OBITUARY: Ihor Bulba, prominent member of Ukrainian community in Austin (01/25/04)

OBITUARY

Ihor Bulba, prominent member of Ukrainian community in Austin

by Ihor Lysyj

AUSTIN, Texas - Ihor Bulba, a prominent member of the Ukrainian community in Austin, Texas, died on January 8, in Buffalo, N.Y., after a long and valiant battle with cancer. At the time of his death he was with his wife, Eva, his three sons and one daughter, their families, grandchildren and numerous relatives.

This writer met Mr. Bulba for the first time in 1948 at the International Refuge Organization (IRO) school in Arolsen, Germany, where we both studied the intricacies of electronics. Later Mr. Bulba attended the Technische Hochschule in Munich and was an active member of the Ukrainian student community of that city. An extraordinary sense of humor was his hallmark during those difficult early years of our young immigrant life, when we were lacking in almost everything, and it served him well throughout his life.

Mr. Bulba arrived in the United States from Germany as an immigrant on the Displaced Persons quota in 1950. Within a few months of his arrival he was drafted into the U.S. Army and returned to Germany as a noncommissioned officer to the same town he had left only a few months earlier. After his tour of military duty he completed his formal professional education at the New York State University, Technical Institute in Buffalo, graduating with distinction as an electrical engineer.

His professional and military careers were closely interwoven from that point on. As he progressed up the executive ladder at General Electric, Westinghouse and other corporations, he also remained on the military reserve roster and served his adopted country with distinction during the Korean and Vietnam wars.

At the dawn of Ukrainian independence in the early 1990s Mr. Bulba was one of the first Ukrainian-American businessmen to lend a helping hand to the economically devastated country. On behalf of a group of American investors he organized, staffed and equipped a computer hardware manufacturing plant in Kyiv. Within a year the company was in full operation, manufacturing computer components and generating profits. It was later taken over by Ukrainian businessmen.

The roots of the Bulba family go deep in Ukrainian history. The Bulba clan hails from the Volyn/Polissia region of Ukraine and his ancestors served in the Zaporozhian Sich. The family name appears in historical records as registered Kozaks in the Volyn region during the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the wars of liberation that followed that period.

According to the oral family history, Mykola Hohol visited the city of Kremenets, the ancestral home of the Bulba family, in the 1830s to study historical records of Polish-Ukrainian military conflicts that took place during Kozak wars for independence. The city was the major center of learning in western Ukraine prior to the final partition of Poland in 1772, and the library in Kremenets remained the principal repository of historical documents and records in Ukraine after final partition of Poland and the annexation of the Volyn region by Russia. Hohol, as a young history lecturer at the Patriotic Institute and later at the University of St. Petersburg, needed resources of the Kremenets library for his research on the Kozak past.

During his stay in Kremenets, Hohol was a guest of Nikofor Bulba, a prosperous entrepreneur, innkeeper and great-grandfather of Ihor Bulba. Nikofor Bulba, a registered Kozak, acted as a guide for young Hohol during his stay in Kremenets. Together they visited many Kozak mohyly (burial mounds left by the war of liberation), as well as the castles and fortifications in the area of major military engagements, so vividly and accurately described by Hohol in the masterpiece he published later under the title of "Taras Bulba."

This historical novel is based in large measure on the resources of Kremenets library, visits to battle sites and fortresses of the area, and on the lengthy conversations with Ihor Bulba's great grandfather Nikofor. The title of the resulting literary icon, "Taras Bulba," published in 1835 as a part of the Myrhorod anthology, is not coincidental but appears to be an acknowledgment of the inspiration and the source of material used by the 25-year-old author in his novel.

During the war for Ukrainian independence in 1917-1918 Ihor Bulba's father served as an officer in the Army of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) and established a lifelong friendship with Lt. Stepan Skrypnyk, nephew of Otaman Symon Petliura. Lt. Skrypnyk, later became a bishop of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Mstyslav of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A. and patriarch of Kyiv and all Ukraine.

After World War I the Bulba family settled in Rivne, Volyn region. Ihor Bulba's father supervised the modernization of the city's municipal facilities, while his uncle served as a county administrator and judge, and later as a mayor of Rivne. Escaping Communist oppression the Bulba family emigrated to the West during the second world war, eventually settling in the United States.

For the past 28 years Ihor Bulba with his wife, Eva, lived in Georgetown, Texas, where they raised four children. In his retirement Mr. Bulba was an active member of the Ukrainian community in Austin, Texas, contacting and welcoming Ukrainian newcomers to the Austin area.

During the past decade Mr. Bulba transferred the majority of his family records, his numerous military uniforms and other artifacts of historic value to the City Museum in Rivne, where many of these are on permanent display. He also donated numerous Ukrainian art objects to the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas.

A funeral liturgy, with full military honors, was held on January 12, at the Ukrainian Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Cheektowaga, N.Y. A memorial service was scheduled to be held in Georgetown, Texas, upon Mrs. Bulba's return. In addition to his wife, surviving are: four children, Paul Konstantine, John Frank, Mark John and Ada Marie, with their spouses, eight grandchildren, and numerous relatives.

Donations in memory of Ihor Bulba may be made to The Ukrainian Weekly Press Fund at 2200 Route 10, P.O. Box 280, Parsippany, NJ 07054.

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