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As she grew in accomplishment and experience within the UNWLA, and perhaps because of her independent views, in 1981, she was elected First Vice-President, a post she never actually sought. But she was proud to serve, happy that she could apply her considerable diplomatic skills and rational thinking (after all, she had been trained as a lawyer) when she was sent out to resolve complex organizational issues in different UNWLA branches around the country. She genuinely enjoyed her extensive contacts with many UNWLA members, and above all, felt she was making a contribution to the organization that had been such an important part of her life. In the last decade of her life, she remained a loyal "soyuzianka", organizing a UNWLA branch in Stamford, Connecticut, and later joining the Yonkers, New York branch of which she was a member until the end of her life. In the October 1998 issue of Our Life , which was dedicated to the memory of Teodozia Sawycka, UNWLA President Anna Krawczuk wrote eloquently and beautifully about my mother's contributions to the UNWLA and to her personally. Among other things, she wrote of her "shining example of tolerance, patience and understanding of others, even under the most trying circumstances." During my mother's year-long illness, many UNWLA members from across the country wrote and called to offer their moral support, which was a great comfort to her. "I'm not used to all this attention," she said, almost shyly. I was reminded of her first UNWLA activities during the early 1950s, when she went out to comfort the sick and the elderly, and I felt the love she had so generously given others over the years returning to her in her time of need. As was her custom, she would have liked to thank each well- wisher personally, but she grew too weak to do this. So, dear ladies of the UNWLA, in her name, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know she would have been deeply touched too by your generous commemoration of her memory, for which our family offers you its thanks. In spite of all I have said about the significance of the UNWLA in my mother's life, ironically enough, I feel that my mother's legacy to me is that, when faced with a choice between her family and her women's organization, she remained a mother first and an activist second. On this Mother's Day, as I ponder her commitment to the UNWLA, and through it to the Ukrainian community , I am grateful to her for the example of service that she set, but even more grateful that she was, above all, such a wonderful mother. To me she was truly, as her name "Teodozia" suggests, a gift from God. An especially heavy delivery of mail from Brazil temporarily saddens Teodozia Sawycka. 1979. Anisa Handzia Sawyckyj was editor of the English language section of Our Life in the 1970s. In 1975, she traveled to Brazil with her mother, photographing Ukrainian communities there and subsequently writing about them in the Ukrainian press. In 1982, she chaired the Ukrainian Women in Two Worlds conference. A member-at-large of the UNWLA, she lives in New York with her family.
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