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[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 177 (Thursday, November 20, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2283]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                         HONORING IWAN SHULJAK

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. MARCY KAPTUR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, November 19, 2008

  Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize Iwan Shuljak of 
Cleveland, Ohio who passed away October 6, 2008. This record stands as 
first published in the Ukrainian Weekly, November 2, 2008, written by 
Andrew Fedynsky. In addition to this beautiful narrative of the life of 
Iwan Shuljak, I fondly remember his warm smile and welcoming heart. He 
will be missed by his family, friends and the entire Ukrainian-American 
community. May his generous and loving spirit be comfortable at its 
final resting place.
  ``This is a fairytale, only the story is true. And because it's true, 
it ends with death, but it's a fairytale and therefore has a happy 
ending. It's about an elderly man who devoted his life to Ukrainian 
Culture and how the global village cared for him.
  I first met Iwan Schuljak in the early 1960s at the Plast Scouting 
Home in Cleveland where he was the live-in caretaker. Twenty-five years 
later, he was still there when I returned to Cleveland to become 
director of the Ukrainian Museum-Archives (UMA), which had purchased 
the building from Plast.
  In 1987 the UMA was adrift. Having been in the Tremont neighborhood 
for a century, the Ukrainian community left for the suburbs after 
highway construction demolished half the houses and nearby factories 
were closing. UMA leaders had either passed away or retired. And so, a 
staggering collection of memorabilia, documents, books and artifacts 
was sitting neglected in an aging wooden building in a neighborhood 
where the major industry had become arson and insurance fraud.
  Mr. Schuljak lived in a spare room on the second floor. Invariably, 
he sat on the porch reading or prowled the streets of Tremont to let 
people know the UMA was viable and someone was caring for it. In the 
winter he shoveled the snow; in the summer, he mowed the grass; 
throughout the year, he cleaned and was there to welcome the occasional 
visitor.
  I was 39 years old and ready for a change after nearly a decade on 
Capitol Hill. My father had been UMA director and I felt an obligation 
to help preserve his legacy. And so, with old friends like Ihor 
Kowalysko and new ones like Vlodko Storozynsky, we started working on 
the collection and raising the profile of the institution.
  At the age of 76, Mr. Schuljak welcomed the changes and made 
appropriate accommodations. He announced that he was now restricting 
his garlic to weekends only and told me that I was to avoid it 
altogether. People were noticing, he said, and we had to present a 
certain image.
  Before long, the world around us changed dramatically: communism 
collapsed and Tremont began gentrifying. The arsonists went to jail, 
and urban pioneers were restoring historic buildings, opening art 
galleries, coffee shops and restaurants. Developers built townhouses 
and condominiums. And the UMA was part of all that, with young 
volunteers and board members. Throughout, Mr. Schuljak was a mainstay: 
not only a caretaker, but also an advisor, a confidant and a beloved 
figure in the neighborhood.
  He had a thousand stories: you know the guy at the Friendly Bar with 
no fingers on his left hand? Back in the 1930s, the NKVD demanded he 
turn his gold over to the state. He didn't have any, he said, so they 
chopped off a finger and kept on until they were finally persuaded he 
was telling the truth . . . The macabre punch line: the joke was on 
them! He had the gold all along, and it's still there, buried in the 
ground. The guy hated the Communists so much he wouldn't give them the 
satisfaction.
  Well, Mr. Schuljak, the son of farmers, hated them too. When 
communism came and with it collectivization and famine, he became a 
``class enemy.'' Arrested and brutally interrogated, he carried scars 
the rest of his life where a Chekist cracked his skull with a revolver, 
depriving him of hearing in his right ear.
  Once the Terror subsided, Mr. Schuljak was released to work on the 
railroad. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, he, along with 2 million 
other Ukrainians, was forced to work in the German economy. His blue 
and white OST patch identifying him as a slave is now part of the UMA 
collection. When the war ended, Mr. Schuljak wisely decided to 
immigrate to America. There, he maintained contact with his family, 
exchanging letters and phone calls, sending them money.
  As he reached his mid-80s, Mr. Schuljak was slowing down and the 
village in Cleveland began to pay attention to his plight. Daria Sopka, 
who worked at the UMA, signed him up for the Cuyahoga County Passport 
Program for the elderly. Lida, a young immigrant from Lviv, assisted 
Mr. Schuljak with everyday needs, shopping, etc. At MetroHealth, 
nurses, doctors and Ukrainian interpreters knew him by name.
  Then in January 2007, he slipped and broke his leg. The leg healed, 
but at 95, he could no longer live unassisted and Myron Pakush--also 
with the UMA--arranged for him to be admitted to Avon Oaks, a nursing 
home owned and operated by the Reidys, Ukrainian Americans from Lorain 
County.
  Not having heard from him for some time, Mr. Schuljak's family became 
concerned and called. When they learned what had happened, they 
immediately offered to take care of him in Ukraine. Well, Avon Oaks is 
a gracious and caring community and he had regular visitors, especially 
Father John Nakonachny from St. Vladimir's Cathedral, but it was still 
a nursing home and Mr. Schuljak was ecstatic at the prospect of ``going 
home.''
  But there was a problem: he had never become an American citizen and 
since Ukraine did not exist when he was born, he wasn't a citizen of 
that country either. So he couldn't get a passport.
  I explained the situation to Ukraine's ambassador to the U.S., Dr. 
Oleh Shamshur, who directed his consular office to help. To establish 
that Mr. Schuljak had been born in what is today Ukraine, his relatives 
retrieved his birth certificate from 1911. He also needed an updated 
``green card.'' Alerted to the urgency of his case, the Department of 
Homeland Security turned things around in less than a week. Ukraine's 
honorary consul for Ohio, Andrew Futey, and Roman Andarak at the 
Embassy in D.C. did the rest and earlier this year, Mr. Schuljak became 
a Ukrainian citizen. In June, accompanied by Ihor Mychkovsky, he 
arrived in Kyiv to meet his relatives. His life had come full circle.
  Because he was nobody's responsibility, Mr. Schuljak became 
everyone's. People all over helped out, making amends, in a way, for 
how brutally he'd been treated in the first half of his life and 
repaying him in part for his dedication and selflessness. He died on 
October 6, and is buried within walking distance of where he was 
born.''

                          ____________________
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