

Prof. Struk joined the University of Toronto department of Slavic languages and literatures as an assistant professor in 1971, and became a full professor in 1982. In April of this year he was appointed chairman of the Slavic department, for what was to have been a five-year term.

Prof. Struk's instruction in Ukrainian language resulted in a textbook, "Ukrainian for Undergraduates" (1978), which was reprinted three times and reissued in a revised second edition in 1998; an accompanying laboratory manual was released in 1989, then issued in CD format in 1998.

The Harvard-trained scholar designed and taught courses in modern Ukrainian poetry, prose and drama, and was an acknowledged expert on the works of Ihor Kalynets and Emma Andievska. His articles in the field appeared in scholarly publications such as the Journal of Ukrainian Studies, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Slavic Review, the Slavic and East European Journal, the Canadian Slavonic papers (where he served as book editor in 1980-1982) and émigré periodicals including Suchasnist and Novi Dni.

In 1982 Prof. Struk succeeded professor George S.N. Luckyj as managing editor of the Encyclopedia of Ukraine (EU) Project, conducted in cooperation with the late Prof. Volodymyr Kubijovyc (who died in 1985) and the Shevchenko Scientific Society, with the support of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, the federal government of Canada (CFUS), and the provincial governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. The encyclopedia was published by the University of Toronto Press.

Having overseen the publication of the first volume in 1984 and of the second in 1988 (as well as serving as a subject editor for literature and contributing a number of entries), Prof. Struk became editor-in-chief of the EU in 1989. Under his stewardship, the five-volume English-language reference work was completed in 1993. Prof. Struk also oversaw ongoing work on revised editions of the first two volumes, as well as a volume of updates.

In 1990, Prof. Struk became the director of the Toronto Publications Office of CIUS, which also houses the editorial offices of the Journal of Ukrainian Studies (from 1993 to the present) and a branch of the Peter Jacyk Centre for Ukrainian Historical Research.

A full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) since 1988, Prof. Struk was elected president of its European branch, based in Sarcelles, France, in 1997.

In 1998 Prof. Struk founded the Institute of Ukrainian Studies in France (IUSF) and initiated a drive to establish a foundation and scholarly research center sponsored by NTSh in Europe, the CIUS and the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (ANU), that would attract scholars, writers and artists from Ukraine and elsewhere to Sarcelles, a suburb of Paris, and re-establish it as a locus of intellectual and cultural exchange.

Prof. Struk served as vice-president of the Canadian Association of Slavists in 1989-1990 and president in 1991-1992, and was a board member of the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies from 1985.

In 1992 he was elected as a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; in 1993 he was awarded the CFUS Prize for Highest Achievement in Ukrainian Studies; and in 1997 he was designated Ukrainian of the Year by Ukrainian Technological Society in Pittsburgh.

Prof. Struk's poetry was first published in the journals Suchasnist, Pivnichne Siaivo and Nova Poeziya. A collection of his poems, titled "Gamma Sigma," was published in 1963. Prof. Struk translated the poetry of Lina Kostenko and the prose of Vasyl Stefanyk into English, and works of Walter Patric Kinsella and Ted Galay into Ukrainian.

From the late 1950s to the early 1970s Prof. Struk was active in the Plast Youth Association as a hiking and mountaineering instructor, ranging from the camps of the Eastern Seaboard to the Rocky Mountains. He was a member of Burlaky fraternity.

Soon after his arrival in Toronto, he established the now-defunct Knyho-Kliub Books club (modelled on the Book-of-the-Month Club), and joined the social-investment club Cosbild Inc., of which he was president in 1996-1997.

A funeral service was conducted on June 22 at the Ukrainian Catholic Exarch's Chapel in Munich by the Rev. Myron Molchko, vicar general of the Ukrainian Catholic Exarchy in Germany, with an additional mass planned by Bishop Mykhailo Hrynchyshyn, to be celebrated in Prof. Struk's memory at the St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Catholic Church in Paris. Prof. Struk's remains were cremated in Munich.

On July 2, a memorial tribute to Prof. Struk will be held on University of Toronto grounds. For further information, please call the Toronto CIUS office at (416) 978-6934.

Prof. Struk is survived by his wife Oksana, by his children of his first marriage, Boryslava, Ostap and Luka; step-children Andrij, Julian and Tetiana; his grand-daughter, Yaryna; his former wife, Roma Stefaniw; his sister, Natalka Husar; and his mother, Daria Husar. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Danylo Husar Struk Fund at the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, 2336A Bloor St. W., Suite 202, Toronto, Ontario, M6S 1P3.

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