Valentyna Yermolenko, proud survivor

Even as a teenager in the Ukraine, Valentyna Yermolenko had a survivor's instincts.

Adults who heard her sing urged her to study opera. She chose architecture, a practical field that might protect her in a Stalinist country where sometimes people disappeared and were never seen again.

The scrappy Yermolenko eventually talked her way across Europe and to the United States. She died at age 98 on Aug. 10 in Minneapolis, blind but still sharp and witty.

"She wasn't a pretentious person, and a lot of people didn't know a lot about her because she didn't talk about herself," said her daughter, Inna Elliot. "She was a very strong woman and a caring person."

Yermolenko got her architecture degree and married a railroad engineer. Inna was a baby in 1937 when her father was arrested after complaining that he couldn't get the proper materials for a project. He was sent to Siberia and "we never saw him again," Elliot said.

For months after, Yermolenko was taken by police each night and interrogated until morning. She refused to sign anything, her daughter said.

The Yermolenkos survived the horrors of Stalinism -- the Ukrainian famine, a street lined by bodies hanging from light posts -- and World War II. When the occupying Germans loaded people in cattle cars to send them to Germany as slave laborers, Yermolenko decided it was safer to go than to try to stay in the Ukraine.

The Yermolenkos ended up in an Austrian camp. Soon she was working on train transportation. "Mama's profession saved us," Elliot said.

At the end of World War II, the Yermolenkos ran through a forest to escape approaching Soviet troops, only to be told by U.S. soldiers that they had to return to the Ukraine.

"Mother told us ... we might as well be dead" and refused to go, Elliot said. Eventually they were placed in a refugee camp. Yermolenko helped convert the former Nazi troop camp into a space for families. There she met her second husband, engineer Serhy Yermolenko.

In 1950 the Yermolenkos, including Elliot's young brother, Ihor, emigrated to Minneapolis. The family's priorities showed in their luggage: six of the seven boxes they were allowed to bring held books.

"Mother said you can lose everything, but what you carry in your head is always there," Elliot said.

Yermolenko became an American citizen in 1956 and later worked in a technical job tied to milling. She wrote poetry, volunteered at the University of Minnesota and published articles in the Ukrainian-American press about notable Ukrainians who had been blackballed by the Soviets.

She helped start the Ukrainian school linked to St. George Orthodox Church in northeast Minneapolis and used her mezzo-soprano voice to sing in the church choir.

"She was very proud of her Ukrainian heritage and of being a U.S. citizen," her daughter said.

Yermolenko's husband died in 1979. Besides her children, she is survived by five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Services are 10 a.m. Saturday at Sunset Funeral Home, 2250 St. Anthony Blvd. NE., Minneapolis. Visitation is one hour before the service.