The Orphan Years: While We Are Absent One from the Other

It was not easy to grow up in Pennsylvania coal country in 1918. Many teenagers quit school before graduating so they could help support their families. Their dreams of a better future were dim. There just weren’t many opportunities if you didn’t have a diploma, especially if English was not your first language. When the unexpected chance came to live and be educated in an orphanage, the opportunity was too great to pass up. Although Tillie and Wasyl felt guilty about leaving their widowed mother and their siblings and even though they were not actually orphans, they were poor, they were children of Ukrainian immigrants, and their father was dead. According to the church, they qualified for the orphanage.

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