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Constable: Mt. Prospect family's history of hardship starts in Siberia

Ignoring the aches in her shoulders, smiling Val Schacht wraps her arms around her 22-year-old son's twisted body and hoists him to his feet. Maneuvering Ryan's 135-pound frame as if he were an unwieldy life-size marionette, the 53-year-old mom walks him to his wheelchair. Rolling him down the ramp from their Mount Prospect home gives her a minute to recharge for what comes next.

Folding Ryan into the front seat of their 2004 Chevy Impala parked on the drive in front of their one-car garage always creates an arduous challenge, especially since Ryan can't talk or control his ungainly arms and legs. That's why friends of Val and David Schacht, Ryan and his 16-year-old sister, Eva, organized the Nov. 2 "Rolling With Ryan" fundraiser to raise money for a wheelchair-accessible van, which Ryan will need more than ever after his eight-hour surgery on Nov. 13 to straighten and fuse his spine.

"You never complain. You're just good people," friend and neighbor Barb Fryzel-Marquette tells Val Schacht.

"You do what you've got to do," explains David Schacht, 53, who says he learned that lesson during his eight years in the Army and from the stories of his father's family raising rabbits and pigeons in Des Plaines to help his milkman grandfather survive the Depression.

"All you have to do is turn around and look, and somebody's got it worse," says Val Schacht.

She has to look only as far as the yellowed manuscript bound with thread on her kitchen table. Written by her grandmother Maria Pawlenko in her native Ukrainian and published in Chicago in 1955, the book's title translates as "Thrown From the Nest."

"I had a good cry this morning," Val Schacht says after reading a portion of her grandmother's book, which describes the family's escape from a Siberian labor camp in 1930 during the reign of Communist leader Josef Stalin. "Even though I know the story, because it's my mother, it hurts."

Schacht's mother, Polina, was one of twin girls born on Sept. 7, 1930, while the Pawlenko family with three older children was imprisoned in a labor camp. The other twin, Melania, died of starvation a week after birth. Schacht's grandfather begged one of the guards to let them give the girl a proper Christian burial in the woods. After they put the baby in the ground, the family, with Polina tucked under her mother's coat, made their escape from Siberia.

"They were going to be executed if they had been caught," Val Schacht says, explaining how the family would hide during the day and hike at night for months.

"My grandfather wanted to leave my mother in the woods because she was slowing them down and her crying might give them away," Schacht says. Instead she became their "salvation," as a mother with a baby was more likely to get a food handout than a family on the lam. The older kids used sticks to poke the ground in search of rodent nests, which they would raid for seeds and grains.

"It was stealing food from mice because that's all they had," says Schacht, who says she didn't learn about her mother's hardship until she was 16.

"It's all proportional," Schacht says of the hardships her ancestors endured. "I remember my grandmother talking about how tough it was for her mother to lose a leg to gangrene."

Knowing their ancestors survived those life-and-death struggles to become happy, productive people gives the Schachts the confidence to do the same in the two decades since Ryan was diagnosed with weak muscles, cerebral palsy and a "failure to progress." David Schacht works full time as a Teamster, operating equipment to move garbage around a dump. Val Schacht works part time at the Eileen Fischer outlet in Schaumburg. They purée food so Ryan can eat. They change his diaper. They juggle schedules so one can attend Eva's events. The father helps out with Eva's color guard team at Prospect High School.

"They are the most positive people I know," says Janice Rajecki, a longtime family friend and Eva's godmother, who moved to Mount Prospect, in part, to be closer to the Schachts and live in a building with an elevator so that Ryan can visit.

During a "girls' sleepover" when David and Eva Schacht were on a band trip, Val Schacht's friends came up with the idea for a fundraiser to buy a van. Working with kevinhealy.org, they set up a rollingwithryan.com website and organized the benefit from 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 2, at Gaelic Park, 6119 147th St., in Oak Forest. Tickets are $35 each and include a full buffet, beer, wine, soft drinks, raffles and auctions. The Schachts have many friends in the south suburbs because they attend the Ukranian Orthodox Church of Ss. Peter and Paul in Palos Park.

One wall of the Schachts' home is covered with crosses of all shapes and sizes from all over the globe. Friends give them as blessings. Faith is as important now, say the Schachts, as it was for their ancestors. A canvas image of Mary with baby Jesus, the icon given to her grandmother in 1917 and preserved throughout all those hardships, now is on display in Ryan's room.

"We pray every day. Ryan won't go to sleep until I go in there with him," his mom says. "We pray for everybody in our family who is having issues, and that list is long."

From the relatives still in Ukraine to the family members who immigrated to the United States, "how you deal with hardship is what characterizes you," Val Schacht says. "To live through that, you either have horrible anger or the humility that makes you raise your family and be good Christians and be a good person."

The outpouring of help and interest in the "Rolling With Ryan" fundraiser is humbling, say the couple, who refuse to be weighed down by life's hardships.

"There's a whole lot of negative, but there's a whole lot of positive," David Schacht says. "We're blessed."

  The hardships of carrying for 22-year-old Ryan, who can't talk or walk, pale in comparison to the struggles of ancestors, who escaped from a Stalin labor camp in Siberia, says Val Schacht. Bob Chwedyk/bchwedyk@dailyherald.com
  Moving her 135-pound son, Ryan, from this wheelchair into the family's car is a struggle for Val Schacht of Mount Prospect. Friends organized a Nov. 2 fundraiser to help the family buy a van with a wheelchair lift. Bob Chwedyk/bchwedyk@dailyherald.com
  This photograph of Paul and Maria Dubova Pawlenko, Ukrainian immigrants who died in 1986, gives no clue to the horrors they endured while staving off starvation and escaping from a Stalin labor camp in Siberia. Bob Chwedyk/bchwedyk@dailyherald.com
  This icon of Mary with the baby Jesus was given by her great-grandmother to her grandmother in 1917, says Val Schacht. The icon now is on display in the room of her son Ryan, who has severe disabilities and is facing major surgery on Nov. 13. Bob Chwedyk/bchwedyk@dailyherald.com
  Understanding the hardships endured by her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother before they immigrated from Ukraine to the United States helps Val Schacht of Mount Prospect deal with life's challenges. Bob Chwedyk/bchwedyk@dailyherald.com
  Written in her native Ukrainian, this yellowed manuscript written by Val Schacht's grandmother was published as a book in 1955, detailing the family's escape from a labor camp in Siberia. Bob Chwedyk/bchwedyk@dailyherald.com
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