Ann Betz Walko
March 6, 1908 - Feb. 10, 2013
Ann Walko In Memorium 2013
By Jerry Jumba
I first met Ann Walko in 2002 at the Andy
Warhol Museum (a part of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum system) when she was 92
years young. The Carpatho-Rusyn Society Vice President Maryann Horchar Sivak
found Ann Walko and booked her for a presentation at the annual Rusyn Event at the
museum. Ann was to give an interactive
lecture and interview on her recently published book Eternal Memory (Vičnaja
Pamjať in the Rusyn language) at the well-attended event.
I sang and played several American Carpatho-Rusyn
Songs from the industrial era in Western Pennsylvania as a warm up for her
presentation, then introduced her and interviewed her with a full-capacity
crowd in the library. The seed of the purpose of that presentation effort
around her book "Eternal Memory" has produced great results.
The follow-up work to research her stories and
songs went forward to become a tremendous recall of her life experiences and
some salty peppery commentary as an educational catalyst from 12 years of
interviews of Ann Walko's life as the first generation born here in the Wall-Wilmerding-Trafford
area. Several interviews included the merited life of her husband John Walko.
My visits to Ann Walko to learn and share
songs and plays and hear her memories began on June 1,
2002. In subsequent years, her theatrical production Women's Lib was presented
in 2003 and she also sang a short concert of Carpatho-Rusyns songs in 2005 with
a six-piece orchestra of excellent folk art musicians. Based on 12
years of interviews, we are publishing a book called Ann Walko - Songs and Hymns Remembered (working title) with over
100 songs and hymns. Her commentary on the song and hymn texts illuminates
and gives character to the value of family and community life in the first
half of the 20th-century industrial era in Wall and Wilmerding. Her
words also provide an educational and sociological contrast to the life and
times of this 21st century.
After Ann Walko got her GED diploma, she took classes at
the University of Pittsburgh and was told she needed to study a second
language. She said she would study English and take writing classes
because English was her second language. Studying under Dr. Peter Oresick, she
went on to receive numerous writing awards.
Ann lived a tri-cultural-paradigm kind of life of American,
Carpatho-Rusyn and East Slovak community interaction and outreach, a life of
merit and distinction in which she touched thousands of people's lives. There
is a cultural awareness growth happening because the artistry of folk songs is
an expressive communal catalyst for participation and social bonding. I integrated a number of her Rusyn songs
with translation into numerous Carpatho-Rusyn sing-alongs at many
Carpatho-Rusyn Society events. I added her Rusyn hymns with translations to the
authentic Carpatho-Rus’ Chant repertoire that I teach. The impact is the growth
of appreciation and interest in singing these expressive songs. The same is
true where I added a number of her East Slovak songs to Slovak events and sing-alongs
for the Western Pennsylvania Slovak Cultural Association. In 2009, Ann collaborated with Darina
Protivnak, David Protivnak and me to write a joyful ending to the classic Rusyn
song “červena ruža”. This American-Rusyn
creativity has been applauded by Rusyns in America and Europe.
Our research work was featured on Pittsburgh's
Educational Public Television station WQED's "On Q" and was
first broadcast in December 2008 and throughout 2009 and 2010. It placed
in the top five features and was repeated on numerous WQED TV broadcasts. Over 200 people showed up for her 100th
birthday party at the Westinghouse Castle in 2008. WQED film-maker Pierina Morelli was
there and began to film an amazing scenario. I asked Ann, "Did you go to
school with any of these people? How is
it that you have over 200 friends here?" She said, "To have a
friend you have to be a friend. I guess I was friendlier than I
remember."
There were two Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grants to help us in 2005 and 2006. In 2008, I received a national grant from the
Austin, Texas-based Fund for Folk
Culture Grant Award, an artist-support program. The grant,
underwritten by The Ford Foundation with additional support from The William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation, provides funds to individual folk and traditional
artists to pursue opportunities that will help them grow artistically and
professionally, to better connect with their cultural communities and to
develop new audiences for their work. Our grant’s focus was to help the
authentic Carpatho-Rus' Liturgical Chant research move forward into a best
practice curriculum and inspire participation.
This song and sociological study had significant heaven-blessed
public and civic philanthropic funding support from the empathetic
cultural resource specialists Julie Malinich Throckmorten Meunier and Dolores
Dyan- -two fine souls from the Rivers
of Steel Foundation in Homestead who connected us with the two Pennsylvania
grantees, Pennsylvania Institute of Cultural Partnerships in Harrisburg and the
Fund For Folk Culture. Without their financial support, this research and
publishing work could not go forward.
In 2011, we began the final editing
to shore up the parameters of the Ann Walko - Songs and Hymns Remembered
book and finished near the end of 2012. This was a careful and tedious
process because of the sorting of the numerous Carpatho-Rusyn dialects and East
Slovak dialects of the texts and melody variants as well as the various translations.
When we were stuck with a difficult translation, Ann always quoted
somebody from long ago who said, "Translation is odious." She
squinted every time she spoke the quote, in a sonorous, slow-motion
extended pronunciation. In this time of the final edit review, we
remained enthusiastic, participatory and focused.
In these later years when Ann stayed home,
she remained focused and committed in the joy of work as a labor of
love. Her home was the precious environment where history came alive in her
memory and helped to provide continuous inspiration for her editing and
commentary work. There was the fear that if she left that environment, as
she did two years ago after breaking a hip in a fall, that she would begin to
lose the environmental context of her memories. In the last year of her life,
I continued to work with Ann in her home in order to complete as quickly as
is possible this magnificent outreach of human experience articulated
with character, spirit and dignity.
Ann's
influences were about hospitality and the soulful kindness she
experienced in her neighborhood and at her church in Wall and with her parents
and their boarding house for railroad workers. She heard the boarders sing and
tell stories before the time of the telephone and radio and became a
conversationalist and a dancer.
Ann chanted the Carpatho-Rus' liturgical chant at
Holy Trinity Byzantine Catholic Church in Wall. And it happened that for
a number of years the cantor, Professor John Ribnicky, lived as a boarder in
the Walko house. The Carpatho-Rusyn chant and hymns I learned from Ann
were lit up with her commentary rich from memories experienced
at the Divine Liturgy and the social fabric of church life. She contributed knowledge
that added to the chant cultural and educational stewardship sustainability and
development. This is an important aspect of my work; talking with her helped to
elucidate the progression of the historical story of
Carpatho-Rus' prayer life nurtured in the American Byzantine Catholic
Church. Sometimes excellent prayer can be like spiritual lightning to wake up a
soul or quietly fill it up with super-charged inspiration. How a living
vocalized prayer culture is learned, earned and realized is worthy of study in
order to incorporate the best practices of chant education and to achieve its
inspirational purpose to live in the fullness of earning and sharing God’s love
every day.
Ann taught catechism to many grade levels, wrote
catechetical plays and had fashion shows. In the early 1960s, she wrote a
serious comedy, Ženska Šljeboda (Svoboda) or phonetically Zhenska Shljeboda
which translates to Woman’s Liberation or Women’s Lib. It received thunderous applause from a packed
house in the church hall.
Ann’s keen observations and comments based on them
stem from good memories which are critical to nurturing the cultural
development and preservation that we treasure in a community--live to earn the
spiritual victories by sharing the love of God in circulation. So I treasure
that almost indescribable level of empathy that sees how the good we do in
life always matters. Ann Walko thought this way, too. There is always something
to learn. The good acts of living always add up internally in one's very
own soul.
At the conclusion of
the Carpatho-Rusyn Byzantine Catholic and Orthodox Church
funerals at the final resting place, we chant "Vičnaja Pamjať "
which translates as "Eternal Memory". It is about being attentive to the constancy
of the eternal presence of God's love. It became the title of her book, Eternal
Memory.
The Ann Walko legacy shows the cultural
continuity and sustainability that faced the educational and cultural
challenges in her life time. She made a
life time of exceptional effort as a culture builder with a mind for civic
service and church service. In addition,
she pointed out the precious value of collaboration by building a family with
her dear husband John, her immediate and extended family and her neighbors who
experienced the eternal nurturing value of hospitality in community life. She
has personified the goodness of hospitality and community life in her actions
and writings which might be best summed up by what Ann Walko writes on the
title page of her books, plays, and poetry, “To________ Written
with joy, with pleasure shared, Ann Walko".
To see Ann Betz Walko's obituary, click on the link below:
