†

Stephan Chemych, civil servant and administrator, fundraiser and organizer, community activist; was born September 27, 1928 in Drohobych to Illia and Olena (née Maksymovych) Chemych. He had three brothers: Mykhailo (b. 1926), Theophil (b. 1932), and Taras (b. 1942). He completed elementary school in Drohobych and passed a high school equivalency exam at the gymnasium at Schleisheim, near Munich. As a functionary of the 159th Station of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Traunstein (in Bavaria), he assisted a group of Ukrainians from the central Dnipro region (which had been part of the USSR before the war) avoid forced repatriation to the Soviet Union. During 1950 and 1951 he worked in the conciliar section of the administration of the Funk Kaserne Emigration and Repatriation Camp near Munich. In 1952 he arrived in the United States and began his studies at Oregon State College in Corvallis, Oregon. He continued his studies at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he received his B.A. in 1956, having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa upon graduation. In 1957 he became an American citizen. From 1958 to 1961 he was a lecturer of Ukrainian language at Columbia University in New York, where, as a recipient of a Ford Foundation scholarship, he continued his studies in political science and sociology. He received an M.A. there in 1963. During this time he also worked for a publishing agency of the federal government as a researcher studying the administrative-juridical aspects of the reorganization of the Ministry of Agriculture of the USSR. This project was undertaken in cooperation with the well-known economist Vsevolod Holobnychy, who worked on the economic aspects of the reorganization. From 1963 to 1993 Mr. Chemych worked as a director in the Emergency Services Section of the Human Resources Administration of New York City. He also worked part-time in banking in the Ukrainian community of New York. This in turn aided him in organizing the funds established for programs in Ukrainian studies at Harvard University (from 1976-1989). He took an important and leading role in Ukrainian student life in the United States: he was the president of the Ukrainian Student Association of Columbia University (1957-1958); the president of the 4th Congress of the Union of Ukrainian Student Associations of American (SUSTA; 1959); the president of the Association Adjudication Committee of SUSTA (1961-1962); the founder of the Ukrainian Studies Fund (USF/FKU) and was its president after its incorporation in 1956 as a non-profit organization; and the deputy head of the Ukrainian Students' Society in New York (1957-1958). It was in the Ukrainian Students' Society that he met Maria Kuzyk. They married in 1959. They had two children‹Roxane (b. 1963) and Askold (b. 1966). Mr. Chemych always considered his wife to be a vital and equal partner in his work in Ukrainian studies. He felt that the crowning achievement in that work was the creation in 1968 of a permanent program in Ukrainian studies at Harvard University.

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Funeral information:

Sunday, Feb. 11, 2001
Viewing, 2PM to 9PM
Jarema Funeral Home
129 East 7th St. (between 1st Ave. & Avenue A)
New York, NY 10009
212-674-2568

Wake 7:30 PM
Jarema Funeral Home

Monday, Feb. 12, 2001
Mass, 11AM
St. George Ukr. Catholic Church
24 East 7th Street (between 2nd and 3rd Ave.)

Burial
Following Mass, transportation will be provided to the Holy Spirit Cemetery, Hamptonburg, NY (cemetery of the Stamford eparchy).
Travel time is about 1.5 hrs each way.

February 9, 2001
Maria, Roxane, and Askold Chemych
New York

Dear Mrs. Chemych and Family,

On behalf of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies, I would like to express our extreme sadness and sorrow on the passing of your husband and father. Please know that our thoughts and prayers are with you. All of us who care deeply about Ukrainian studies in this country are aware of the great debt that we all owe to Stephan Chemych. His organizational work in the field - fiercely driven and yet magnificently insightful and well informed - has yielded bounteously. Every student who learns about Ukraine at Harvard carries on his legacy. The same is true of every scholar who visits Harvard for its Ukrainian studies, every book that is published by HURI, every person who visits the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies. And now‹almost thirty-five years after the founding of the Standing Committee on Ukrainian Studies at Harvard‹Mr. Chemych's legacy emanates from programs and institutions all over the world.

Mr. Chemych's vision of firmly grounding Ukrainian studies at the highest levels of American academia was a bold and ambitious gambit. But I know that in his mind he saw it not as a risk to be taken, but as a calling to be answered. We all are much enriched that he answered that call. Vichna iomu pam'iat'!

With deepest sympathy,
Robert De Lossa
President, AAUS