By Ed Staskus
My father was born in the village of Vadzgiris in 1892. Lithuania had been under the thumb of the Russians since 1795. They had wiped the name of the country off the map. They instead called the land the “Western Provinces.” They declared a press ban in 1892 that prohibited printing Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet. Cyrillic script became obligatory, no matter what the natives said. A large scale crop failure that year led to widespread famine. Migration to North America swelled to a tidal wave. That same year the first light bulb in the country was lit in the town of Rietavas. There was at least one small light at the end of the tunnel.
A certificate of baptism makes the birth place and birth year of Antanas Staskevicius, my father, clear. That is probably where he grew up, although it is uncertain. He had a younger brother, Juozas, who not wanting to be drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, emigrated to the United States. My father served in the Czar’s army in Saransk. He always said it was in the middle of nowhere, although nobody knew for sure where the middle was. My mother was a native Russian he met there, a school teacher. They started a family in 1916, starting with my two sisters.
When the Bolsheviks took over from the Czar they sent many military officers to jail. Since my father was a Lithuanian they let him return to his country. In those days Lithuanians who returned from the Russian Imperial Army were not looked upon favorably. Their Russian wives were even less popular. But as time went on people got used to them.
At first, my father lived in Siauliai. Later on, he lived in Kaunas. Around 1930 he went to work in Panevezys for a short time. I spoke only Russian until I was four or five years old, no matter that my mother spoke Lithuanian very well, without an accent. Although she was Russian Orthodox, we went to a Catholic Church, acceding to my father’s wishes. I would occasionally go to the Russian Orthodox Church with my mother, but only when my father was away from home.
I was born in Siauliai, not far from the Hill of Crosses, in 1924, even though we did not live there at the time. After I was born my father moved to Kaunas. He became the Director of the Department of Citizen Protection there. Later on we moved back to Siauliai. My father was appointed the Chief of Police. He used to wear a fancy uniform when he would attend events. It was always exciting to see him in it. He was in charge of the entire region as well as the police department.
I remember Police Captain Kurpius. He had a big face and a small mouth. He would stop at our house after duty hours to eat and smoke. He and my father drank vodka and sang all night. My mother plucked a kankles while they sang. Both of my sisters were friends with the daughters of the man who was the director of the Teacher’s College. They dreamt about becoming teachers like our mother.
Sometime in 1938 or 1939 my father was transferred from Siauliai to Panevezys and then to Zarasai. Augustinas Voldemaras lived in Zarasai at that time. He had been banished there after briefly serving as the country’s first prime minister. He was a stubborn man with a quick temper. He often came to our house. I used to go with my father to the sauna where I rubbed Augustinas Voldemaras’ lower back for him. When he felt better he used to run out of the sauna and jump into an ice hole.
I did not finish grade school. I went for only two grades since I did not find it difficult. My father hired a tutor for me and two of my friends. The tutor helped us prepare for the high school exams. We passed the exams and started high school. We were the youngest in the class. Since I attended three different high schools, in Siauliai, Panevezys, and Zarasai, I could not remember the names of my classmates very well.
My father had a good friend in Kaunas who was a certain Mr. Dagys. My mother was good friends with his wife. When they would come to our house I used to have to hold the door open for them. I did not like to kiss the hands of married women, which at that time was customary, but I had to kiss her hand. One time I cut my lip on a diamond ring she was wearing.
We had an open air Chevrolet Eagle Cabriolet. When the famous pilot Feliksas Vaitkus, the second Lithuanian after Darius and Girenas to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, came to Panevezys. I went with our driver, who called the car “Stovebolt” after its engine, and my father to the train station to meet him. I was on the edge of my seat being in the car with the aviator. Later in the day he met with the public and gave a long speech I didn’t listen to.
When we lived in Zarasai we had a driver who was a police officer. He wore a peaked visor cap with a cockade fixed to the front. My father and I lived there by ourselves for a year. My mother was supposed to join us as soon as we were established, but she never came. The year passed quickly and then the Russians came. My father returned to Siauliai, since he, like all officials, was relieved of his duties.
He spent most of his time in the hinterland instead of the city. Our farm in Dainai was a model farm. In the summer excursions would come from all over to see our land and operation. We had all the newest tools and farming equipment, both cutting and sowing implements. We had many cows and an orchard of yellow Alyvinis apples.
After the Russians came our car was taken away. In 1940 the mood was very bad. We had a fear of the future in the pit of our stomachs. My father was seized by the Russians a week before the mass deportations of 1941. They took him as he was, just the shirt on his back and wearing sandals. Three men came in a passenger car. They asked my father for some help. They claimed they were having car trouble, or maybe they needed water. My father walked over to them and they shoved him into the back seat of the car. I was not at home. I was taking my exam at the high school. My mother called the high school. I sped home right away on my bicycle, but there wasn’t anything I could do.
Later, my mother and I went to the prison and took clothes and food for my father. We weren’t allowed see him. We drove to the NKVD office in the County Police Headquarters where we were told to go home. No one explained anything to us. I never saw him again. He was sent to a slave labor camp in Siberia and starved to death in 1942.
The mass deportations began in June. When they started my mother and I hid in the woods. When things got better we went home. One of my sisters was living in Vilnius. My mother said to me, “Go to Vilnius and warn her to watch out for herself.” Soon after I got there a neighbor called and told me to come back. He said my mother might be arrested. She was hiding in his root cellar. In the meantime, the Germans went to war with the Russians, occupying the country, and it was toilsome trying to return. No one was allowed to travel without permission, but I got lucky. Someone who had been a policeman in Siauliai was working with the Germans in Vilnius. At one time he had worked for my father. He was taking care of travel documents. I don’t remember his name, but I went to him, he introduced me to a German officer, and I got permission to travel by train. I returned to Siauliai.
After my father was sent to Siberia I had to manage the farm. I knew almost nothing about farming, even though I thought I knew in the fall the fields had to be plowed. I told the farm hands who had not run away, “Go plow the fields.” A neighbor saw them and ran over and said, “What the hell are you doing? You are plowing next year’s clover under.”
I hurt my hand during the war. I had ridden out with a horse drawn mower to cut hay. I saw that rain was coming. I tried to speed things up. Instead of sitting down as you should I walked beside the horses so that I could get them to pull the mower faster. As I was encouraging them I tripped and fell on the blades. The horses stopped. My right hand was almost cut off. The farmhand who was helping me ran over and, seeing my mangled hand, fainted. Meanwhile, my hand was hanging there and I was losing blood. I ran a kilometer to the prisoner camp where Red Army troops were being held, which was also in Dainai, for medical help. An ambulance came and rushed me to the hospital.
My mother was arrested and deported in 1944. She spent twelve years in Siberia. Later, after Stalin’s death, she was released, but was not allowed to return to Dainai or Siauliai. Nobody said why. She was moved into a cinder block apartment in Silute near the Curonian Lagoon.
I fled Lithuania when the Russians came back. I escaped with a company of Werhmacht leaving the Red Army prison camp in their Opel Blitz trucks. Their aim was to get to East Prussia. They were in a big hurry and only gave me a few minutes to gather what I could. We were a mile away when I looked back. I could see black smoke from our house and barn that the Russians had set on fire.
I went to Germany where I stayed for five years. At first I lived in a DP camp. I worked wherever I could doing whatever I could, I sold chocolate and cigarettes and shoes on the black market. I found legitimate work with the International Refugee Organization in 1948. I left for Sudbury, Ontario in 1949. I worked in a nickel mine, thousands of feet deep, working there for nearly seven years. There were many expatriates holding down jobs in Canada. Some cut down forests, which was hard work. Some went into the mines, which was dangerous work, but for men who barely spoke English and who did not have any specialty, the pay was good. I worked as a black powder man. I worked laying tracks for trains that carried the ore. Eventually I got an easier job driving underground tractors.
It was In Sudbury that I made a family. My three children were born there. My wife, Angele Jurgelaityte, was from southwestern Lithuania, from a small farm near Gizai, five kilometers from Marijampole. We met in Nuremberg where she was a nurse. She helped operate on my hand, which needed two more operations to restore its use to me.
After five years of living in Sudbury we started planning where we would live next. Most of the Lithuanians in the city were looking for better prospects. Many left for Montreal and Toronto, others to Chicago and Pittsburgh. We all started to go our separate ways. When I was living in Germany I had applied for a visa to live in the United States, in case the prospect ever arose. When the opportunity came we sold our house in Sudbury. We moved to Cleveland, Ohio in late 1957 with our children. My older sister and her husband were living there.
At the time I fled Lithuania my younger sister was forced to stay behind. We had all fled separately. She was unable to evade the Russians and get across the border. She stayed locked up behind the Iron Curtain for the rest of her life.
When I went back to Lithuania for the first time in 1979 I looked for our farm. I hadn’t seen it for thirty five years. Our house and barn were gone. There was a collective on most of the land. I found an old woman who remembered my parents. She briefly told me some things. She told me that in 1957 my mother searched for me by printing an announcement through the Red Cross in the American Lithuanian newspaper Darbininkas. A priest from Siauliai, Father Justinas Lapis, helped us to make the connection with my mother. He had looked after her welfare when she returned to Lithuania from Siberia.
After arriving in Lithuania I was determined to see her, no matter what the restrictions were. At first I tried to travel secretly to Silute, but was stopped in Ukmerge and ordered to go back to Vilnius. The next day I got permission to go for one day and was able to get a car. They charged me two hundred American dollars for it, which was highway robbery, especially since the car was of such poor quality. I visited with my mother and we spent three hours together. The car broke down on our way back to Vilnius.
From our former farm the city of Siauliai is five kilometers away. It was a busy city, or so it seemed to me after we went there from Panevezys, which seemed to be a very quiet city. Everyone used to say that Siauliai was known for its hooligans, although I didn’t see any. I did not like Siauliai when I lived there. The requirements of the high school there were not strict. I didn’t like that. The high school in Panevezys was very strict. The director would personally make sure everyone was in uniform, that their collars were buttoned and ties knotted, whereas the high school in Siauliai was not strict about the dress code, at all.
After a few years in the United States my wife and I shortened our surname from Staskevicius to something easier to pronounce. Since I worked in international business it was bothersome always explaining my family name to foreigners. I worked for TRW for seventeen years, selling auto parts worldwide. I was a Manager for International Service and traveled all over South America. Later they closed our division and gave the older workers pensions. In 1984 | collaborated to start the Taupa Credit Union in Cleveland. I worked there for six years before leaving. I became an international trade consultant and started traveling to Lithuania often. We tried to buy and sell a number of things, not all of them successfully.
One thing, furniture plugs, was successful. In the United States there are only a few companies that manufacture them because you need good birch trees. Lithuania has plenty of good birch trees. We negotiated there for two years. We looked for partners in Kazlu Ruda, a city near Marijampole, and Panevezys, to no avail. We finally found a group in Elektrenai, in southeastern Lithuania, to partner with and who we successfully began doing business with in the United States.
Birch trees lose their leaves in early fall in the Baltics, but they keep their roots intact year after year. Winter storms in the land of forests make the trees dig deep to stay the course. They are a pioneer species. They are the first to regrow after wildfires and ecological disturbances. When I set foot in North America I had to make a new home far from home. I had to carry my roots with me. I planted them where I landed, which was all I could do.
Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Down East http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.” His books are available on Amazon and Apple Books.
“Cross Walk”
Late summer, New York City, 1956. Big city streets full of menace. A high profile contract killing in the works. A private eye working out of Hell’s Kitchen scares up the shadows.
A Crying of Lot 49 Publication
147 Stanley Street 