Jaroslawa Stasiuk, 103 years, of Margaretville, passed away on Tuesday, April 14, 2026 at Mountain Side nursing center.She was born on Monday, September 18, 1922 in Ukraine, the daughter of the late Dmytro and the late Olga (née Pawlyshyn) Fedkowsky.

Visitation Hour will be held on Monday, April 20th from 10:00 to 11:00 AM at St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, NY-23A, Hunter, with a Funeral Service from 11:00-12:00 PM  Jaroslawa's Burial will take place on Monday, April 20th at 3:00 PM at St. Andrews Cemetery, 280 Main Street, South Bound, New Jersey. Services will be officiated by Father Ivan Kaszczak. A full obituary will follow. 

Posted Tuesday, September 30, 2025 4:13 pm The Reporter.net

By J. Lawrence-Bauer

MARGARETVILLE - A long and storied life was on display on Tuesday, Sept. 19 when family and friends gathered in person and on Facetime to celebrate the 103rd birthday of Jaroslawa “Slava” Stasiuk at Mountainside Residential Care Center. Stasiuk, born in Zolochiw, Ukraine, came to the United States with her husband and two daughters as war refugees in 1950 and her story, as shared at the party, was one of extreme challenge and great triumph.

Surrounded by her younger sister, Irene Kupchynsky, her older daughter, Lydia Piaseckyj, and her younger daughter, Christine Bonacors via telephone, Stasiuk’s beauty was still radiant 75 years after her arrival in New York on a ship called General Black.

Eager to share Stasiuk’s story, Piaseckyj explained that her mother and father endured almost five years of hardship in Ukraine as World War II raged around them.

“We had suffered losses and what was ahead was Russians coming; to shoot us or to send us to concentration camps,” she said.

As a young woman of just 19, Stasiuk boarded a train with her husband, daughter Lydia, and all of the belongings they could carry and set off with thousands of others for an unknown destination somewhere in the west. It wasn’t until she was on the train and feeling ill that Stasiuk learned she was pregnant with her second daughter, Christina.

Disaster was never far away. At one stop, Stasiuk waited on the train for her husband to jump off and take Lydia to the bathroom. The train pulled out before they re-boarded leaving Slava alone with all of the family’s belongings and documents, not knowing what to do. At the next stop, she got off and sat with all the belongings on the platform, refusing to go anywhere. As the frightened teen mother sat alone, with mobs of troops and people around, a BBC network of communicators managed to find her husband and daughter at the previous stop, telling them to get on the next train and go one stop to meet Stasiuk.

The family ended up in Austria, while Stasiuk’s parents and younger sister Irene ended up in Germany. Christine was born on May 6, 1945, a day before the German’s surrendered. “It was Easter Sunday. Momma said my birth had ended the war. All the bells rang,” she said.

The family remained in Austria for five years.

In 1949, Stasiuk’s parents and siblings made their way to Texas. The next year, 1950, she and her husband and two daughters sailed to New York and found a home in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Stressing that the, “U.S. was nice, opening its quotas and offering to take these displaced people.” Piaseckyj said he had to have sponsors and had to pay off sponsorship fees once he arrived.

The beginnings were rough. They arrived in February and it was cold. They had a cold flat with a bathtub in the kitchen.

“The full immigrant experience,” said Piaseckyj. Stasiuk cried for a year and suffered from a series of allergies to everything new in their new home. She worked nights and her husband worked days.

Bonacors said that the kids didn’t have the same experience.

“We as children never felt hungry or worried. There was a huge Ukranian community already in place.” Piaseckyj concurred saying, “I, as an almost nine-year old, loved America. I loved everything about it; loved public school…here we had no fears of the Russians coming. This country has been the most blessed, wonderful country on Earth and hopefully will stay that way for everyone.”

Stasiuk adjusted and she and her husband built a beautiful life. Once settled, Stasiuk didn’t work out of her home but was very, very active in the Ukranian community. She was a talented baker and became an instructor in the Ukranian Museum teaching others how to make traditional Ukranian bread. She made wedding bread, Christmas bread, Easter bread and shipped them all over the world. Clever and gifted, she was a gardener and made beautiful wildflower and herbal type wreaths.

When her daughter moved to Lexington, Stasiuk eventually followed, building a new home and a new life there. She moved permanently more than 20 years ago and has lived her life in love and peace since then.

Now a resident of Mountainside Residential Care Center, Stasiuk lives surrounded by caring peers and providers in addition to her devoted family members.