By: Rich Custer

Carpatho-Rusyns had a strong showing at the 11th Annual Polacek Family Johnstown Slavic Festival in Johnstown, Pennsylvania on September 18th and 19th, thanks to dedicated members of the Carpatho-Rusyn Society.

This year’s festival was held at a new venue: the grounds and facilities of St. Therese Roman Catholic Church in Johnstown’s West End, having moved from the festival’s longtime home at the Heritage Discovery Center in the historic, multi-ethnic Cambria City neighborhood. As in past years, the festival featured many performing musicians, dancers, and singers; offered a wide variety of Slavic cuisine for purchase; and hosted informative talks about Slavic history and culture.

The festival opened Friday afternoon. C-RS members David Felix (Pittsburgh, PA) and Rich Custer (Washington, DC) set up a display with artifacts and folk dress loaned from the C-RS Cultural Center and their own collections. Bethany Sromoski (West Pittston, PA) joined them to staff the booth to offer festival visitors a wealth of knowledge and helpful information about Carpatho-Rusyn history, culture, and genealogy.

The booth offered information on C-RS’s activities and how to join, as well as some new-this-year, eye-catching posters focusing on Carpatho-Rusyn history in Johnstown and the surrounding area and on two standout Carpatho-Rusyn Americans who hailed from Johnstown and nearby Franklin Borough: Steve Ditko, the artist who was the co-creator and original illustrator of Spider-Man, and Sgt. Michael Strank, one of the U.S. Marines who raised the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima and was immortalized in a classic photograph. One of the posters in particular, “Domes of Carpatho-Rusyn Churches in the Greater Johnstown Area,” attracted much attention and sparked many conversations. Another, “Carpatho-Rusyns Settle in Johnstown: The Beginning,” included a series of surname lists of the Carpatho-Rusyn families who settled in Johnstown and adjacent Conemaugh from the villages that were most represented in this area, such as Kamienka, Oľšavica, Jarabina, Polany, Mszana, Hyrowa, and Chudl’ovo. The posters were conceived and created by Rich Custer and David Felix.

On Saturday, more C-RS volunteers arrived from Pittsburgh to strengthen the Carpatho-Rusyn presence: Christina Duranko, Mary Huzinec, and Alex Plummer, as well as Keith Koshute (Palmyra, PA) who brought additional cultural artifacts and informational materials. With these additional volunteers and materials, we expanded the booth to make it more vibrant and more visible to attendees.

Dozens of festival attendees perused the C-RS display and engaged in fascinating discussions with the C-RS volunteers. Some of the visitors were local, but others came from as far as northeastern Ohio. Among the visitors to the C-RS booth was a group of seminarians from nearby Christ the Saviour Seminary of the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, some of Carpatho-Rusyn heritage, others not, but with great interest in our display. Also present from the local Carpatho-Rusyn community were sales tables sponsored by Christ the Saviour Seminary Bookstore, which sported the Carpatho-Rusyn flag, and Christ the Saviour Cathedral’s ACRY chapter, which sold traditional Carpatho-Rusyn medovniki honey cakes.

The festival ended Saturday night on a dramatic note, undampened by a light drizzle, with a fireworks display. C-RS and Carpatho-Rusyns can take additional pride in having been the only non-profit cultural organization to promote their ethnic group with an educational/cultural display at this year’s festival.

We hope that the Johnstown area, with its significant population of people with Carpatho-Rusyn ancestry, may still find the spark for a long-overdue C-RS chapter. In any case, we look forward to continuing the C-RS participation in the festival for years to come.

Article written by Rich Custer