Volodymyr Bilyaiv at a reception at the Gridiron Club. Washington DC. 1980s. Private archive of Bilyaiv family.
His activities are wide and varied: he is not only an outstanding Ukrainian poet, but also a literary scholar, public figure, brilliant journalist, publicist, and researcher of the works of Ukrainian writers.
Petro Odarchenko, literary critic
Volodymyr Bilyaiv was a Ukrainian poet and journalist, public figure, director of the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America (1991-1998), corresponding member of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States (1984), and member of the National Wtiter’s Union of Ukraine (1995).
He was born on June 25, 1925, in Shakhty 12, Makiivka district, Donetsk region. Because of his parents and circumstances (persecution of his relatives by the Soviet punitive system, the Holodomor of 1932-1933), he early realized the tragedy of his people. Bilyaiv’s childhood and youth in Donetsk and his love for Ukraine became central themes in his poetry and public work. Having been forced to work in Germany during the Second World War and losing contact with Ukraine, he returned to his native land in his poetry and did much to fight the USSR.
In the postwar years in Germany, Bilyaiv worked for the US Air Force, the International Tracing Service in German camps. He graduated from the School of Journalism at the Ukrainian Technical and Economic Institute and began his journalistic career at the newspaper “Ukrainian News”.
He married Halyna (Bilyk) from Kyiv, who was also deported to Germany. Soon after, they had a daughter, Alla (Rogers), a famous American-Ukrainian artist.
In 1949, they emigrated overseas. First, to Australia, where Bilyaiv worked in factories, wrote for Ukrainian weeklies in Australia and the United States, and was elected secretary general of the International Council of Immigrants from Countries Enslaved by Communism. In 1954, the family moved to the United States, where Bilyaiv immediately immersed himself in the Ukrainian journalistic and public environment, working for several publications, writing in particular about the work of Ukrainian diaspora writers. At the same time he received a degree from the University of Pennsylvania and founded his own construction company.
But his priority was Ukrainian affairs. During the 1970s and 1980s, he worked closely with the UPR (Ukrainian People’s Republic) in exile, was deputy chairman of the Presidium and spokesman for the Ukrainian National Council (1972-1984), and in 1978 he headed the UPR government’s mission to the United States and served as chairman of the UPR Council in 1982-1984.
From 1984 to 1998, he worked for the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America and headed it from 1991 to 1998. During this period, he visited his native town in Ukraine twice — in 1993 and 1996.
Volodymyr Bilyaiv also realized himself as a poet. Each of his collections, starting with the first one, “Flight,” is “poetry imbued with an idea,” as defined by H. Kostiuk. Among his most famous collections are “The Other Side of Happiness” (USA, 1979) and “Autumn Renewal” (2001), “On the Vast Wing” (2003), and “Fate and Path” (2005), published in Donetsk.
After Volodymyr Bilyaiv passed away on February 12, 2006, in North Palm Beach, Florida, USA, his second wife Dorothy Strom Bilyaiva with daughters Alla Rodgers and Gina Bilyaiva Long, donated the library to the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, which is kept as a personal collection.
