Romas Sakadolskis has died

http://en.delfi.lt/global-lt/voice-of-america-journalist-romas-sakadolskis-passes-away.d?id=70518950

Romas was a very important, close friend of Vaiva's.  He had a major role in her co-founding of a.p.p.l.e., and was the godfather for our daughter, Liepa.

61

Vaiva was born 61 years ago today.

Antakalnis, July 1 2015

Renata has done a splendid job with Vaiva's grave.

Ran into Leonas Raciunas

By one of those quirks of fate, Leonas Raciunas was in the cemetery freshening his father's grave at the same time as we were visiting Vaiva's grave.  The Raciunas and Vebra families are doubly linked by marriage.  Vaiva's father's first wife was a Raciunas, and his own sister married the brother of his wife.  I'll have to look up the exact relationship on genii, but in Lithuania Leonas is a cousin.

I well remember meeting him on my first Vilnius visit in 1980.

An evening in the cemetery

Visited Antakalnis this evening as the sun went down. 

It was 37 years ago today . . .

. . . that we were married.

Grave

Here's a few photos of the grave. Things fall from the aspen tree above onto the ground in the spring. Let's say they're seeds, unless anybody has a better idea.

You can see above that we've been weeding and spread a reasonably thick layer of grave soil onto the ground for planting. (We = mostly my wife and mother-in-law)

Any suggestions for what to plant there are welcome.

Vaiva's relatives in Lithuania

I did not warn anyone I was coming, but many people dropped everything to stop by to see me today. It seemed so very appropriate to see these people again in the house that Vaiva built.

It's the sequel to this photo from five years ago.

Another gray December day

Five years

It's been five years since the saddest day of my life, the day my bride died.

I'm marking the occasion with the visit to Aras and his family in Lithuania.  We'll visit Vaiva's grave today.

Goals

How did you set goals in the very beginning of APPLE’s formation?  How did they change through the years?

Goals were set by Vaiva.  There was collaboration, consultation, feedback, but at the end of the day, Vaiva took charge of the goal-setting process.

The earliest goals were:

1. Find a productive outlet for the tremendous energy of the Lithuanian-Americans, who were overwhelmed by Lithuania’s new independence.  They had worked for it all their lives, they had faithfully attended February 16 commemorations, but they never dared hoped to see success in their lifetimes.  Now it was here, and they needed some way to participate.

2. Raise awareness among Americans that Lithuania existed, that it was independent, that it needed to stay that way.  It was not difficult to get Americans to sign the petition for independence, if they stopped to listen for a moment.  It was much harder to get politicians to pay attention.  Public, successful, voluntary organizations could serve as proof that new institutions, a new infrastructure, were being built to assure the success of Lithuania’s independence.

3. Rescue Lithuania’s children from Soviet education.  We didn’t know what they’d been taught about the West, but we were confident it wasn’t accurate.

4. Promote special education in Lithuania. This was an area that needed much attention, we were told.

5. Lift the professional standards of Lithuanian teachers.

6. Break the Soviet model of education in Lithuania.  We wanted Lithuania’s education establishment to be free of Russia as quickly, completely and irrevocably as possible. The Minister of Education sought education reform, and we needed to support that effort in any possible way.

The early work of a.p.p.l.e. consisted of arranging for visits of Lithuanian teachers to the USA, as well as fundraising for future endeavors.  Within a few months, the idea of delivering an in-service professional development program was hatched (I’m not sure who gets credit for it).

Vaiva recruited teachers from the USA to lead the programs in Lithuania.  The proposition was this:  you pay your own air fare, and there’s no salary.  However, the Education Ministry will provide us the funds for your food and lodging while you are teaching your summer course.  Sounds like a tough thing to sell, but she was able to secure remarkably talented volunteers, both Lithuanian-Americans and Americans with no prior contact with the country.

I’m uncertain how the publicity was handled in Lithuania, but the classes were well subscribed, perhaps oversubscribed— the teachers were very enthusiastic. 

It turned out that a.p.p.l.e.’s actual product was mutual respect.  The Lithuanian teachers who participated expected an authoritarian, top-down set of new marching orders. They were surprised and pleased to be treated as colleagues, as professionals, as friends.  Many told us that their participation gave them great pride in being teachers.  The Americans were similarly pleased with the strong participation, enthusiasm and appreciation shown for their efforts by their Lithuanian peers.  After the successful first year, it was not hard to persuade an American teacher to return for more.

As the summer sessions expanded, someone on a.p.p.l.e.’s Board of Directors suggested the idea of collecting money in the USA to directly subsidize the participation of Lithuanian teachers.  Although the programs were free, there were transportation costs to consider, as well as an opportunity cost for those who needed to work during the summer vacation.  At that time dollars were very valuable in Lithuania, so we were able to set the scholarship figure at just $20.  The sidebar in each issue of a.p.p.l.e.’s newsletter, Report to the Corps, read: “What can you do with $20 in [this year]? You can change the life of a Lithuanian teacher.”  Donations poured in, well in excess of the number of participants in the programs.

The only requirement to receive a scholarship was that the Lithuanian teacher needed to hand write a thank you note, mentioning some of the benefits received by participating in the summer seminar.  These were collected and mailed to the scholarship donors each year, which made the values more tangible for all concerned.  They also made it easier to collect addition scholarship donations in subsequent years.

Over the years, there were shifts in the content of the seminars.  Lithuanian teachers learned quickly the differences in Western education approaches, and began to ask for more sophisticated presentations.  These were developed under the leadership of Emilija Sakadolskis, who took over as the second President of a.p.p.l.e.

Beginnings

Vaiva Radasta Vebra was the only child of Juozas Vėbra and Genevieve Vebra nee Genovaitė Židonytė. The entire Židonis family fled Lithuania ahead of the communists during WWII, Juozas Vėbra was arrested during the war for his anti-Nazi activities.  After he was liberated from a concentration camp, he knew that certain death or deportation to Siberia awaited him should he return to his family in Lithuania (a wife, two sons and a daughter).  He reunited with the Židonis family, whom he knew before the war, in a displaced persons camp.  He and Genevieve left for France, and eventually settled in New Haven, CT, where Vaiva was born.  The rest of the Židonis family emigrated to Albany, NY, but soon joined the Vebras in New Haven.  They were all active in New Haven’s Lithuanian community, and in the St. Casimir’s Lithuanian church.

This background is offered to explain Vaiva’s fierce, lifelong determination, tenacity and patriotism, which was one vital key to the success of a.p.p.l.e.  Although born in New Haven, she was raised Lithuanian, and did not learn English until she began attending public school.  She lived a Lithuanian life in America.  She founded a Lithuanian Saturday school, danced with and led a Lithuanian folk dance group, was active in countless Lithuanian organizations. 

As the possibility of Lithuania’s return to independence became tangible with the advent of perestroika in the late 1980s, Vaiva’s activism went public.  She co-founded the Lithuanian Resource Center in Hartford, CT, in support of Lithuania’s independence.  She (and I, in the background) created Americans for Lithuanian Independence, which launched a petition drive in support of the independence movement and Sajudis. Over 160,000 signatures were collected from 49 states and 27 countries.  Vaiva presented them to Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole in Washington, DC. In 1990.

The signatures were collected by creating a network of Lithuanians and sympathetic Americans who, in turn, recruited people to collect signatures and gather more recruits.  It was something of a pyramid scheme. Signatures were collected first at Lithuanian churches, then at other churches, then anywhere volunteers felt comfortable to go.

These organizational efforts were the first and second drafts of the entity that was to become a.p.p.l.e.

In the summer of 1990 Vaiva attended a seminar, I believe called Santara-Šviesa, a gathering of Lithuanian intellectuals.  There she met for the first time Darius Kuolys, then the Minister of Education for the newly independent Lithuania.  My understanding is that Kuolys and Vaiva were chatting with Romas Sakadolskis at or after that gathering, when Kuolys suggested that Lithuanian teachers needed to build professional ties to the West, and some sort of group was necessary to facilitate that.  Sakadolskis nominated Vaiva for the job of creating such a group, and she accepted.

Vaiva joined with her lifelong friend Jurate Krokys-Stirbiene in founding an organization for promoting ties between educators in America and Lithuania.  Jurate was already working on a similar track.  Vaiva asked me to develop some choices for naming the organization, and American Professional Partnership for Lithuanian Education was among the first ideas I recommended.  The name communicated both the means and the ends of the new entity.  The fact that the acronym was a.p.p.l.e. was a happy coincidence.

To get the new organization off the ground, Vaiva returned to the network of contacts she had developed for the Lithuanian Resource Center and the Americans for Lithuanian Independence.  This existing network, already familiar with Vaiva and her work, allowed the fledgling a.p.p.l.e. to “hit the ground running,” demonstrating early success in gathering financial support and building credibility.  We created a direct-mail newsletter for communicating with supporters and raising initial funding. 

On the history of a.p.p.l.e.

I was going to try to write a history of a.p.p.l.e. when I got sidetracked by a theft of my intellectual property a bit over four years ago.  Now, a doctoral student from Lithuania has asked to interview me about the origin story.  I'm going to post my thoughts here, as I send them to him. Please give me your corrections, as I'm having trouble locating source material and my memory grows foggy.

Today would have been Vaiva's 59th birthday.

Had she lived, she might have been Lithuania's President by now.

Fourth anniversary

Vaiva died four years ago today.