Kovac family about 1933
My mother was born Betty Kovach on April 7, 1928. Her parents, Michael and Mary (Gurelo), had immigrated from central Europe around 1908. Kovach (Cyrillic: ΠΠΎΠ²Π°Ρ, meaning blacksmith) is a Slavic surname. They were part of a mass migration of Slavic peoples from the Carpathian mountain area to work the coal mines in Pennsylvania. These people, the Rusyns, brought a unique culture and have become known as Rusyn Americans.
Brother Dave found a location in the eastern part of what is now Ukraine, which corresponds to some of the historical data we have on her parents. They are likely from what is called Lintsi. Situated in the Zakarpattia Oblast (administrative district), the historical region is known as Carpathian Ruthenia. This was a melting pot of people from many ethnic backgrounds, including the Rusyns.
After immigrating, the family settled in New York, where their oldest daughter, Ann, was born shortly after establishing a homestead in Vanderbilt, Pennsylvania. Notably, St. Stephanβs Byzantine Church stands as a prominent landmark in this region. Constructed in the 1880s, it served as the dominant religious center for the Rusyn community, which adhered to East Orthodox Christianity. Michael and Mary are interred within the churchβs grounds, as are their eldest son, Michael, and his unmarried siblings.
The oldest son stayed behind until his teens before joining them. They had 13 children, including two who died as infants. My Mom was the 12th child. Her mother died after giving birth to their last son, George, in 1929. My mother told me her death was due to infection (sepsis), likely due to poor medical care.
After the mother’s death, the father disappeared, and the older children were responsible for providing for the family. This was during the Depression of the 1930s, and times were tough.
The eldest son, who had recently relocated from the homeland and was still struggling with his English, had a reputation for being stern and quick to anger. In contrast, the eldest daughter, Ann, was a replacement for her mother and was already an older teenager. The second oldest daughter, Helen, was grappling with mental health issues and had been hospitalized multiple times. Notably, neither Ann nor Helen chose to marry.
There appears to be a significant amount of strife and long-standing resentments that stem from the 1930s. The family faced the brink of disintegration but managed to stay together as the older children took on the responsibility of providing for their younger siblings.
They lost their homestead at some point, as evidenced by the only picture of the family at the top of this page. Tragically, their father, Michael, abandoned the family after their mother passed away. I believe my mother only met her father once. He lived until he was 70 years old before dying in an automobile accident in the Connellsville area. Our cousin shared that he was living in an abandoned building before his demise. Another cousin said he, too, was mentally ill. It appears that there arenβt many fond memories associated with him.
The 1940 census shows all family members except older sisters Helen and Mary living together. Mary married Edward Shaw in the 1940s and went on to have a family. When Mom got older, she moved in with Mary and helped raise her cousins. She moved back out for a while before graduating from High School. After that, she moved back in again and began working.
The 1950 Census shows my Mom living with the Shaws and employed as a Payroll clerk. She also told me she ran the post office in one of the mining camps. At one point, she was dating a sailor named Murphy, and I think he asked her to marry him. Mom told me later in life that she sought someone to provide the life she desired as a young Catholic woman.
Ed Shaw was a superintendent at the mine in Morgantown, West Virginia. One of his engineers was my Grandfather, Edward B. Tubridy. My mother and father met when they were invited to watch a World Series game on my Uncle Ed’s new television. It seems fitting, given my penchant for new technology π.
After marriage, they lived briefly in Dayton, Ohio, where Dad worked for Goodyear. He had been stationed at Holloman Air Force base outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico, as a missile test engineer for the Air Force. After leaving the service, he joined Goodyear and worked for several years in Dayton and Alamagordo before moving with Mom in early 1955. I was born there in August of that year.
Around the same time, Dad started working for General Dynamics. They were building the Atlas rocket in San Diego, California. We moved there briefly in 1956, and my brother Rick was born there in March 1957. Shortly after his birth, the family relocated to Cocoa Beach, Florida. It was there that the first launch of the Atlas took place.
Mom was always an avid gardener. I remember going to flower shows where she would show off her arrangements. She was very involved with us as young children, for example, being a den leader when we were in Cub Scouts. I remember she hooked up with one of the neighbors and became involved in campaigning for the Republican party! She worked at the Cape as a secretary in the late 60s. She liked to sail but was never fond of flying in small airplanes when Dad was an active pilot.
She, Dad, and brother Dave lived for several years in California, where Dad was involved with building the first Space Shuttle. When they returned to Florida, they lived in a lovely Spanish-style house on the golf course. They eventually returned to the family home on Blakey after Dad retired in 1992.
Mom became very active again in the Catholic Church in the mid-1980s. She focused her energy for the rest of her life. She traveled extensively with Dad, including MeΔugorje in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Egypt, and Russia. They visited me twice when I lived in Germany in the late 1980s.
She always stayed in touch with her family. When we were younger, we visited the Shaws almost every summer. They had a farm home in the mountains of West Virginia where her brothers and sisters would bring their families. She regularly talked to her sisters and was close with Mary’s children, Sandra and Pete. Sandra would visit us a lot before she got married and started her own family.
After Dad passed away in 2002, she stayed in Cocoa Beach until 2014. In 2004, a hurricane damaged her home. She spent several months visiting her family while Rick oversaw rebuilding it. In 2014, she relocated to Panama City, where Dave took care of her until her passing in 2019.
The last thing we did as a family was see her Grandson Carl marry in August 2019.
She passed after a brief illness a little over a month later on October 11. She had been having trouble swallowing and ended up with pneumonia and a urinary infection. I believe this triggered encephalopathy, affecting her brain, which quickly took her life. She had never spent a day in the hospital in my memory until the end.
She decided to be buried in a cemetray south of here in Palm Bay. It is next to the oldest Catholic Church in Brevard County. She’s at the far corner where there is a statue of the Virgin Mary. She was mom’s favorite!
Rest in Peace My Beautiful Mother!