War refugee enjoys homecoming
LYNNETTE HINTZE | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 10 years, 4 months AGO
<p><strong>Nick Drociuk</strong> and his wife, Ann, pose Wednesday outside his former home at 433 Eighth Ave. W. in Kalispell. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p><div> <a href="editorial-asset">Save and close</a></div>
<p><strong>Nickolas Drociuk</strong>, right, is pictured with other family members in 1951 when the Drociuk family arrived in Kalispell after spending five years in German refugee camps following World War II. (Photo courtesy of Nick Drociuk)</p><div> </div>
A World War II refugee whose family wound up in Kalispell after the war returned to the Flathead Valley this week to remember the community that once embraced him so warmly.
Nick Drociuk was just 12 when his family came here in 1951 after spending five years in a dozen different refugee camps in Germany.
The Drociuks came to Germany from Poland but his family was from Ukraine.
The family was sponsored by the Kalispell Assembly of God Church. The Daily Inter Lake reported in April 1951 that members of the congregation rented a house at 433 Eighth Ave. W. and “loaned household goods to make it livable and spent hours patching and plastering.
“The biggest surprise to the family, once they had been welcomed and had eaten, was to learn that this house, with all its five rooms, was theirs,” The Inter Lake noted. “It took them a while to understand that their days of living cooped up with other families in a refugee camp were over.”
Drociuk didn’t speak English when he first arrived here, but after spending the summer playing with the neighborhood boys, he was able to manage the language.
He visited the Museum at Central School this week and found his old homeroom where he practiced his reading with teacher Edith Dahl during study hall.
By the time he was 15, the family moved to New Jersey, where they became U.S. citizens and Drociuk later went to work for General Motors.
After he retired from GM after 30 years as a production supervisor, he came to the Flathead for a hunting trip with his son because Kalispell still seemed like home to him, he said.
When Drociuk’s wife, Ann, also a war refugee from Poland, retired from her job at a utility company in South Carolina, she promised him a trip to Montana.
Drociuk, 76, marveled at the amount of growth Kalispell has seen since he was here in the 1980s.
“What I remember is farmland between Kalispell and Whitefish,” he said, noting the commercial development now along the U.S. 93 corridor.
Drociuk wants to connect with any classmates from the 1950s who still live in the area. He can be reached at (803) 315-2011.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.