Marie A. Ulanowicz
(nee Chmilewsky)
Probably much, too much than you wanted to know about me, but here it is:
Well, I was born in Stanislaviv (Ivano-Frankivsk), Ukraine in 1943/44. (I have a split birthday because the priest who was registering my birth as well as my baptism, decided to change my birthdate. I was actually born on the 24th of December 1943 but he felt that no woman (chivalry or chauvenism?) should be saddled with another whole year because of one week, so he lopped off the first digit and moved the birthday up to the next month and year: Jan 4, 1944.)
My parents left Ukraine about two months after that, slowly moving west, just ahead of the front. My father, who had been on the bolshevik "black list" before the war broke out between USSR and Germany, was understandably anxious to stay out of Soviet hands. Unfortunately, after my family made it to Vienna, and after the siege of Vienna, that sector of the city was given over to communist control. The hardships of those years, as my parents described them, really do sound as if something from a film script. And, of course, as I hear others of that generation tell their stories, I know that my parents' experiences are by no means unique. Since my father was a medical doctor, he was finally able to commandeer an ambulance out of the communist sector into the American sector (ultimately making our way into Bavaria), where he was employed by IRO in one of the DP hospitals. We came the US in 1949 to Baltimore.
I grew up "in the country" in Maryland since my father worked at a TB sanatorium. (That was when part of the treatment for TB was isolation). My contact with the Ukrainian community was restricted to Saturdays mainly --- doing the usual thing: Saturday Ukie School, piano lessons at UMI, and of course, just socializing with other Ukes my age. I didn't do either Plast or SUM because their meetings were during the middle of the week, and it was just too much of a hardship for my parents, who didn't own a car to get me there.
On graduation from high school, I got my BA from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland in music education and piano pedagogy. At that time I met my husband, Robert Ulanowicz, who is a fourth generation American of (primarily) Polish lineage. To please me and impress (and to soften her opposition to him as a non-Uke) my Mother (my Father died in 1965), he learned Ukrainian and has a reasonable command of the language--- to such an extant that my friends occasionally forget that he isn't Ukrainian. The slavic last name also confuses people.
After he completed his graduate studies, we moved to the DC area. As he was teaching at Catholic University, I took advantage of the tuition break for spouses and got my MA there in historical musicology (emphasis Byzantine chant). That seems like another lifetime!
Bob was bitten seriously by the environmental bug and we moved to the shores of the Chesapeake bay. He has been a professor of mathematical biology at the University of Maryland, Center of Estuarine and Environmental Studies now for 24 years (hard to believe)! We thoroughly enjoy our rural environment, although it seems, sadly, that the Washington metropolis is making inroads into our area.
I taught for a while, both in schools (public and Ukie) and at home (piano). But since our youngest child was born, I've limited myself mainly to homemaking and volunteering in various organizations. I also enjoy writing pysanky during the Easter Season. We have three children: Anastasia, "Anya" - now 29 years old and a Ph D candidate in Cultural and Critical Studies (and in the throes of finishing her dissertation); Peter-- age 26 -- who is married and an attorney in Florida; and Vera, our "bonus baby -- a junior at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland.
When my kids used to ask me, "What's Mama going to do after she grows up?" for the longest time I had to reply, "I dunno." Finally, after Anya graduated from college and Peter from high school, I decided to return to graduate school to study Theology, an area that has intrigued me ever since undergraduate days (my father had teasingly called me "monsignor" back then). I got my Masters in Theology in 2002 from the Washington Theological Union. Now I work in adult faith formation and spiritual direction and love what I'm doing. Since my ancestry is well rooted in Theology (Grandfather, great-Grandfathers, great-great Grandfathers, etc--- all Ukrainian Catholic priests), I like to say that it's just a matter of me returning to the family business.