The first issue of Ukrainia is dedicated to the Honorable Dr. Vladimir Siemenovich. Could it be otherwise?

The history of the Ukrainian colony in our city, is so tightly and so finely bound with the life of Dr. Vladimir Siemenovich, and his sympathetic and eminent person is so well known to all Chicagoans, that if, by some accident, he should be absent from any of our general national holidays, or if he were not seen at some important community affair then we should look around and expectantly ask: "Why is not Dr. V. Siemenovich here? Perhaps the poor man is sick, or maybe he is only detained and will yet come...." There was a time when the Honorable Dr. wax never late, but always put himself at the head of every national work, and always he was the last to leave it, even when his home and professional obligations were heavy. So when he is recently sometimes late this, folks, you will please pardon him.....today.

2

When Chicago and all the cultured world, will celebrate the World's Fair in our city (1933) we, the Chicago Ukrainian group, and it may be the entire Ukrainian people, on this continent as well as in Europe, will celebrate the forty year jubilee of the permanent, effective and uninterrupted work of the Hon. Dr. Vladimir Siemenovich in our city. This will be our Ukrainian holiday, and we do not doubt that it will turn out on a grand scale.

Dr. Vladimir Siemenovich was born in Galicia, from an old priestly family, which gave out a great number of both secular and clerical marvels, very well known in the history of the Lithuanian-Ukrainian state, hundreds of years before our time. After completing his gymnasium studies and several years of law in the University of Lviv, young Vladimir bade farewell to his native country and started over the ocean. The heavy yoke over Galicia, ruled by the Austrian-Polish nobility, which he felt more than the average man, caused the young Ukrainian law student to stand on American soil on March 11, 1887. The Galician-Ukrainian Bibliography published by the late John Levitsky in the very same year received its first batch of American news from Dr. V. Siemenovich, for the Lviv Dilo; from then even until this day the Venerable Doctor has not let the pen out of his very busy 3hand, since month after month, year after year, persistently does he help the Ukrainian publications both in his native land and here, without any pretension and always with excellent articles on various subjects.

At the time of his stay in the East our young immigrant took an active part in the national work, besides attending a University where he finished the course of medicine. In 1893, as a young Doctor, he undertook a permanent stay in Chicago and since then has never abandoned us.

Little and hardly evident was the Ukrainian colony in Chicago, not quite forty years ago. Many of us were not yet then living....As a young doctor, he won the love and admiration of his people. From this time on there was not one national event, not one useful community work in which Dr. V. Siemenovich did not take active part. Along with this the modest but hospitable home of Madam and Dr. Siemenovich, both guardian angels, wise and active hosts and leaders, became a place of shelter, of moral consolation and of material help for everybody. It is no wonder then, that all who in anyway possible profited 4by the good hearted and generous hand of Dr. V. Siemenovich, are legion. It is pitiful that there were found among them some that paid him for their bread and lodging with great ingratitude, and that some boldly threw mud and rocks at their benefactor. Yet this never lessened the charitable optimism of the honorable doctor, and never has it ousted from his Christian heart this great guiding watchword of his life. The purpose of a noble soul is to work restlessly and create noble deeds for the good of humanity without looking for acknowledgement and thankfulness, without regard for the aggression and abuse of cunning and mean people, whose base profession is like the dog's barking, so that noble souls may keep up their endless work for the benefit of everybody - until death!

In the above mentioned motto in the life of Dr. V. Siemenovich, there appears before our eyes all the beauty and splendor of a human being. It is evident that there are all kinds of people. Our late, prematurely dead poet, Alexander Kozlovsky, used to say occasionally without any sarcasm during Ukrainian meetings, "Do I not see enough Ukrainian-Ruthenians? Only I do not see real men among them".

5

So our venerable Dr. Vladimir was a real man, both when with contempt he ran away from the hard bondage of the Austrian-Polish nobility, and when in America he became a doctor. He was a real man, a human being who at every opportunity knew well how to see the good in everyone else. That is what ancient Romans called the "Salus Rei Publicae", and it is exactly applicable to our honorable Dr. Vladimir through all his life, and the characteristic will remain with him until his end comes. Thus we all must perceive, love and honor the beauty and splendor of his noble soul.

Cultured Americans and, generally, all the cultured Anglo-Saxons, the Germans and the French have learned during long ages to respect and to esteem the human soul and man's brains above all the treasures of the world. "You may destroy all our machines and all our factories" - the Americans say - "yet we shall not bewail for our educational geniuses will build them again even more perfectly. But if our scholars were annihilated then our great nation would be immediately reduced to powder; for it is impossible to make up for the loss of genial human brains even with mountains of educational human trash."

6

We, too, do respect and esteem the ideal and the genius of Ukrainian magnanimity in the honorable person of our most beloved and eminent Doctor Siemenovich, as well as his Ukrainian kindness, benevolence, hospitality, personal modesty, self-sacrifice, public munificence, ceaseless labor and his ready understanding of human weakness.

We bow our head before him to the very ground as before a Socrates, a promoter of learning and science, but, above all, do we salute Dr. Vladimir Siemenovich as an ideal man, Ecce Homo! - Behold the man!

Dear Ukrainian youth, and all you Ukrainians who are dispersed all over God's creation like so many autumnal leaves! Behold an example for all and everyone of us - for all the young and the old, for the learned and those untutored, for the rich and the poor - a rare pattern indeed - uncommon, pure as a crystal, an exemplary type of an ideal human being to be fully initiated!

Behold him as one that always has been, is now and shall remain forever in his 7wholesome seed that he so prolifically sowed into his uncultivated national soil; behold him as the invigorating salt of the earth; behold him as the shining luminary dispersing the darkness; here is a man who throughout his life has sacrificed his ego on the altar of his Ukrainian people and Fatherland.

Thou shalt reign

Oh little father,

Long as people do exist

Until sun will cease to glitter

Thou shalt be remembered!