Vilnius Review - Four Portraits of Lithuanian Americans in Alaska (September 8, 2021)

I thought that my uncle was the only Lithuanian in Alaska. On this visit, I learned that there are about a dozen adventurous Lithuanians who have made Alaska their home. Three of them are writers, and they have not forgotten Lithuania.

On June 18, 2021, the Little Lithuania Museum & Library in Chugiak, Alaska officially opened its doors to visitors. This delightful historical museum was created by Svaja (Svajūtė) Worthington, the Republic of Lithuania's Honorary Consul in Alaska. Svaja's family has a long and distinguished history connected to Lithuania. Svaja's grandfather, Stasys Šilingas, was the Minister of Justice in pre-World War II independent Lithuania. When the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Lithuania because he was an intellectual, and because of his service to his country, Stasys Šilingas, his wife, Emilija, and one of his nine daughters, Raminta, were deported to the Gulag in Siberia, where they were tortured by hard labor and starvation. Stasys Šilingas survived ten years in prison while under an Article 58 death sentence not knowing from one day to the next if it would be his last day on this earth, and then he survived 10 more years in the Gulag after the death sentence was lifted, but he had the honor of dying in Lithuania.

Svaja, who is a retired professor of Literature at the University of Alaska, created a website to honor her grandparents’ and aunt’s memory. Svaja writes on her website: “My grandfather was then Minister of Justice, a leader in the intelligentsia of Lithuania, and a tireless champion of Lithuanian autonomy and independence. He was a patron of the arts, a poet and writer, and his home, Misiūnai, was a gathering place for artists, writers, poets, philosophers. He was an orator described as ‘the Cicero of the North,’ renowned for his ‘fiery, patriotic speeches’ according to Encyclopedia Lituanica. Others called him ‘The Soul of Lietuva’ and ‘The Father of Lithuanian Independence.’ With a full beard and intense, passionate eyes, to me, he always looked like Leonardo da Vinci, or God.”

Laima, Svaja's mother and one of the nine Šilingas sisters, understood that under the Soviets only one fate awaited her and her family – deportation to the hard labor camps of Siberia. Together with her husband, Mykolas, she escaped Soviet occupied Lithuanian, seeking asylum in the Allied occupied territories of Germany. Soon after they left home, their horse was commandeered by soldiers. The young couple continued their journey on foot to Germany, carrying a wooden suitcase containing all their belongings in one hand and two-year-old Svaja in the other. Covering hundreds of kilometers on foot, Laima wore out her wedding shoes and continued the journey barefoot. The route they took is documented on a map displayed in the Little Lithuania Museum along with the suitcase and its modest contents.

Laima was pregnant when she fled Lithuania in August 1944. Svaja’s younger brother was born enroute in Czechoslovakia in 1945. The family lived for five years in a Displaced Persons camp in Germany. All that Svaja remembers of those years is the blue and white checkered blanket that hung over a rope, separating their living space from the next family’s. The checkered blanket is now on display in the Little Lithuania Museum.

“I don’t remember the bombs falling,” Svaja said when we met for the first time in a café in downtown Anchorage. After almost 50 years in Alaska with little opportunity to speak Lithuanian, Svaja's Lithuanian was hesitant, so we spoke in English.

In 1949, when she was seven, her family crossed the Atlantic in steerage in a boat filled with refugees. They settled in Lyons, Illinois, a suburb outside of Chicago where there was more nature and less concrete. The surroundings reminded Laima of her home in Lithuania. “Back then, mostly immigrants from Eastern Europe lived in that town,” Svaja recalled.

“I did not speak English at first,” Svaja recalls, “but I remember playing dodge ball with a group of children at school and someone called, ‘You’re out!’ and suddenly the English began to flow.”

Six of the nine Šilingas sisters escaped Lithuania. “My mother never got over the loss of her parents and her life in Lithuania,” Svaja confided. “I don’t remember that my mother ever laughed.”

Svaja recalls her mother telling her that they lived a beautiful life in Lithuania; although, their father did not spoil them. He made them work on the farm. But in America they struggled.

Svaja’s website narrates her family history, and her work as the creator and curator of the Little Lithuania Museum is documented on the museum website. This type of writing belongs to the genre that is known as life-writing. The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing recognizes that types of less formal non-literary writing, such as diaries, letters, interviews, reflections, journals, even recipes, is worthy of study as belonging to the genre of life-writing.

“I don’t think of myself as a writer,” Svaja explains, “but there are some things that need to be recorded and communicated.” Thus, for Svaja, writing is a tool of expression intended for a community of readers who might not otherwise be familiar with the tumultuous 20th century history of Lithuania.

Often trauma wounds are at the core of life-writing. The passion to record memories of a Lithuania before the World War II, and to show Lithuanian culture with pride, drive Svaja’s writing. Her work stems from the need to heal a family wound, and a historical wound. For Svaja, writing serves as a tool to tell her family story, and through telling her family’s story, to tell Lithuania’s story.

Although Svaja does not consider herself a writer, she has written about Šilingas and her family in Proteus and has translated most of his letters into English; although, they have been publicized only in part at Conference presentations. She also translated his poetry: Genesis of a Nation's Songs.

Svaja’s grandfather, Stasys Šilingas, was a man of the people, she explained. He held governmental and political positions in prewar independent Lithuania. He was active in bringing about Lithuania’s independence in 1918. For these activities, the Soviets named him an “enemy of the state. Svaja told me that the 1863 uprising against the Tsar of Russia, was funded by her great-great Grandfather Count Stanislovas Šilingas, who was exiled to Siberia for 10 years for his role in the Uprising. His estate house in Paberžė is now a state museum of the 1863 Uprising.

Recently, reading my great-grandfather, Jurgis Čiurlys’s handwritten diary, I learned that my great-grandmother, Elena Bilminaitė Čiurlienė’s grandfather participated in the 1863 uprising. Because of his participation in the revolt, he was deported to Siberia and died there. So here we were, two women seated in a café in Anchorage, Alaska, both descended from Lithuanians who were exiled from their country for being among those who were a “threat” to the Russian and Soviet totalitarian regimes because of their educations, their principles, their beliefs. We both had an ancestor who had rebelled against tyranny. Throughout the Soviet occupation, we and our families were the persona non grata of Lithuania. Love for Lithuania is in our blood. And yet, we are also displaced out of Lithuania. With each generation the ties with the homeland grow weaker. This is precisely why our ancestors were exiled – to break our ties with Lithuania. Both of us had dedicated much of our life’s work to preserving the memory of Lithuania.

Svaja and her husband Bob, and four of their seven children, (three were born later in Alaska) came to live in Alaska in 1975. When Svaja was a student, they had spent two summers in Denali National Park where Bob worked as a ranger. They fell in love with the beauty and allure of Alaska and wanted to come back. When a job as a medical technician opened for Bob in Anchorage, they relocated from New Mexico. It was the height of the pipeline boom and all they could afford was a log cabin outside of Anchorage in Chugiak with minimal electricity and water. “For ten years life was hard for us in Alaska,” Svaja recalled.

Svaja told me she regrets not having taught her seven children Lithuanian. “But all my children have Lithuanian names,” she boasts.

“What about your husband? He is American. Did he agree to giving the children Lithuanian names?”

“My husband said to me, ‘Our children can have Lithuanian names as long as I can pronounce them.’”

A few days later, I met Svaja with her husband, Bob Worthington, for drinks at the Crow’s Nest bar on the 20th floor of the landmark Captain Cook Hotel in Anchorage. Perched on barstools with a bird’s eye view of the mudflats that surround Anchorage, as a conversation opener, I asked them how they met. Svaja explained that they met in the early sixties when she was a graduate student of Literature in New Mexico. Bob told her that he was ready to parachute into Lithuania and join the freedom fighters to fight for Lithuania’s independence. That was enough for Svaja to fall in love.

I thought to myself that those words may have been spoken to impress a young Lithuanian refugee woman. However, the story turned out to be literally true.

“Let me explain,” Bob interjected.

Bob explained that he had been in the Green Berets in the early sixties, and at that time, the Green Berets were funded by the CIA. He trained with a group who might have parachuted into Soviet-occupied Lithuania to aid the anti-Soviet resistance.

“I joined up too late,” Bob said wistfully, nursing his beer, “the Korean war drained off resources which might otherwise have gone toward resistance movements in Eastern Europe in the early 50s, and by the early 60s the Viet Nam war was doing the same thing. While I had truly expected to be able to take my fight to the Russians and would have felt honored to stand with the last best fighters in Lithuania, the resistance there had already been crushed.”

I wondered if this may have been the CIA sponsored program that was responsible for parachuting the leader of the Lithuanian Anti-Soviet resistance, Juozas Lukša-Daumantas, into Soviet occupied Lithuania in 1950?

I asked Bob for more details.

“It was all top secret,” Bob said. “One group never knew what another group’s mission was.”

Just before I left Alaska, Svaja spoke these words to me: “I’m proud of Lithuania today because Lithuanians are trying so hard to do the right thing in terms of politics, foreign policy. Lithuanians are talented, artistic people. I think they are enjoying their freedom. I really hope that Lithuanian independence will survive this time. Russia is such a threat in the region.”

Original article: https://vilniusreview.com/articles/470-four-portraits-of-lithuanian-americans-in-alaska