Year 2025 Wrapup: Not the Year I Wanted

Щастливый новый рік! Happy New Year!

For my 2024 retrospective, I compensated for a year thin on accomplishments by weaving all sorts of other Pennsylvania Carpatho-Rusyn news into my post, whether I was involved in it or not. This year I won’t artificially pump up my retrospective and will keep it honestly representative of what little progress I feel I made in 2025.

As some of you know, I was focused in 2025 (and still am) on family health issues. Sadly, this situation probably won’t improve. But I did try to keep some of my life on track, and am happy about the notable things I did even though they were few.

Throughout the year, I did keep my Carpatho-Rusyns of Pennsylvania Facebook page well updated with a few of my own posts and many shares of other Carpatho-Rusyn (or PA heritage-related) content, and tried to keep my Carpatho-Rusyns of PA Instagram supplied with interesting images and informative captions, even if I didn’t have a lot of fresh items due to lack of opportunities for travel and research.

In February, an article based on my presentation from an ASEEES panel in 2023 was published in the Lemko Rusyn scholarly journal Річник Руской Бурсы / Rocznik Ruskiej Bursy from Poland, in a special section “Our People at 40.” The panel, all of the presentations of which are included therein, provided thematic reflections on Paul R. Magocsi's groundbreaking book Our People: Carpatho-Rusyns and Their Descendants in North America which first appeared in 1984 and most recently appeared in a 5th edition (2023). My article, “Our Bible of Carpatho-Rusyn American Religious Life,” is online; you can also read the whole section including all the presentations.

 

With the coinciding Western/Catholic and Orthodox dates for Pascha/Easter, I got to visit a few of our churches in east central PA on Great & Holy Saturday to see if they might be open for folks to visit the Lord’s grave (Božij hrob) and burial shroud (plaščanica. Images from my successful stops in Coaldale, Lansford, Nesquehoning, and Frackville I shared on Instagram and Facebook.

In June, a short piece of mine was included as one of dozens of thankful, congratulatory, and heartwarming tributes to Professor Bob Magocsi, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, in In So Many Words: Celebrating Paul Robert Magocsi (Toronto: U. of Toronto, Chair of Ukrainian Studies, 2025) edited by Nicholas Kyle Kupensky.

On June 29, my presentation at the Heinz History Center Czech & Slovak (and Rusyn!) genealogy workshop in Pittsburgh out of family necessity I had to instead give online. I think despite that it went very well; see my report and some of the presentation.

On July 20, the Feast of St. Elias the Prophet, I made another long-awaited research visit to St. Mary’s Russian Orthodox Church in Saint Clair, Schuylkill County. A super blessing was that the old metrical records were made available to me (other people connected to the church years ago had told me nobody knew what happened to them!). See my posts on Instagram and Facebook.

In late July, George Pawlush published his new book They Came To Play: How Professional Sports Helped Carpatho-Rusyns Assimilate Into America. I was honored to have been asked by the author to write the foreword. (I also assisted with verifying the Carpatho-Rusyn heritage and ancestral villages of many of the athletes profiled in the book.)

Carpatho-Rusyn immigrants coming to America in the late 1800s had no idea to the extent of the nation’s widespread obsession with playing and watching competitive sports. Their first-generation American born sons were eager to assimilate into American life and they quickly immersed themselves into these new activities.

George Pawlush’s new book “They Came To Play,” just published, and available on Amazon, profiles 45 athletes and others with Rusyn ancestral roots who reached the highest level of their sport. A few found fame as professional boxers, but most gravitated to America’s most popular team sports in the 1920s and 1930s - football and baseball.

Read more about They Came To Play on my Facebook post.

Courtesy of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society

In early August I scheduled a long-awaited research visit to St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church in Bethlehem, Northampton County. Unfortunately, the surely very intriguing early metrical records were unaccounted for that day, but I made the most of the visit otherwise; see my posts on Facebook and Instagram.

In October, I made it in person to present at the C-RS Eastern Pennsylvania Chapter’s 9th Annual Genealogy Conference at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre. See my report and most of the presentation on my blog.

Finally, I wrote the cover article for the December 2025 issue of the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International’s magazine Naše rodina / Our Family. The issue, with the theme “Final Resting Places,” contained articles about notable Czech, Slovak, and Carpatho-Rusyn cemeteries in the United States. In “A Carpatho-Rusyn National Cemetery That Never Was: Shenandoah, Pennsylvania,” I wrote about the early history of St. Michael’s Greek Catholic Church and its cemeteries, the final resting place of deceased Carpatho-Rusyns from not only Shenandoah but many places near and far.

 

Since I wasn’t able to travel for the most part last year, when able I worked at home to further prepare my long-promised book, including doing some additional data entry. On a related note, I’m eagerly anticipating my research associate finishing the data entry for deceased member listings of fraternal benefit societies with Carpatho-Rusyn members (some more than others) including the Russian Brotherhood Organization, Ukrainian National Association, Providence Association, and the Ukrainian National Aid Society. The database is up to 4,400 entries!

And something I’ve been working on piecemeal is of course long overdue, my article for the Pennsylvania History journal that will close out the requirements of my paid residency at the Pennsylvania State Archives back in late 2023. As a teaser, I believe I’ve settled on a title (but don’t be too surprised if it changes en route to publication):

Navigating Ethnonational Identities: Carpatho-Rusyn Immigrants in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley and Moshannon Valley, 1890-1940

I hope that sounds intriguing. It will tell the story of what happened to Carpatho-Rusyns (by whatever name) in places like Catasauqua, Allentown, and Northampton, and Osceola Mills, Philipsburg, Ramey, and Madera, informed by analysis of naturalization documents, fraternal benefit society membership and activities, chain migration data, and first-person accounts of controversial events as covered in Rusyn and Ukrainian immigrant newspapers. You won't see it soon, but stay tuned and you can be sure you'll hear about it when it's done and hopefully published.

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