NEWS AND VIEWS: Shadows for my ancestors no more (05/12/02)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Shadows for my ancestors no more

by Mike Buryk

In the beginning, my family's history was mostly filled with shadows. My grandmothers spoke hardly a word of English, and Ukrainian was not the every day language in my parents' home. My grandmothers and I could communicate about the basics when I came to visit - eating, sleeping and going to the store - but much beyond that was a major struggle. They were both Ukrainians who had come to America before World War I and always lived in those long gone places in our immigrant communities where English wasn't a critical tool of expression.

Both of my grandfathers died tragically many years before I came along, when my parents were still young children. For me, there were no tales of ancient glory at grandpa's knee. There was "gigi," who was my dad's stepfather. But he was Polish, spoke no English at all and wasn't around much those few times that we made the eight-hour trek to visit my paternal grandmother in the Pennsylvania coal country of Schulykill County.

And yet, the past was always with me. My maternal grandmother who lived nearby in Jersey City, N.J., insisted that I make my First Holy Communion at St. Peter and Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church downtown. After that there was also some talk of sending me to their grammar school instead of the neighborhood school, the predominately Irish Catholic St. Anne's, but the idea of a second grader traveling halfway across the city by bus every day didn't really make much sense - even in the 1950s.

When my family moved away from Jersey City to the far away suburbs in Wayne, N.J., in the early 1960s, my parents cut me some slack to get over the 13-year-old trauma of moving to a whole new world. They let me take the bus from time to time back the 30 miles to visit my old neighborhood. As luck would have it, the bus connection to Jersey City tunneled its way through New York City and I became like a tourist in a new country.

It was then that I first came across Seventh Street on the Lower East Side with its thriving Ukrainian cultural life. Surma. Arka. The Howerla bookstore. St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church. The luncheonettes Odessa and Leshko's. The smell of cabbage and dill was everywhere in the air! The more I went to these places, the greater my curiosity grew about my Ukrainian roots.

Sometime early in high school, I began to really question my Uncle Johnny, my mother's brother, about where his parents came from. My maternal grandfather, George Sych, was a bit of an unknown, since he died in 1930 and never spoke much to his children about the past. Or if he did, no one was telling me about it! Austria. Galicia. That was the extent of it.

On the other hand, my mother's mother, Anna Sawchyn, was an entirely different story. She was alive and here and, even though I couldn't ask her the questions and understand the answers myself, my mother, her brother and sister certainly could. I took my family history lessons in small doses at the white porcelain kitchen table in Babtsia's railroad flat on Jersey Avenue. Each time I added more and more detail to my view of where she came from. This would go on for several years until she passed away at 82 in 1973, the year after I graduated from college. I still miss her today after 29 years and even have dreams sometimes that she has returned.

Over the last 35 years, the blank spots of my family's past were slowly filled in. It took innumerable trips to the National Archives, the New York Public Library and the Family History reading rooms of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) plus chance meetings with relatives, near relatives and total strangers to sketch the details of our life in Halychyna before World War I. Then came the Internet.

Tales of Lemkos in Siemuszowa near Sianik (Sanok) and Boikos in Rosilna (Rosulna) near Ivano-Frankivsk unfold before me webpage-by-webpage. E-mail has helped me connect with people halfway around the world to yield precious shards from the Buryk (Gburyk), Czerepaniak, Sawchyn and Sych family mysteries. Piece by piece, I am recreating the story of our ancient Ukrainian roots with the help of many others bitten by the genealogy bug and the strong desire to know where they came from. Now, relatives long lost through the ravages of World War II and Operation Vistula (Akcja Wisla) are re-united electronically in the zap of an e-mail! Lviv is as close as New York City online.

Where it all leads I still can't say. I do know that somewhere my grandparents are all having fun watching me pull together the few clues they left to unlock the secrets of my Ukrainian ancestry. And my Dad is smiling with them, pleased to see how much I've filled in the shadows of our family's hidden past.

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The results of some of Mike Buryk's genealogical diggings for his Ukrainian roots may be found on his website, "Our Patch, The Buryk Family Ancestry," at http://www.buryk.com/our_patch/index.htm. If you have questions about researching your Ukrainian ancestors, particularly in the Lemko region of southeastern Poland, you may contact him by email at: michael.buryk@verizon.net.

He would especially like to hear from former residents of Siemuszowa, Poland (near Sianik), about their reminiscences of the village and the families who lived there. Former residents of Rosilna near Bohorodchany in Ivano-Frankivske Oblast also are asked to contact him with their stories.

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