Endless Trip on the Weels of History

Mariya Leviton

English 100

October, 6 2010

Endless Trip on the Wheels of History

I never met my grandfather-in- law, nor did my husband ever meet him. However, our life was greatly influenced by this person’s decisions and achievements. More than a century separates Morton Leviton and me, but we are connected through a circle of events that took place during his lifetime and during lifetime of his kids and grandchildren. My daughter, who was only two years old when we first came to America, repeated her great- grandfather’s trip from one continent to another. Nevertheless, this trip was made hundred years later and under less dramatic circumstances.

My grandfather –in- law left Ukraine in 1904. This year was marked like the most bloody in the history of Ukraine. People all over the country were fighting for their rights, while the Tsar started the Russian-Japanese war. Odessa, were Morton lived, at that time was a center of political and economical events. Before the Russian Revolution of 1917 happened and the Bolsheviks came to the power, people in Ukraine and Russia suffered from poverty and economical injustice. The Tsar lost his authority among his own people because besides poor economic conditions of all working class, a lot of people were prosecuted for religious, racial or political reasons. For example, there were a couple of Pogroms, which means “riots”. They were anti-Semitic attacks, initiated by Tsar and different political forces. Such bloody pogroms encouraged a lot of Russian Jews to immigrate to America. Morton Leviton along with other Jews were forced to escape from the agony of the war in Odessa. A group of people, the majority of whom were just teenagers, took a risky boat tour at night fleeing for their lives and leaving behind their families, home and motherland.

America turned out to be a safe haven for my grandfather in law. A lot of possibilities were waiting for him, and no Bolsheviks threatened his life. Morton Leviton received an American education and became an architect. By the age of thirty he got married, bought a big house and had three children. However, things changed dramatically.  In 1929, the stock market crashed and it resulted in a huge economic recession. As a result, millions of Americans lost their homes, jobs and a hope to earn any source of income. My grandfather- in- law became the ultimate victim of that horrible event in American history. He lost his job and was forced to sell his house. Morton felt totally devastated and crushed under the cruel circumstances of his life. He declared a bankruptcy and couldn’t live any more. The last moments of Morton Leviton’s life were dedicated to the frantic ideas how to protect his family and how to earn money to feed his kids. Thus, all the terror of his childhood years in Ukraine came back to Morton in the form of dark depression which wrapped America like an endless night. Mr. Leviton didn’t live to see the dawn of the American economy. His heart was broken, and his health was destroyed. Morton Leviton died at the age of thirty- five, just five years before the Great Depression ended and the economy of the country started to recover.

As a result, my husband’s grandmother in law raised kids herself. After all, the family survived the Great Depression and flourished for the  next eighty years. All the kids inherited their father’s talents and a good ability to learn. One of them, Gordon Leviton, who would give birth to my husband, became an editor. He was a multitalented person, who could have become a genius writer, musician or artist. However, he didn’t achieve so much in his life and died young at the age of 42, just like his father. My husband believes that being raised without a father, his father became a very skeptical and bitter person, who didn’t take advantage of any of his talents.

Being descendants from Ukraine, my American relatives became Americanized and wouldn’t recognize any difference between Ukraine and Russia. In fact, they didn’t know about their Ukrainians roots before my husband did his family tree investigation. My husband, Roger Leviton is a third generation Ukrainian in America, and he became fascinated and carried away by his grandfather’s life story. Furthermore, he decided to take a trip to Ukraine, his historical motherland. This trip led to his marriage with me, a Ukrainian woman, and to the birth of our daughter, who was born in Ukraine. By the will of the fate, the life of my husband once again was related to Ukraine; nevertheless, in more real way, far from the fantasy. A hundred years after his grandfather left Ukraine, my husband fulfilled a perfect plan to bring me and my daughter to America. Like Morton Leviton, we crossed the Atlantic Ocean and moved from one continent to another. However, our trip was not dramatic or dangerous. Compared to the illegal boat tour of his grandfather, our jet flight was fun and very fast. Even though my daughter never saw her great-grandfather, she inherited his genes, and repeats little bit of his history - the history of becoming American and creating the new generation of Ukrainians in America.

In conclusion, history has a tendency to be repeated. You never know where your curiosity can bring you. Will it be a tourist trip to a new country, or will it give a start to a new generation of people, who in their turn will repeat your own history. For example, my grandfather- in- law became a hero for my husband because he achieved a lot in his life. For instance, he moved to a new country, studied a new language and became an architect. However, life was cruel to him and once again he moved to the other side of the scale – poor and desperate. Nevertheless, the family, which he established in America, survived and keeps growing till the present days. Now, I wonder how surprised he would be if he lived to see his grandson renews his Ukrainian genes in the Levitons’ genealogy.