Dr. Natalia Koropeckyj

  Over the last few years of her life Natalia would frequently remark how fortune had always smiled on her.  In the course of over a hundred years she lived through war, flight, and emigration together with her parents Dr. Volodymyr and Maria Bilozor and her two sisters Olia (d. 2021) and Oksana.  She pursued a successful career as a medical doctor, married and became mother to two accomplished children Roman and Sophia, grandmother to two no less accomplished grandsons Roman and Orest Pazuniak, and was blessed with a great-granddaughter Ida.  Throughout most of her life she was an active and dedicated member of the Ukrainian scouting organization Plast and especially her sorority Pershi Stezhi.

  On a frigid December night in 1920, her mother walked a mile in the snow to a hospital in Lviv to give birth to a tiny baby daughter whom she named Natalia.  Because of the hardships following the war, her family soon moved to Kolomyia in the Carpathian Mountains where her father became a well-respected physician and community activist and her mother worked tirelessly both for the needs of the family and for the betterment of the less fortunate.  From an early age, ignoring the hustle and bustle of a busy household full of family, her father’s patients, various lodgers, and frequent visitors, she focused on her studies.  Her amazing power of concentration and remarkable memory served her to her very last days.  Upon completing the local Polish girls’ gymnasium with distinction, she was admitted to medical school in Lviv where she studied medicine during both the Soviet and German occupations.  Her family eventually joined her in Lviv, but in 1944, under imminent threat of arrest and deportation by the Soviets on account of their Ukrainian activism, they fled west to Germany.  For the next five years, they lived in a series of temporary homes and displaced persons camps. Natalia was able to complete her medical studies in Munich and worked as a doctor in DP camps.  Throughout the turbulent years of war and flight, she and her family lived a charmed life—they miraculously missed the firebombing of Dresden by several hours.

  In December 1949, the family boarded a troop transport ship to New York.  Gazing over New York Harbor she was puzzled by the moving streams of headlights—she had never seen so many cars.  The family was warmly welcomed by her mother’s cousins who had immigrated to the United States before the war and lived in Jersey City, NJ.  Again, fortune smiled on the family. Natalia’s relatives helped her find a job cleaning surgical instruments in a hospital while her father continued his medical career in a sanitorium in Secaucus, NJ.  Through her characteristic capacity for hard work, considerable dedication, and a bit of luck, she eventually received a license to practice medicine in New Jersey as an anesthesiologist.

  Thanks to the marriage of her younger sister Oksana to Mykola Koropeckyj in 1952, Natalia renewed her acquaintance with Mykola’s older brother Iwan (d. 2012) who had also studied medicine in Lviv.  Six months later, they too were married. In 1954, their son Roman was born and two years later their daughter Sophia.  Natalia continued to work in hospitals in Somerville and Weehawken, whither they moved in 1960 from Jersey City.  When Iwan accepted a position as professor of economics at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1964, the family moved to Moorestown, NJ. Natalia found a position as an anesthesiologist at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in nearby Camden and some years later at West Jersey Hospital.

  Despite the demands on her time from her professional responsibilities and raising two children, Natalia, together with Iwan, hosted many gatherings for the extended family, leading Ukrainian-American intellectuals, and prominent visitors from Soviet Ukraine.  Natalia continued her active participation in Plast: she was a den mother in Jersey City, a doctor at Plast summer camps in East Chatham, NY and Alberta, Canada, and a member of the Plast administration. Throughout, she was one of the leading figures in her sorority Pershi Sterzhi, which she joined while in Germany as one of its founding members.

  In 1987, she retired to devote herself to caring for her mother, Iwan’s uncle, and helping to raise her two grandsons, which provided her with immense joy.  Roman and Orest maintained a very close relationship with their grandmother to her dying days.  She also maintained close ties to her two sisters, and many nieces and nephews, who considered her their favorite aunt.

  To be close to their daughter’s family, Iwan and Natalia moved to Elkins Park, Pa., in 1998.  She began volunteering at the library of the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center in Jenkintown, Pa. and worked there until her 100th year.

  Natalia was loved and respected by everyone who knew her. She listened without judgement, valued everyone regardless of their station in life, and was always willing to provide wise and insightful counsel, medical and otherwise.

  She had an active mind to her last days. She was insatiably curious about the world around her, was a voracious reader, perused the New York Times daily from the front page to the weather, and loved playing Scrabble, particularly with herself.

Fortune did indeed smile on her.

  She will be missed by her sister Oksana Koropeckyj, her son Roman (Volodymyra Stefura), her daughter Sophia (Bohdan Pazuniak), her beloved grandsons Roman (Natasha Fedorova) and Orest (Valeria Kolesnik), great-granddaughter Ida, nieces Marta Jarosh, Nadia Cehelsky-Kidd, Oksana Klapischak, Tania Koropeckyj-Cox, and Ulana Koropeckyj Czorney, nephews Adrian Cehelsky, and Marko and Andriy Koropeckyj, their children, relatives in Ukraine, her sorority sisters in Pershi Stezhi as well as her many friends and acquaintances.

  Committal will take place on Saturday, 25 March 2023, 11:30 AM, at St. Mary’s Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Elkins Park, Pa. It will be followed by a tryzna at the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center in Jenkintown, Pa.

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