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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 2018 WWW. UNWLA .ORG 1 7 A Story About Stor ies Page 23 of the September 2018 issue of Our Life featured an obituary honoring Luba Kinach, a long - time member of the UNWLA and someone very dear to me and mine: Luba was the wife of my mother’s f irst cousin Oleh and someone I will al- ways remember as a gentle and loving presence in my life. Below the obituary was an excerpt from a poem entitled “A Word about Ukraine” (Слово про Україну). A brief note below the title of the poem explains that the po em was written for a collection about “historical attire of Ukrainian women,” mak- ing it (in my view) a rather fitting companion to the tribute to Teta Luba, whose obituary included a lovely photo of her as a young woman, wearing an embroidered blouse and a multi - strand necklace, familiar and lovely accouterments associated with our Ukrainian cultural heritage. The poem was written by Leonid Poltava, who was born in Ukraine in 1921, emigrated to the West after WWII, and died in New York in 1990. A prolific writer, Poltava left his mark on the Ukrain- ian literary scene as the author of numerous vol- umes of poetry, two plays, a collection of short sto- ries, a historical novel, four opera librettos, and an array of poems and stories for children. Via a tele- phone c all from my godmother (Dr. Wira Slobodi- aniuk Trigos), who has a subscription to Our Life , I learned that the poem had evoked memories of times gone by: her personal encounters with the poet during the turbulent war years and additional related memories of decades past. A day or two after this conversation, I re- ceived a letter in the mail, which included Wira’s story and photos of Leonid Poltava and another ex- patriate Ukrainian poet and novelist Leon yd Lyman , who is considered by some to be one of the best poets of his generation. Her story also in- cludes a brief mention of a third personage, an opera singer (baritone) named Mykola Manoilo, who returned to Ukraine and later served as a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR. The photos of Poltava a nd Lyman are origi- nals, given to my godmother in 1945, and each bears the signature of the giver. They are repro- duced here with her permission, accompaniments to the story she wrote, a reflection of human his- tory, human resilience, and an insatiable curios ity about the world and the people who inhabit it. I am not a big believer in coincidence and view “coincidence” as part of a cosmic master plan that underscores the theory that some things are simply meant to be. Shortly after all the events re- lated to m y godmother’s story, I received an email from New Mexico, which was forwarded to me from the UNWLA office administrator, Olya Sta- siuk. The email included an attachment, the text of a speech penned by Stephanie Chopek Sydoriak and delivered at a Ukrainian I ndependence Day celebration held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on August 26. It is a story in which past and present events are intertwined and which accentuates the manifold intricacies of the Ukrainian immigrant experiences. I contacted Mrs. Sydoriak by te le- phone and had a lovely chat with her about her story and related matters. It is my sincere hope that other readers of Our Life will write and share their own immigra- tion stories and thereby preserve a historical rec- ord of these experiences. They are sto ries worth telling, worth reading, and worth sharing within our diaspora community and within the greater context of our American world. - tsc All About Life There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely a s if they had never happened before. – Willa Cather, 1913 Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards. – Soren Kierkegaard, 1843 All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. – Shakespeare , 16th century, AD Whi le there’s life, there’s hope. – Terence, 163 BC
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