Eternal Memory (Вічная памят!) to a dear Oral History Interviewee

In May 2018 I was privileged to conduct an interview with Olga (Krasulski) Yudisky, probably the oldest resident of "Polander Hill" (which 100 years ago was mostly populated by Carpatho-Rusyns/Lemkos), the daughter of a Lemko immigrant father and an American-born, Lemko mother, and a lifelong member of the historic St. Vladimir Greek Catholic Church of Alden.

"Aunt Olga" went to her eternal reward on November 28, 2019. With condolences to her family, I add my prayer that God grant to her a blessed repose and eternal memory -- Вічная єй памят!

~~~
Olga Krasulski Yudisky, 96, of Alden, passed away Thursday, Nov. 28, 2019, in Wilkes-Barre General Hospital.

Born in Alden on July 24, 1923, Olga was the daughter of John and Anna Rudowski Krasulski.

Olga was preceded in death by her husband of 21 years, John A. Yudisky; brother, John Krasulski; and sisters, Mary Krynick, Martha Krasulski, Helen Wall, Betty Kozik, and Anna Charnuska.

She is survived by siblings, Emily Weisberg, Waterbury, Conn.; and Andrew Krasulski, Florida.

Olga is survived by her children, Dennis Yudisky and wife, Diane; Linda Wheeler and husband, Shaun, Hamilton, Ohio; as well as her beloved grandchildren, Captain Holly Yudisky of the United States Navy and husband, Bryan Slutman, Arlington, Tenn.; Dr. Lauren Kuryloski, Buffalo, N.Y.; and John C. Wheeler, Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Olga was a graduate of the Newport High School, Class of 1941, and after graduation she worked as a lab technician at Vinaly Lite in Piscataway, N.J. Upon returning to Northeast Pennsylvania, Olga worked as an accomplished seamstress, where her services were in high demand. Olga was active in her community, serving as a member of the Luzerne County Historical Society and coordinator for the Luzerne County Folk Festival. She was a devout member of St. Nicholas Greek Catholic Ukrainian Church, and participated in the League of Ukrainian Catholics and the Sacred Heart Society. Olga will be dearly missed by her loving family, many friends, and the countless community members who knew her.

A Divine Liturgy will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday in St. Nicholas Church, Glen Lyon.

Friends may call from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday. A Parastas service will be held at 6 p.m. with the Rev. Roman Petryshak. Olga will be laid to rest in the parish cemetery.

Original material is © by the author, Richard D. Custer; all rights reserved.

The 2019 Memorial Day Weekend Research Trip (The Last One?)

Another Memorial Day Weekend has come and gone, and as has become my custom, I extended it a few days and made a research trip out of it. Again as per custom, I began in central PA and wound up in northeastern PA for a few days, also attending the Memorial Day Pilgrimage at St. Tikhon’s Monastery. With a conveniently located motel in Dunmore as my base, my activities were mostly in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area, followed by a few visits around Pottsville to close out the trip.

But back to the beginning. Heading north to PA from DC typically leads me to Somerset, Cambria, Indiana, and Huntingdon Counties. I began this trip with a stop in Wood (once upon a time known as Woodvale) in Huntingdon County. I wanted to take some new and hopefully better photos of the inside of the vintage St. Michael's Orthodox Church, and parishioner Susan Pawuk graciously met me there and opened the church.

She also provided me with the parish's 2017 centennial booklet, which had some valuable photos inside. Susan's brother Ronald has been a Facebook friend for a while, so I was glad to make a personal connection with the family, who are now among only a few local parishioners of St. Michael's.

I then headed to Patton, Cambria County, near my mother's homestead in Barnesboro (now known as Northern Cambria), to meet with the current pastor of Patton's Ss. Peter & Paul Byzantine Catholic Church and our family parish, St. John's Byzantine Catholic Church in Northern Cambria. Father Vasyl Polyak is a Carpatho-Rusyn native of Užhorod and came to the U.S. to serve our churches several years ago.

Again taking "improved" photos of the inside of the Patton church, Fr. Vasyl also supplied me with a DVD to commemorate the parish's history, and later emailed me a digital copy of the historic old photo of the parish and its congregation, which was taken from a newspaper.

The hamlet of Dixonville in northern Indiana County was my next stop; parishioner Maureen (Betsa) Cornman, while unavailable to meet me there in person, graciously arranged for the church to be open, for a copy of the parish's 1915 centennial booklet to be set out for me, and for a bounty of historical photographs available for me to scan. It was encouraging to see a parish that's in a fairly out-of-the-way place still active and clearly proud of who they are. (Although most of its history has been as a Ukrainian Orthodox church, it was originally a Greek Catholic church tied to the mainly-Subcarpathian Rusyn St. Michael's Church in neighboring Clymer, and was actually a parish of the Pittsburgh Greek Catholic Exarchate until the mid-1920s. Most of its families, though, came from transitional Lemko-Bojko villages of Lisko County in southeastern Poland—within Carpathian Rus' but whose American descendants and those who remained in the homeland mostly came to consider themselves Ukrainians.) As part of the "circle of life," it was Maureen's parents George and Ann Betsa whose home at the base of the hill where the church now stands and whose porch I sat on and with whom I first discussed the history of St. John's parish way back in the 1990s when just beginning this project. George and Ann have gone on to eternal life, but their legacy lives on in a wonderful way.

Let's Get Reacquainted!

Just because it may be a long time between blog posts doesn't mean things aren't happening. It's just that these last few months it has been easier for me to post quick updates, and share interesting relevant content, on the Carpatho-Rusyns of Pennsylvania Facebook page.

A few months ago I added the Facebook gadget in the right-rail of this blog so hopefully, dear readers, you have noticed that there is activity happening on my end, just not in the form of full-length blog posts.

My recent activities have included the following:

• I'm continuing to work on building my databases of fraternal benefit society (and similar organization) lodges, and perhaps most importantly, of the places in Pennsylvania Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants settled, by county and region.

• On April 20, Great & Holy Saturday for most Byzantine/Greek Catholics in America, I took a ride across a portion of the cradle of the Carpatho-Rusyn immigration in the U.S. — Schuylkill and Luzerne Counties. Some, not quite most, of the churches of Carpatho-Rusyn origin were open that day for services or for people to spend time in prayer at the “grave” where the burial shroud (плащаница - plaščanica) of Jesus is displayed until the Resurrection services in the evening/night or Sunday morning. I posted quite a few of the photos on the Carpatho-Rusyns of Pennsylvania Facebook page.

• In May I attended the 25th anniversary celebration of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society, in Munhall. I am one of the eight founders of the organization, and I edited its New Rusyn Times publication from its start in 1994 until the beginning of 2016.

• While in Pittsburgh, I completed my photography of Rusyn immigrant tombstones at Calvary Cemetery in Hazlewood/Greenfield, and made a research contact with the pastor of one of the few remaining parishes I need to analyze the early metrical records of.

• I applied for the Grant-in-Aid Award of the Immigration History Research Center Archives at the University of Minnesota so I can soon, I hope, return to the IHRC Archives for one more visit to do research with early Carpatho-Rusyn (and Ukrainian / Slovak / Russian) periodicals. (The IHRC Archives has much of this sort of material not available anywhere else, and much of that was published in Pennsylvania; their collections are not only related to Minnesota!)

• I'm continuing to discover new and fascinating articles and go down rabbit holes on newspapers.com, and occasionally readers are sending me their discoveries too, for which I'm very grateful!

• Again this year I'll be on a panel at the Annual Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), this time in San Francisco in November. The panel title is "Documenting Lives of Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Neighbors in Subcarpathian Rus’ and Beyond" and my paper will be "A Carpatho-Rusyn Village’s American Conversion to Orthodoxy: Statistical Analysis Reveals Life Narratives." This paper draws on my research and experience of giving the St. Alexis (Toth) Lecture in 2018 at St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral in Minneapolis.

• And last but not least, I'm actually writing text for the book. Finally. I'm preparing the introductory essays that will present an overview of Carpatho-Rusyn life in Pennsylvania, and a synopsis of Rusyn history in each of the state's regions that will form the sections of the book.

I did go on my usual Memorial Day Weekend research trip last month, which I will blog about in the next few days. 

Original material is © by the author, Richard D. Custer; all rights reserved.

The St. Nicholas Greek Catholic Russian Aid Society of Allentown

Original St. Michael Greek Catholic Church
at Green St. & Ridge Ave.

Carpatho-Rusyns settled in Allentown, Lehigh County, in the late 1890s, but were not present in large numbers until around 1905. Two Greek Catholic parishes were founded in the Sixth Ward, in 1907-08 (St. Michael the Archangel), at Green Street and Ridge Avenue, and a Galician offshoot founded by Lemkos and Ukrainians in 1909-10 (St. Mary's Immaculate Conception) on Front & Furnace Streets, shortly thereafter building a church on Fullerton Avenue. This was a neighborhood largely made up of Central European immigrants, not just Carpatho-Rusyns and Galician Ukrainians, but also Slovaks, Poles, and Hungarians.

In the years to follow, Carpatho-Rusyns would also be involved in founding a short-lived Russian Orthodox parish (also named for St. Michael), and later an independent Greek Catholic parish (St. John the Baptist, on N. 2nd Street). That church eventually left the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese and joined the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Passaic as St. Andrew Byzantine Catholic Church (the story behind this is an unfortunate one, the details of which I'll leave for my book); a portion of its members founded Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary Orthodox Greek Catholic Church which established itself in a former synagogue at the prominent corner of North 6th and Tilghman Streets. Meanwhile, St. Mary's Immaculate Conception (Galician) Greek Catholic Church would lead a movement to establish a Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the U.S. in the 1920s, and today the parish is known as St. Mary's, Protection of the Holy Theotokos Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Other than lodges of fraternal organizations like the Greek Catholic Union and the Russian Brotherhood Organization, the main Carpatho-Rusyn social organization in this community was the St. Nicholas Greek Catholic Russian Aid Society, founded in 1919. I knew about this group and its club building, but did not know its history. A few days ago I searched newspapers-dot-com to see what kind of articles there were about it. It yielded no less than 40 articles about the organization, many of which provide a very useful body of information on its history and activities. (I only wish the accompanying photos were better.)

For example, this article provides a few details of its founding.

The Morning Call, October 28, 1945