BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

21/03/2010

Chicago pediatrician was active in Belorussian community

Dr. Witold Romuk, 95, worked with disabled children for 25 years

By Trevor Jensen, Tribune reporter

With the early years of his life in Eastern Europe rocked by political upheaval and war, Dr. Witold Romuk was middle-age before he began his career as a pediatrician.

Dr. Romuk came to the U.S. to complete his medical training in the 1950s, got married and became a U.S. citizen, a final homeland after a frequently displaced past. He worked in Chicago as doctor for disabled children for 25 years.

Dr. Romuk, 95, died of natural causes Tuesday, March 9, at his daughter's home in Freeport, Ill., , said his son-in-law, Roland Tolliver. He lived for many years on Chicago's Northwest Side.

Born in Ukraine, Dr. Romuk moved with his family to Belarus, their original home, after the Russian Revolution. He worked on the family farm until the Germans swept through. Shipped to Germany, he worked in forced labor and found himself in a displaced persons camp after the war, his family said.

Saving money from menial jobs and harboring a desire to become a doctor, he was able to put himself through a university in Munich, said his daughter, Irena Tolliver. He then won a scholarship to study medicine in Belgium, she said.

A Catholic priest sponsored his passage to the United States, where he completed a medical internship at the old Lutheran Deaconess Hospital in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Through connections in the emigre community, he met fellow Belorussian Vera Zyznieuski while on a pediatric medicine residency in Peoria. They were married in 1958 and settled in Chicago's Ukrainian Village neighborhood.

He was in his mid-40s by the time he started practicing medicine. He worked for a time at the Illinois Pediatric Institute and then for many years at the Chicago-Read Mental Health Center, treating children who had been institutionalized for a variety of reasons.

Dr. Romuk and his wife were active in Chicago's Belorussian community, which for many years found its social center at Christ the Redeemer Church on West Fullerton Avenue. Through the Belarusian Coordinating Committee, the couple worked to keep their homeland's cultural traditions alive, participating in various parades and festivals, and always making sure Belarus was represented in the Museum of Science and Industry's annual "Christmas Around the World" exhibit.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Dr. Romuk is survived by a son, John; a sister, Stacia; a brother, Fred; and nine grandchildren.

Services were held.

Source:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/ct-met-0322-romuk-obit-20100321,0,4849603.story


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