Obituary: Vera Tanasichuk, church founder and benefactor, never took no for an answer

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
Updated ·4 min read

After her mother had a stroke and had to be carried up 67 steps to church, Vera Tanasichuk came up with a plan.

Tanasichuk would purchase a 4.75-acre parcel of land on Highway 96 in Arden Hills and donate $1 million to replace Sts. Volodymyr and Olga Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Holly Avenue in St. Paul. The new St. Katherine’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a handicapped-accessible building that could meet her mother’s needs, opened in 1995.

“My mother taught me, ‘You just don’t take no for an answer when you have to do something in life,’” Tanasichuk told the Pioneer Press in a 1995 interview.

Tanasichuk died of natural causes on Wednesday at her home in St. Paul. She was 82.

Family fled Ukraine

Tanasichuk was 8 when she and her family immigrated to the United States. Her parents, Andrij and Katherine Zaslavetz, were forced to flee Ukraine after Russian soldiers shot and burned Andrij Zaslavetz’s three brothers and their families, said her daughter Kristina Tanasichuk.

“My grandfather got a horse buggy and, literally, threw everybody in the back of it,” Kristina Tanasichuk said. “They took off, and they hid in the woods. The Russians searched the fields, but they didn’t quite get to the woods, so they were able to get away, but the rest of the family was killed.”

Andrij and Katherine Zaslavetz and their three daughters ended up in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany. In 1949, the owners of a mink ranch in Hackensack, Minn., sponsored their immigration to the U.S. in return for working at the ranch for a year, Kristina Tanasichuk said.

After the year in Hackensack, the family moved to St. Paul’s East Side. Katherine Zaslavetz, a seamstress, sewed for Star Garment, and Andrij Zaslavetz worked as a baker before “turning to industry to make a living,” according to a 1995 Pioneer Press story.

Vera Zaslavetz graduated from Harding High School and studied teaching at the University of Minnesota. “She taught at a preschool in St. Paul for a while, but the kids were coming home with a (Ukrainian) accent, so she was told she couldn’t teach there anymore,” Kristina Tanasichuk said.

She worked as a professional ballroom dancer on the “Chmielewski Funtime” television show, which aired in syndication for 35 years beginning in the early 1970s. “She danced classical dances like the waltz and the tango,” Kristina Tanasichuk said. “She was on there regularly.”

Married a med student

Vera Zaslavetz met Murray Tanasichuk, a medical student at the University of Minnesota, at Sts. Volodymyr and Olga Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Murray Tanasichuk’s family had emigrated from Ukraine to Canada, where they worked as farmers, and then pooled their money so that Murray, the youngest of 10 children, could attend medical school at the University of Minnesota, Kristina Tanasichuk said.

The couple’s courtship started with a practical joke. “He was pursuing her, and she was playing super hard to get,” Kristina Tanasichuk said. “On the first date, she sent her best friend, Lyda, in her place. He was, like, ‘Yeah, you’re not the one I’m looking for.’ The rest is history. He succeeded in getting her to go on an actual date.”

The couple married at Sts. Volodymyr and Olga Ukrainian Orthodox Church and moved to a house on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. They had one daughter.

The couple invested in real estate and owned several apartment buildings in Little Canada and a mobile-home park, Kristina Tanasichuk said.

“They did not spend money,” she said. “They saved it, and they invested it. They invested in me. Their big mantra was that education is the most important thing in the world, and they wanted me to have the best education possible.”

Murray Tanasichuk died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 52.

“She managed everything after my dad died,” Kristina Tanasichuk said. “She was a testament to education and perseverance. Given her background, there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do.

“America was the savior country. I mean, it saved their lives. They were able to come here and establish free, successful lives. They did not speak English. They didn’t know anyone. I mean, this was ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.’ The American Dream story is my family.”

Upset by war

Vera Tanasichuk returned to Ukraine several times, leading mission trips and spreading the Christian gospel, Kristina Tanasichuk said. “She had a deep commitment to Christianity and to God and her mom.”

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The news last year that Russia had invaded Ukraine was deeply upsetting to Tanasichuk, Kristina Tanasichuk said.

“They were working on building a new democracy, and now they’re fighting the ‘orcs‘ left and right. She was very sad,” Kristina Tanasichuk said. “I wish she would have seen peace in Ukraine before she passed.”

Tanasichuk is survived by her daughter, Kristina Tanasichuk, and her granddaughter, Kalyna White.

Visitation will be 1-2 p.m. Wednesday at O’Halloran and Murphy Funeral Home in St. Paul, followed by a private burial. A Celebration of Life reception will follow at 5 p.m. at St. Katherine’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Arden Hills.