Gimme Shelter: Remembering the Ukrainians

When Sy Weissman woke up Thursday morning, his heart sank when he saw the news. His first thought, he said, was, “This is the worst.”

Ukraine, a country close to his heart, had been invaded by Russia. The news was filled with reports of firefights, artillery shelling, people in the capitol, Kyiv, sheltering in subway stations, and families in paralyzed traffic jams attempting to flee their homeland ahead of invading Russian troops.

I called Sy, 89, a former Islander for many years, later that morning. He’s in a nursing home in upstate Rochester, not far from his current home of Pittsfield, suffering from COPD. He took his time, gathering his breath to speak about the year, 1995, he and his wife, Elizabeth Durbin, known as Liz, spent living and working in Ukraine.

Liz, who passed away in 1999, was a professor of Economics at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, and other prestigious institutions. The author of several books, Liz, Sy said, was also known for her active engagement in social issues, especially the fight for equal pay for women. 

In 1995 she was a visiting professor to the Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration, to teach other academics and graduate students about western economics, specifically capitalism, Sy said. Many of her students emigrated to the United States and Canada, the latter being especially hospitable, Sy said, providing housing subsidies and other benefits for arriving Ukrainians.

A former producer at CBS News, he wasn’t just along for the ride. “I was tapped to set up a TV news network in Ukraine and the other former Soviet republics, Moldova and Georgia.”

Sy explained that, even though Ukraine became independent two years after the wall came down in Berlin in November 1989, the Soviet Union still had influence in its former vassal states and eventually the news network was done in by Russian interference.

He and Liz traveled widely in Ukraine and made many friends. “We spent time in Kyiv, where we were based, but also spent a lot of time in Odessa, Kharkiv and Lviv.”

The news he was watching and reading this week, with those place names leading reports, was “heartbreaking,” he said.

He recalled the sense of hospitality and the ease with which the people they met spoke English. “We were with highly-educated people and everyone spoke our language,” he said. “But then, in most European countries, English is taught, and most times it’s mandatory in schools.”

It was a precious time for them both. “The Ukrainians have a deep culture, with their own distinctive music, literature — fiction and poetry and theater,” Sy said. “The Ukrainians have a real sense of wit, and a great sense of irony, comprehending the subtleties of human nature. They were great admirers of the west, and even a bit envious of our system of government.”

A father of four and grandfather of 10, Sy said that before they went to Ukraine, they moved permanently to Shelter Island in 1994. A World War II veteran, Sy was a Brooklyn kid, who went to high school with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and then Kenyon College, where Paul Newman was a classmate. After college and his army service he went to the University of Southern California to study film.

He made commercials and ads for politicians, and proudly remembers being the campaign manager for Alfred Kilb, who served as the Island’s supervisor. An avid photographer, his work has appeared at the Senior Center. Through his and Liz’s efforts, the Center acquired a big screen TV and refurbished the kitchen.

The mid-1990s was an exciting time to be in Ukraine, Sy said, with the country’s future blossoming before their eyes. The nation was awakening from a nightmarish 20th Century of occupations, oppression, famine, war, genocide and terror, to something new, a free people engaged in democracy.

I asked him again about what he had termed the Ukrainians well-developed sense of irony. “Well,” Sy said, with a pause to gather his thoughts and his breathing. “The Ukrainian people had all the attributes, instincts and gifts of a free people. But were missing just one thing — freedom.”