This old journalist is not easily moved to tears, especially if his mind and eyes are also focused on what’s going on on the other side of his Nikon camera lens. But I did feel a bit of moisture in my eyes that sunny Saturday morning a month ago at St. Andrew Ukrainian Cemetery in South Bound Brook, N.J., as the priest and mourners began singing “Vichnaya Pamiat” for Ross Chomiak, visibly moving his wife, Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, daughters, Tania Chomiak-Salvi and Dora Chomiak, and their families to tears.
Rostyk – as Ross is known to his Ukrainian friends – is an old journalist colleague and friend of mine who died that previous Monday morning, December 7, after a long illness and a few weeks shy of his 80th birthday. Since then, my mind hasn’t been able to stop thinking about him, his work in Ukrainian and African affairs, and the role he played in the development of my journalistic life since our professional paths merged in the 1970s in Washington.
It was at the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America – the U.S. government’s shortwave radio service providing Ukrainians living in the Soviet Union and elsewhere with truthful reports about what was going on in the world in their native language. I joined VOA in 1969, and Rostyk came there in 1972 after five years at Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, a similar U.S. media organization.
His earlier journalistic career resumé, which began in the early 1960s, also included such assignments as the editor of The Ukrainian Weekly, reporter for the Calgary Herald and associate editor of the Prolog Research and Publishing Association.
After two years at VOA, Rostyk accepted an editorial position with the African Press Branch of the U.S. Information Agency, which provided African countries – their governments, media and people – with journalistic reports, texts and transcripts of official statements transmitted over what was known as the “Wireless File.”
In 1979, when Rostyk was deputy chief of the African Branch, he suggested that I apply for the editorial position that became open. I did and was accepted, and it focused my journalistic career back into the press and the English language. As well, it gave me a deeper world perspective with the experience and insight I gained in covering post-colonial African affairs, including a few assignments on that continent covering visiting senior U.S. government officials.
After the break-up of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. government had to open embassies in the newly independent Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, both of us were selected to be among the first press attachés there: I in Ukraine and Rostyk in Kazakhstan.
His daughter Tania Chomiak-Salvi became the second press attaché in Kazakhstan. And now, she is a senoir foreign service officer at the State Department.
Rostyk and I retired from the USIA in 1994, and both of us then refocused our journalism back to the now-independent Ukraine. He spent a year in Kyiv managing the International Media Center – which was co-founded by his other daughter, Dora Chomiak – and continued writing articles and commentaries for The Weekly, Svoboda and other media. And I became the Washington Ukrainian radio correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation and began my freelance relationship with The Weekly.
It looks like things worked out well for both of us Lviv-born journalists, Rostyk. No need to stop the presses.
Thank you. Rest in peace. Vichnaya Pamiat.