EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS

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November 20, 2008 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E2283 

A TRIBUTE TO BISHOP EUGENE J. 

BLOUNT 

HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS OF NEW YORK

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 

Mr. TOWNS. Madam Speaker, I rise today 

to pay tribute and to honor Bishop Eugene J. 

Blount. Bishop Blount has, from an early age, 

always placed a devotion to community betterment and a passion for Christ and his church 

at the forefront of every endeavor he has undertaken. 

Bishop Eugene J. Blount, in 1990, joined 

the Elim International Fellowship, where he introduced a renewed enthusiasm for the scriptures and an appreciation for the supernatural, 

serving in the prophetic ministry as one of the 

‘‘King’s Seers’’ and as Chief of Staff in the full 

time ministry under the leadership of Archbishop Wilbert S. McKinley, where he molded 

and implemented the mission of the church. 

Bishop Eugene J. Blount, an outstanding 

and well-respected member of the Brooklyn 

clergy, will undoubtedly prove to be a tremendous asset to the Bedford-Stuyvesant community as he is consecrated as a Bishop of the 

Elim International Fellowship. 

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize 

Bishop Eugene J. Blount for his extraordinary 

accomplishments and to congratulate him on 

his consecration at the Elim International Fellowship. 

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to 

join me in paying tribute to Bishop Eugene J. 

Blount. 

f 

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. Twentyfive 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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