The following is the Eulogy that was given for Mrs. Vera Z. Romuk by her daughter at her funeral service on Saturday, May 8, 2010. A daughter's love is one that binds her to her mother in the best of circumstances and keeps her memories in her heart even after her passing. Mrs. Vera Romuk, nee Zyznieuski, died at Northwestern Memorial Hospital on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 at 12:40 p.m.. This was eight weeks, two hours and ten minutes after her husband of almost 52 years, Dr. Witold Romuk, passed. Vera was accompanied by her son, John, at the time of her death, much like her husband, Witold, who was in the presence of their daughter, Irena, when he died. I rarely saw them when they were not together and we can now take comfort in knowing that they are together once again.
Eulogy for Vera Romuk
Vera Romuk- daughter, wife, mother and grandmother. My mother began her life’s journey in Vilna, Belarus on September 6, 1931. Her father, Stepan, was a farmer and a tailor, and her mother, Eudokia, was a homemaker and a seamstress. Their simple farm provided much of what they needed with crops in the rich soil, a few animals, and one special white horse that my mother would tell us stories about until her final years. She and her older brothers, Walter and Nikodem helped on the farm and she would often visit the nearby fields to pick berries. Their lives were turned upside down, however, by the ravages of World War II. Caught between the Russian army and the German army, the horror of war was forever imbedded in her memory when she witnessed a Russian soldier shoot her brother, Walter, who at age 19 had refused to fight for the Russians, vowing to be part of the Belarusian National Guard. He would die shortly after, despite an attempt by a German medic to save his life.
The family was uprooted and relocated to a German Displaced Persons Camp, where her father was made to use his tailoring skills to sew clothes for the German citizens and soldiers. After they were liberated by the Allied Forces, the family members were sponsored by families in the United States to move to this country. My mother was 18 years old when she moved in with a family from North Platte, Nebraska in 1949. She completed high school there and the sponsor family had set their sights on her remaining in Nebraska to go to college and marrying their son. She, however, set her sights higher, and was granted a full scholarship to Bradley University in Peoria, where her brother, Nick, was attending. Their parents joined them there and the family was reunited. She added to her growing list of spoken languages by earning a degree in Spanish. I would say that is pretty impressive for someone who spoke no English upon arriving in this country.
My mother then began working as the secretary for the Chief of Police in Peoria after graduation. Mutual friends from a local Belarusian group introduced her to a handsome medical resident, who was 17 years her senior, but who shared a similar background. Fortunately for John and me, and nine grandchildren, they fell in love and were married at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Peoria on July 26, 1958. I was born the following May while my dad was continuing his training to become a pediatrician. Three years later, they had a son, John, and I had a little brother (who’s not so little anymore). When our father began a year of fellowship training at Children’s Memorial Hospital, our family moved to the Ukrainian Village neighborhood in Chicago. This began my mother’s lifelong love of the city and she immersed herself in various organizations and committees that supported and brought to the world’s attention the plight of the Belarusian people in her native country. They would later buy their one and only home on Oleander Avenue in the northwest corner of Chicago, where we would grow up and I would one day meet my husband right in my own backyard!
Our life was a whirlwind of parades, marches, folk fairs, and dinners with local, national and international dignitaries. My mother reveled in her role as a spokesperson for Belarus and all of the Captive Nations. We’d celebrate the Belarusian Independence Day every March and “Christmas Around the World” at the Museum of Science and Industry every December. My mother’s passport said that she was an American, but there was no person I knew who was a greater supporter of her homeland of Belarus with its rich customs, traditions, and heritage. If anyone wanted to know about Belarus, or sometimes even if they didn’t, Vera Romuk was the person to go to. The movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, had nothing on our mother. Every day growing up was our Big Fat Belarusian Celebration. You just have to look at the wedding video of my husband and me…we should have made it into a movie before they did, then we’d be famous and have a lot of money in the bank!
To our mother, Vera, the hallmarks of her life were centered around her faith, her family, her friends and her freedom. She was a patriot through and through and could never understand how people could talk ill of our great country. She had lived through the war and did not or would not take her liberty for granted.
Her faith melded with her heritage at her home away from home, Christ the Redeemer Belarusian Eastern Rite Catholic Church from the time they moved to Chicago until its closing in 2003. We would sit through the long masses, though usually arriving on Vera time, which was a little later than most. John and I and our cousins would become restless waiting for the Agape in the basement of the Church, where the adults would talk about Belarus and the kids would enjoy the baked goods. We thought that was our reward for having to stand, sit, and kneel through such long services, much of which we didn’t understand. The smell of incense somehow still makes me think of donuts and kolachky. Our mother loved the Lord and would never think of missing a Holy Day unless she or one of us kids was too sick to attend, which wasn’t often.
Her family motto was, “The family that prays together stays together”. She believed in traditional values like having dinner together, attending school functions and parent-teacher conferences, thanking people who have helped her, and sharing Sundays together as a family. That was pretty much how it went, except the once a month Sundays that our father had to make rounds when he was on call, and even then he’d often take one of us with him and then we’d come back home for our family dinner. I don’t recall ever staying with a sitter, except for maybe a couple of times. John and I would go almost everywhere with our parents. We especially loved the trips to KFC before heading out to Paddock Lake in Wisconsin. These values and principles carried over when Al and I began our family. While we still lived in Chicago, many Sundays were spent at Christ the Redeemer Church in the morning and at my parents' house in the afternoon. Some things don’t change much, do they, Mary and David?
The house always seemed to be bubbling over with family and friends. There were lively conversations, mostly revolving around Belarus and the Russian government controlling their native land, or about Church or some upcoming celebration or cultural event. Our mother was the quintessential hostess, always ready with baked goods and chai or a full meal if you came at the right time. No one ever left the house hungry, unless they chose to. My fondest memory has to do with her famous “poppyseed” drink. It was always a part of the festivities of the Christmas season and as simple as it was, it was a symbol of her native Belarus and the sweetness of its people. Of course, we would have to check each other’s teeth for weeks to see if there were any seeds still stuck in between. Just last Friday, when we went to visit her in the hospital, she said she wanted some poppyseed drink. On Sunday, with a make-shift strainer of a styrofoam cup with holes punched in the bottom, we made her poppyseed drink at her bedside and this was her last supper. She could barely whisper, but she said that it tasted “so good” to her. It was the sweetness of life and her beloved Belarus upon her lips one last time.
Freedom! How she cherished hers by reaching out to immigrants and compatriots from Belarus and other Captive Nations. Her gift for language allowed her to communicate to people from Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and other countries that were behind the Iron Curtain. She longed to return to Belarus, and was able to go back twice with our dad. She and our dad were greeted like foreign dignitaries when they returned “home” to Belarus. And it was this need to make others feel welcome that led her to helping those that needed assistance in navigating their new home in Chicago. She knew the gift of freedom and that her friends and relatives in Belarus and other captive nations did not have the same freedoms. She was very passionate about her mission to promote freedom throughout the world and every congressman, senator and politician she met would also be made aware of that, and that included going all the way to the White House where she would let then-President Ronald Reagan know the same thing. And we have the pictures to prove it!
My mother was an intelligent, educated, well-read, curious woman, who spoke eight or nine languages and was as sharp as a tack. It was better not to engage her in a heated debate, because she had a determination, okay, a stubbornness that would wear the other person down until her point was made. Many people would comment on how they always learned something from our mother. She also loved to do crafts, draw and write poetry. Just ask my husband, Al, who became her personal editor over the last 25 years. When I was 7 or 8 she taught me how to crochet. She patiently helped me to make a hat - a beret with a pompon on top! Some of my cousins still have something I crocheted for them years ago! She loved to celebrate special occasions like births and baptisms of her grandchildren with poems. "Babula" loved her grandchildren and was always in her element when they would visit her. It was such a wonderful celebration in 2008 when my parents came out to Freeport with John’s family and we were able to celebrate their 50th Wedding Anniversary complete with Belarusian food and even a limo ride. It was just like they were newlyweds again!
My mother always seemed to find signs in life when something important was about to happen. At the end of her life, the signs were clear. She was on the top floor of Northwestern Memorial Hospital overlooking Lake Michigan and when she was transferred to the Hospice unit, she was in the highest room number in the entire hospital. Just like our mother, she just had to be that much closer to heaven! I can hear her singing, “Nearer thy God to thee.”
While life was not always easy for her, she made sure that she would try to make it easier for others through her generosity of time, donations, and efforts of letter writing, speaking or advocating for the less fortunate. Shortly before she died, she asked me to get a check to the Salvation Army Children’s Fund. I brought the check to our local chapter and the woman was so grateful. She said that her donation would allow children to be able to attend camp this summer, who otherwise would not have been able to go.
Our mother was a courageous woman from humble beginnings. She was a survivor, not only of the war, but of physical challenges, having survived a stroke, breast cancer and never seemed to slow down even after the car accident when her left foot was crushed and had to be amputated. She never felt sorry for herself or wanted to be a burden to others. Her will to be independent lasted until the end. She said to us on the Friday before she died, “Go home and be with your family. I don’t want you to get stuck in traffic.” It was just like her.
Vera Romuk was a woman of style and substance. As you can see by the Belarusian costume that she chose to be buried in and the elaborateness of the funeral service, she loved all of the pomp and circumstance of celebrations. And yes, even though this is a sad day for us, it is also a celebration of an incredible woman, a loving wife, who was not meant to be a widow for long, a wonderful mother and grandmother, and a citizen of the free world. Yes, this costume is the one that she wore the day that she met President Ronald Reagan at the White House during a Captive Nations event. Even among all of the dignitaries present, Vera Romuk would stand out among the crowd.
Our mother was a courageous woman from humble beginnings. She was a survivor, not only of the war, but of physical challenges, having survived a stroke, breast cancer and never seemed to slow down even after the car accident when her left foot was crushed and had to be amputated. She never felt sorry for herself or wanted to be a burden to others. Her will to be independent lasted until the end. She said to us on the Friday before she died, “Go home and be with your family. I don’t want you to get stuck in traffic.” It was just like her.
Vera Romuk was a woman of style and substance. As you can see by the Belarusian costume that she chose to be buried in and the elaborateness of the funeral service, she loved all of the pomp and circumstance of celebrations. And yes, even though this is a sad day for us, it is also a celebration of an incredible woman, a loving wife, who was not meant to be a widow for long, a wonderful mother and grandmother, and a citizen of the free world. Yes, this costume is the one that she wore the day that she met President Ronald Reagan at the White House during a Captive Nations event. Even among all of the dignitaries present, Vera Romuk would stand out among the crowd.
This noble servant of God met Chicago Mayors Daley, Washington, and Bilandic, Governors Thompson and Edgar, congressmen and senators, but it was always her willingness to help others and her generosity that took center stage.
If someone met Mrs. Vera Romuk, they would never forget her. She had that way about her that could charm, enthrall, and educate a person all at the same time. Her life was one that was well-lived and she told us shortly before she died, “Tata is calling me home to be with him.” Well, Mama, we know where he is and now we know that you are once again by his side.
Mom, thank you for giving me life, sharing your faith in Christ with me, and for showing me how to serve others. I love you. We all do.
