Bob Pavelka talks with Helen Fallon about giving back to the Carpatho-Rusyn community.
Helen Fallon
Published: October 3, 2024
Searching for his family heritage led Bob Pavelka to the Carpatho-Rusyn Society five years ago.
A fire in April 2023 that destroyed his home near Cooperstown, New York, and many of his possessions – with the exception of the genealogy binders and digitally-stored information he had painstakingly researched and was working on when he discovered the fire – led him to volunteering to oversee the renovation work currently underway at the Society’s Munhall Cultural Center.
Bob spent a year living in Hawai’i after the fire upended his life, thanks to his homeowners insurance. “I always wanted to be a beach bum,” he said. “I surfed every day.”
But the retired clinical pharmacist started to feel adrift and found himself ready to return to the mainland. So after he saw an ad for help posted on the CR-S website, he reached out to offer his assistance. He’s been overseeing the work ever since, helping contractors and painting renovated areas in the building.
“I am the eyes and ears on the ground here,” Bob said. Rich Laychock, who lives near Harrisburg, is the CR-S building renovation project manager.
Much of the work – new flooring, plumbing and bathroom upgrades, electrical rewiring and more – is complete or nearing completion. A replacement of the HVAC system with mini-split units, which are essentially heat pumps, Bob explained, is still ahead. That system will cool the center in the summer and heat it in the winter, even if temperatures dip to 15 degrees below zero.
Bob says the work laid out in the first phase of the renovation project will be done in time for the CR-S 30th anniversary celebration Oct. 25-27. A visit to the center in mid-September found contractors finishing the area where the CR-S bookstore will be located. Archive work has been progressing, enabling Anniversary weekend visitors to view the accumulated costumes, clothing, village models, records and other artifacts that members and friends of the Society have donated.
Fundraising efforts already underway will lead to the second phase of work on the building. Those updates include security and remote monitoring, more electrical work, archival needs, Internet updates, more painting and repairs to the downstairs area. That work is expected to take about two additional years.
Bob’s interest in his family genealogy started when his daughter switched college majors from nursing to history. A summer project 15 years ago at Potsdam State University in New York required her to research her family history. She was unable to find any information beyond her great-grandfather, Bob said, but he found out why after talking to an uncle.
He said the uncle, Richard Pavelka of Cleveland, Ohio, revealed what he called “the dirty family secret.” To ensure a better job and income, the family name was changed – and not legally – from from Pavelko to Pavelka. That meant a Czech lineage rather than Slovak. “Being Czech meant you were considered Western European,” Bob explained. “You didn’t go very far if you were a Slovak.”
It worked for his grandfather, Bob said. He worked for Liggett & Myers, a tobacco company with factories and offices in Cleveland, and rose to a vice president position. None of it was done under the name Pavelko, but Bob found the name spelled the old way on military discharge papers but the new way on a marriage license and church records.
That piece of information opened up the search, and she could research her family way back. Bob began searching, too, starting with Mormon records that could be requested from any of that religious sect’s churches. Back then, it came on microfilm, but later many of the church and census records for Slovakia became available online. “Interested people can go back to the early 1800s and sometimes even the late 1700s because Maria Theresa [ruler of the Habsburg dominions] mandated churches keep records, including Roman Catholic churches,” Bob explained.
Bob started with researching his great-grandmother’s town, Lenartov in northeastern Slovakia, which is right on the border with Poland. The village was “a melting pot of Poles, Jews, Rusyns and Slovaks,” he said.
He wrote an article for the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International’s quarterly journal published in June about his search, which included help from Paul Robert Magocsi, a well-known author and professor who is a Carpatho-Rusyn expert. He provided him not only with maps and leads to records but also verified that Bob’s third great-grandmother was indeed Carpatho-Rusyn.
Just like some of his Slovak ancestors – who immigrated to Johnstown and Cleveland – Bob lived all over the United States growing up because of his father’s executive position with the Xerox Corp. The family moved every two years, he said.
His path to pharmacy was also a journey. Bob completed his studies in pharmacy at the University of Texas, Austin. But prior to that he earned his master’s degree in agronomy and animal science from Cornell University, where he later worked at the College of Veterinary Medicine as a research chemist. After he just missed entering Cornell’s veterinary school, he did his doctoral work at Texas Tech University in molecular biology and waterfowl biology. For a period of time, he was a winemaker in New York’s Finger Lakes region.
Now three years retired from the pressures of pharmacy work at hospitals and some nursing homes in New York, the 65-year-old said he has found retirement is not a fit for him. The volunteer position with CR-S has proved that to him.
He’s not sure where he will land after the cultural center work is completed. “I don’t know where my next adventure will be,” Bob said.
Helen Fallon is a copy editor at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but she’s currently on strike. Contact her at hfallon@unionprogress.com.
