For my sports enthusiasts cousins
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They Came To Play:
How Professional Sports Helped Carpathian-Rusyns Assimilate Into America
by George G. Pawlush (Author) https://amzn.to/3UrrEI5
Edited 07-Aug-2025 to Add:
Personal Reaction/Review:
While not a huge sports fan, it was fun to find members of my Dad’s extended family mentioned. Each of the featured sportsmen has a “2-page spread” sort of like a detailed Obit. However, as someone new to “on-line” genealogy, I am really happy to have the list of resources for more information on the Carptho-Rusyns and of course happy to have supported the writer in what I suspect was very much a “labour of love” project.
From The Amazon Listing 29-Jul-2025 :
Between 1880 and 1914 nearly 250,000 people, known as Carpatho-Rusyns, immigrated to America from a region in Eastern Europe called Carpathian-Rus’. Prior to 1918, Carpathian Rus’, which comprised a land mass similar to the size of New Jersey, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is located where the present-day borders of Poland, Slovakia and the Ukraine intersect in the Carpathian Mountains.
Rusyns, prior to the start of World War I, were primarily illiterate peasants, who lived in small villages and owned tiny five-acre farms, raised livestock, like cows, chickens, goats and sheep, on land unsuitable to produce sufficient crops. To escape the hardships of their native land, Rusyns sought a new life in America. Many were quickly recruited by mine owners as cheap labor to perform hazardous and hard work in the Anthracite coal fields of Eastern Pennsylvania.
Later, steel magnates targeted Rusyns to work in equally dangerous jobs in their mills and related industries in Western Pennsylvania, and adjoining towns and cities in West Virginia and Ohio. Other Rusyns found entry level employment at plants and factories in the metropolitan areas of New York, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis.
While these newcomers found it difficult to move up the American social ladder, their first generation Rusyn American sons were eager to assimilate into America. Some viewed American professional sports as their opportunity to achieve success. A few found fame as professional boxers, but most gravitated to America’s most popular team sports at the time – football and baseball.
Two Rusyns – John Jadick and Pete Latzo – became international boxing champions in the 1920s. Ducky Medwick and Nestor Chylak both reached Baseball ‘s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., Medwick as a player and Chylak as an umpire. John Kundla was selected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, for coaching the Minneapolis Lakers to five world championships in the late 1940s and 1950s.
They Came to Play is about the history and homeland of the Carpatho-Rusyns, and about the challenges they faced to become accepted and recognized in America. However, the major portion of the book profiles the lives of the five aforementioned sports figures, and 40 others with Rusyn ancestral roots, who worked hard to reach the top level of their professional or Olympic sport.
These 45 individual served, and continue to be, an inspiration to people with ties to Carpathian Rus’. They demonstrated to their fellow Rusyns that persistence and a strong will could lead to success in whatever career path they chose. By 1960, many second-generation Rusyn Americans had earned college degrees, and advanced up the social ladder, and had assumed major management and professional roles in American business, industry, government, education, and health care.
Amazon Details:
Product details
Dimensions: 6 x 0.35 x 9 inches
ASIN: B0FJ5VKS3D
Publisher: Independently published
Publication date: July 29, 2025
Language: English
Print length:153 pages
ISBN: 979-8291466407