School in Nemyriv, Ukraine
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John Holian Jr. passed away suddenly on January 27th, 2023. The funds raised through this campaign will be used to support the school and educational opportunities in Nemyriv, Ukraine, John's ancestral village.
John first visited Nemyriv in the Fall of 1996. I accompanied my father on this trip. Our immediate purpose for visiting was to transfer funds raised at his father's funeral (my grandfather), Iwan (John) Holian Sr., who passed away not long before our visit. Those funds were used to restore the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the village. My dad physically handed the funds to community leaders there, and we verified that the funds were used for their intended purpose, which was the restoration of the interior of the church, including painting frescos on the walls.
My dad was an educator and scholar. In the years since his first visit to Nemyriv, he donated funds and equipment to the local school. He would be touched to know that one of his legacies in passing was to further support the educational and intellectual opportunities for Nemyriv children and residents.
As it turned out, our first visit to Nemyriv would be his first of many, as he began a book project centered on the village. The project, a historical ethnography of the village, involved among other things interviewing dozens of elderly residents. He recorded these interviews and used them in writing a manuscript that he worked on up until his death. I had seen small passages of his manuscript over the years, but it was not until yesterday (1/28/2023) that I copied all of the files and began to see what he accomplished in the 26 years since his first visit. I will share some passages here so you may know why this village was important to him, and why it needs our help:
- ...after several trips to Nemyriv, my ancestral home, conducting a historical ethnography of the town came to mind. It was a research opportunity and an emotional tug. Many of the older residents remembered my parents, had stories of their own to tell, and were willing, even eager, to talk. I started making biannual trips, scuttling between archival and library research in Lviv and conducting interviews in Nemyriv, including three trips to communities across the border in Poland. Most of these were late spring or early fall trips lasting four to six weeks, and also a six-month Fulbright Research Grant during 2004-2005. During these times the country was experiencing a crisis of one kind or another: inflation and economic depression after gaining national independence, the Orange Revolution, the worldwide Great Recession and most recently the low-intensity, but disastrous war with Russia over Ukraine’s two eastern oblasts (provinces). Against this backdrop, ordinary people strived to carry on as best they could.
Since he wrote this, Ukraine has been plunged into a much more widespread war with Russia. Fortunately, Nemyriv and western Ukraine generally has been spared the worst of the consequences, but the situation there is still dire. My plan is to use 50% of the funds we raise here for immediate assistance to the town school, to lessen the hardship faced by its students, and then later to make other more strategic educational investments for the town with the remaining funds. I will update this webpage, and send updates to donors for whom I have contact info; you can share your email address with me at mholian "at" hotmail.com and sign your name to your donation here, or you may choose to give anonymously.
In another passage, he describes the conditions of the school:
- In Nemyriv homes had faucets with running water but toilets were located outside ... Despite Nemyriv having a two-story brick school house, built during the first Soviet occupation, the two toilets were two holes in the ground inside a wooden shed used by students and teachers throughout the school year.
This passage gives a sense of the scale of need at the school.
From what I can tell, my father continued to work on the manuscript until the day before he died. The last part of the book authors often finish is the preface, which is where the book begins. I was able to see that he last accessed the preface file on the day before his death, on 1/26/2023 at 3:32p.m. There was only one paragraph:
- This ethnography has taken so long that I wondered if I would ever get it done. But, along the way, I have learned so much, how to read several languages, including the one spoken in my parents’ family, and many of the details included in the manuscript – how to thatch a roof, how much milk a cow provides, etc. My life, and I hope this book, has been enriched by the many experiences I had in multiple trips to Ukraine and Poland as well as excursions to Kazakhstan, Germany, Georgia and other places. Mostly, though, by the many people I interviewed for this book, most were kind, a few less so, but all were interesting.
Through his work, the lives and the stories of many of the town's residents will also live on. And through this fundraiser, and the generosity of his family, friends, and others, his legacy will also lead to improving the school and other resources (such as the library) for current and future students. He cared deeply about education, learning was perhaps his greatest passion in life, and he would be so moved to know about the positive impact we will have. Thank you.
-Matthew J. Holian, January 29, 2023
mholian 'at' hotmail.com
Organizer
Matthew Holian
Organizer
San Francisco, CA