John Hudanish
New Jersey, USA; Rusyn ancestors from Subcarpathian Rus'
He learned Russian in the Army: eighteen months at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, 1963–64.
- Defense Language Institute, 1963–64
- Vietnam, 1965–67
- Woodburn teacher from 1970
- 35 years among Old Believers
- A book in three languages
“I do not claim to having made history, but only to being present when it happened.”
Then came eighteen months in Vietnam, where he spent his off-duty hours photographing Saigon, Can Tho, Nha Trang and Pleiku — daily life, not the war. In June 1970 he arrived in Portland and took a first-grade class in Woodburn, teaching Old Believer children to read and count in Russian. For 35 years he interpreted for Oregon's Old Believers in courtrooms, emergency rooms and public meetings, and wrote a weekly newspaper column about them.
In 1977 he was the only witness when Bishop Nektary of Seattle prostrated himself before the Old Believer elder Abram Semerikov and asked forgiveness for the persecutions of the 17th century. He set the story down in a long memoir, "Two ROCOR Bishops and the Russian Old Believers in Oregon." His Vietnam photographs became a book in English, Vietnamese and Russian.
After Pennsylvania and five years in Slovakia, he lives in Portland again.
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