Dmytro Shtohryn may have retired as a professor at Illinois in 1995, but his commitment to the university and the field of Ukrainian studies remains as vibrant and meaningful as the Ukrainian paintings hanging on the walls of his home.
Shtohryn, 94, and his wife, Eustachia, still live in Champaign, where they’ve lived since 1960, when Shtohryn turned down a professional librarianship position at Harvard to join Laurence Miller, professor of library administration and the first head of the Slavic and East European Library (SEEL), and the late Ralph Fisher, professor of history and the first director of the Russian and East European Center (later renamed the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Center (REEEC)), in their quest to teach and expand the Russian and Slavic collections at Illinois. The native of Ukraine is credited with establishing Ukrainian studies as a discipline at Illinois.
The Shtohryn’s home is highlighted with Ukrainian décor on the walls and resting in glass cases, and their two children bear traditional Ukrainian names. On their living room table rests a handsome statue of Taras Shevchenko, the most famous poet of Ukraine, from the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America honoring Dmytro and Eustachia for their community service.
“You can recognize from our accent that we speak Ukrainian in our home,” Shtohryn said. “We usually correspond with our daughter through the computer—we write to her in Ukrainian but use the Latin alphabet.”
Now, Shtohryn’s daughter, Liuda, is honoring her father’s career by establishing the Dmytro Shtohryn Endowment in Ukrainian Studies in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures at Illinois. The endowment for the department will be used for conferences, symposia, individual lectures, and other learning opportunities on the topic of Ukrainian studies.
Read the full story on the LAS News site.