By Albert Amateau
The afternoon heat on July 1 did not faze the group of seniors who were enjoying their Thursday bingo such as the list of bingo sites listed in the new bingo sites https://www.newbingosites.biz/ in the cool back room of the Selfreliance Association of American Ukrainians in the East Village.
“They come no matter what the weather is,” said Oksana Lopatynsky, a full-time social worker at the center at 98 Second Ave. “One day two winters ago it was snowing so hard I thought nobody would come. They came,” she said.
One member who rarely misses a Thursday session is Maria Abrammiule from E. Seventh St., who celebrated her 100th birthday at the center last month. She told The Villager that she emigrated from near Ternopil in Ukraine and arrived in New York in 1949.
“Her husband died in 1955 and she raised two daughters and a son and sent them all to college,” Lopatynsky said. “We have about 60 active members,” Lopatynsky added. “We take trips and go to shows. Radio City Music Hall is one of our favorites.”
“I’m the baby here,” said Dolores Ziats, 67, who was playing alongside her friends Vera Dobrowolski, 77, and Stephanie Kosovych, 91. “I think I’m younger than anybody here today,” said Ziats.
“Not all our members are from Ukraine,” said Irene D’Alessio, a part-time social worker with the Selfreliance Association. “Some are Polish and there’s one lady from France,” said D’Alessio, who invited a visitor from The Villager to pay a call on one of her favorite clients.
Margaret Rock, who lives on E. Sixth St. around the corner from the Selfreliance center, will be 107 years old on July 13, D’Alessio said.
“She’s an immigrant from Poland — 1956 — and I think she’s lived in that second-floor apartment since that time,” D’Alessio said. “She changed her name from Malgorzata Gratulewicz to Margaret Rock on the day she was naturalized on Oct. 1, 1958,” said D’Alessio. Margaret worked for many years as a cook and housekeeper for a wealthy family on Central Park West.
“She was a very feisty lady and fiercely independent,” D’Alessio continued. “A few years ago she had a hip operation and I was able to get her into a nursing home in College Point [Queens]. It was O.K. for a year and a half, but then she got antsy and wanted to come home. We had kept paying her rent and were able to get her 24-hour home-care.”
According to Margaret’s papers on file at Selfreliance, her husband died in 1929, and some time after she emigrated from Poland, she brought her two daughters to New York. One died in a drowning accident several years ago and the other, who is frail, lives in Massachusetts.
“Margaret has six grandsons. Three of them are in Massachusetts with their mother and the other three are in the New York area,” D’Alessio said.
Although the grandsons do not visit often, Margaret has frequent company. D’Alessio drops by about twice a week. Margaret doesn’t speak English much anymore and talks to D’Alessio in Polish. D’Alessio, formerly Irene Repczuk, who came to the U.S. at the age of 8, speaks Ukrainian, so there is a rather porous language barrier.
Another frequent visitor is Dr. Mary Efremov, a neighborhood physician who insists on paying house calls to her frail patients.
“It’s ridiculous to tell a 100-year-old patient who never learned English to go to a clinic,” said Efremov, herself an immigrant who came to the neighborhood with her family at the age of 5.
