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Saturday, June 11 at 10 a.m. the Balzekas Museum Lithuanian Book Club will host journalist and author Juratė Kazickas, who will lead a reading and discussion about Odyssey of Hope: The Story of a Lithuanian Immigrant's Escape from Communism to Freedom in America and the Return to his Beloved Homeland her father Juozas Kazickas's inspirational memoir
About the Book
Dr. Juozas Kazickas
Odyssey of Hope (first published in Lithuanian as Vilties kelias in 2002) is the life story of entrepreneur and philanthropist Dr. Joseph Kazickas, a Lithuanian immigrant who found freedom and success in America after a dramatic escape from his country during World War II but never lost his longing and devotion to his homeland.
Kazickas was born in the Saratov area of the Russian interior where his grandparents were exiled for their part in a failed uprising against the Czarist rule in 1863. The family returned to Lithuania in 1922. Kazickas studied economics at Vytautas Magnus University (1937–1940) and Vilnius University (1941–1942) where he met his wife Alexandra. In Vilnius he worked at the Vilnius municipality and was involved in wartime resistance activities. In 1944, the young family, including one-year-old daughter Juratė (the child pictured on the book's cover), fled westward to escape the Soviet occupation of Lithuania and lived in several displaced persons refugee camps in Germany until 1947, when Kazickas was awarded a fellowship to Yale University to study economics and immigrated to the United States. He earned a Ph. D. for his thesis on the sovietization of Czechoslovakia and turned down a professorship at Georgetown University to start a business exporting coal to post-war Germany and Italy. Through hard work, perseverance and acumen, Kazickas became a successful businessman and venture capitalist, leading several international corporations, including Exxon, El Paso Natural Gas, Columbia Gas, Rockwell International, Philip Morris, Coca-Cola, Kawasaki Heavy Industries. During the years of Soviet occupation, Kazickas actively worked for Lithuanian causes and supported the restoration of Lithuania’s independence in 1990. Afterwards, he advised the Lithuanian government on the transition to a free-market economy and worked to establish commercial ties with the West.
Kazickas sponsored the construction of the Church of the Assumption, a Roman Catholic church in Kathmandu, Nepal, where his son Kęstutis died in 1976. In 1998, Kazickas established the Kazickas Family Foundation, which sponsors educational projects, scholarships and cultural programs in Lithuania as well as the Baltic Studies programs at Yale and Washington Universities.
Honors conferred on Dr. Juozas Kazickas include:
· Order for Merits to Lithuania (2008)
· Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas(1995, 1998)
· Ellis Island Medal of Honor (USA) (1996)
· Memorial Medal of January the 13th (1992)
· Order of the Rifleman's Society (1973)
About the Presenter - Juratė Kazickas
Journalist, author and refugee advocate Juratė Kazickas was born in Lithuania 1943 and emigrated to the United States in 1947 with her parents, displaced war refugees Juozas and Alexandra Kazickas. After graduating from Trinity College in Washington, D.C., Kazickas volunteered in Kenya as a teacher. She began her journalism career at Look magazine and went to Vietnam as a freelance photojournalist where she was wounded during the battle of Khe Sanh in 1968. She spent 10 years as a reporter for the Associated Press, covering the 1973 Middle East war and American events. She was a White House correspondent during the Carter administration and subsequently worked as a feature writer for The Washington Star.
Kazickas is the co-author of Susan B. Anthony Slept Here and War Torn: Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam. She edited Odyssey of Hope, her father’s memoir about the Kazickas family’s experiences fleeing from Lithuania in World War II, immigrating to America, and participating in the Lithuania’s political and economic reemergence after the country regained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.
A staunch advocate for refugees, Kazickas served on the board of the Women’s Refugee Commission. She visited survivors of crises in Bosnia, Rwanda, Pakistan and Afghanistan and lobbied on their behalf in Washington. She has appeared on PBS’ Charlie Rose in 1996 to report on the suffering of women and children in war-torn Bosnia and again in 2002 to talk about her experiences as a war correspondent in Vietnam. For her refugee advocacy, she received a 2010 Freedom Award from the International Rescue Committee. After the January 2010 earthquake devastated many of Haiti’s schools, Kazickas co-founded Teach the World Online/Haiti, which enables volunteers in the United States to give daily English lessons to Haitian school children.
Kazickas supports her family’s philanthropic work, serving as President of the Kazickas Family Foundation, which sponsors educational projects, scholarships and cultural programs in Lithuania as well as the Baltic Studies programs at Yale and Washington Universities. Kazickas is married to Roger C. Altman. They have three children and live in New York City.
