William Ridinger

William Ridinger, 92, passed away on Sunday, September 11, 2011. Memorial Service will take place on Thursday, September 15, 2011 at 2:00 PM, New Apostolic Church of Norhtglenn. Dad went back to the hospital on August 11th. He was diagnosed with a case of pneumonia. The situation was actually much worse. It was the culmination of substantial weight loss and general deterioration of his other organs. He had severe back pains and had been unable to get around much of late. Dad and his family discussed the situation with the doctors and decided that any further testing was too intrusive and would endanger his life. He may have had cancer, but the tests themselves and any treatments would probably have been fatal. It was opted to proceed with home hospice care, and try to make him comfortable in his final days. He stopped eating soon after he came out of the hospital, needed oxygen to help him breathe, and couldn't get out of bed without help. He'd been a fighter all of his life, but he was also a realist. He knew his time was near. The hospice program was a blessing for all of us. Dad despised hospitals, always said he wanted to die in his home. There was no shortage of visitors during those final weeks, and we could all see he appreciated it. He still provided a few smiles, held our hands, and the tears were on our side, not his. Those last days made us all appreciate the man inside that body; as strong in death as he was in life. I spent some time with dad during his later years, talking with him about his younger days in Ukraine and Germany, while I was doing some geneology research to discover the roots of our family. I eventually came to two realizations. First, that we are all products of our ancestors. The more I learned about my ancestors, the more I felt their struggles and their triumphs. I feel those lives within me, just as I will always feel dad's life. Those of you that knew him, I'm sure, feel the same way. The second realization I came to was that we can never understand anyone until we've walked in their shoes. The man we are remembering today has walked further in his shoes than anyone I've known. Sometimes he walked without shoes. Sometimes he gave his shoes to others. If a man's spirit is measured by miles travelled, no man had more spirit than my father. He was born in 1919 in a small village in southern Ukraine, not far from the city of Odessa. He was a German, his ancestors having set out a hundred years before from the Alsace region of France, escaping Napoleon's dictatorship for free land and opportunity in the Russian Empire. Like the early American pioneers who headed west to find their fortunes, his ancestors headed east. They built thriving farms and villages on the uninhabited prairies of Ukraine. The Russian revolution was less than two years on when he was born. The effects were soon felt in his village. His family was well-to-do farmers, and his grandfather was a prominent local official. Being German and landholders doomed their family in the new communist system. In 1932 their land was confiscated, his father sent to Siberia for a 5-year term, and his grandfather was arrested and jailed. His grandfather returned for one summer to teach his knowledge as a fruit grower to the new communist youth, then was again repressed. He was never heard from again. Dad thinks he probably starved to death that winter. The famine took 10 million lives that year. It was a political famine, not a natural disaster. Ukraine was the breadbasket of Europe. The soldiers came to the houses to confiscate the food, then shot on site anyone who tried to take it back. Those that survived were mainly in their teens. My father was 13. His father was released after 4-1/2 years in Siberia, and came home to try to put his family back together. A few months later, an assassination took place in Leningrad, and another round of liquidations took place. Kulaks, as the successful farmers were called, had become the class enemy. Dad and his father were both arrested. Dad was released. Perhaps he was yet too young for prison, or perhaps he was simply too much to handle. His father was not so lucky, and was executed soon after. His family was told at the time that he had been 're-located', but I've seen the records. He has since been 're-habilitated', the Russian term for pardoned, an admission by the Russian government that he had been wrongly convicted. Dad's stepmother (he never knew his real mother; she died when he was young) couldn't take care of the kids, and he and his brothers were sent to live with relatives in nearby villages. Though he didn't have the papers to travel outside of his district, he learned the Ukrainian language and was able to pass as a Ukrainian, a skill that may have saved his life several times. By the time he was 20, World War II started. The German army invaded and occupied Ukraine. My father managed a position as a civilian worker repairing train tracks for the German army. He had always been a repairman, a tinkerer. This provided for some interesting humor for us later in his life. He never again returned to his village. Once the war was over, he was a refugee. His worst fear was being caught by the Russian army, which was busy re-claiming all of the former Russian citizens and re-patriating them back to the Soviet Union – and was especially interested in those that had helped the Germans. With luck, he managed to find a British army unit which allowed him refuge for a few days, after which he set off in search of his lost family. He got word they had been evacuated from Ukraine by the retreating German army and were settled in American refugee camps in Bavaria. His two brothers, meanwhile, had been found by the Russian army and were sent back to Russia. One would later die in prison. The other was sent to the Ural mountains, afterwards to relocate to Kazakhstan and finally to Germany after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Dad has three nephews and two nieces, and their descendants, now living in Germany. By stroke of luck, dad found his cousin Amelia in Augsburg, Germany. When he arrived, he had only the clothes on his back. They were living in the refugee camp. He worked for a time in the Camp Commissary. He was offered some choices for re-settlement and decided to set off for England to work in the coal mines. England didn't suit him, so he moved to Belgium to work in the coal mines there. Coal mining must not have been to his liking, or perhaps he was homesick, so he finally returned to Augsburg, where he met his future wife. They married on Christmas Day 1952. She had a son whom my father adopted. I was born in 1954 and another son was born in 1955. The five of us lived in two rooms of my moms' parents house in Germany. With apparently few prospects in Germany and a lingering fear he could still be captured by the Russians, he decided to apply for an American Visa. He was sponsored by his cousin's family with whom he lived in Ukraine, who had left the refugee camp in 1952 to set out for America. They were re-united in Texas in 1960. His journey was still not over. In 1962, with all the belongings in a U-Haul trailer, we all set off for Colorado, where we finally settled down, near to other relatives who had survived those times in Ukraine and Germany. He had another son in 1965, then lost his first son in an automobile accident in 1981. That's the only time I saw him cry. By almost any accounts, my father had a rough life. Yet when he told me these stories, he hardly ever spoke badly of people, although he did express a certain dislike for Joseph Stalin. Rather, he spoke of those that helped him, of the humorous anecdotes. Yes, there were some good ones. Like the time he showed up at his aunt's house in Germany after his trek across Austria and Germany with only a filthy set of clothes on his back, and she told him she needed to wash them. He said he couldn't take his clothes off, since ""this is all I have, and if I take these off, I'll be standing in front of you naked!"" Or how he used to love to kid around with his grandchildren, pulling his teeth out of his mouth among other things. And I will always remember his favorite Ukrainian saying: ""Roboto Malo, Gushets Bahato"". It doesn't tranlate well into English. Figuratively, it's the Ukrainian equivalent of ""Eat, Drink and be Merry."" When I started working in Russia, he made me promise to use it every time I went. The problem was that it doesn't translate well into Russian either, which I didn't know until I learned to speak a little Russian. I got some really crazy looks when I first tried it. He graduated from the school of hard knocks, and made his way through life with a fourth grade education. His sons all received college degrees. He took pride in the fact he gave his family a better life than he had. And he always kept his sense of humor. Always joking, he was delight to talk to you. As for the hard times, well ""that's just how things were."" We can learn from a man like this. Learn to do the right things. See the good things in life. And ""Don't judge until you've walked in their shoes!"" Good bye, father, and may the grace of God be with you, wherever your next journey will take you. Your spirit will always be with us. Roboto malo, gushets bahato. Please share your memories of William and condlonces with his family by selecting the ""Sign Guestbook"" button below.