Mary Szereg

Mary Procak was born in McKees Rocks, PA on Sept. 7, 1919 to Ksenia and Theodor Procak. As teenagers, they had individually emigrated from Jaselko, an ethnic Ukrainian village in Poland, met here, and married. After a series of tragedies took the lives of Mary s mother and two siblings, her father brought her back to Jaselko, where he remarried and where she grew up, leaving her with many happy memories of tending sheep and cows, riding horses bareback, and roaming the fields barefoot. Merka returned to the US when she turned 18 in 1937, sponsored by her aunts and uncles in McKees Rocks. She tried desperately to bring her family over, but WWII intervened. She spent the next five decades trying to keep track of her half-sisters in the Soviet Union, succeeding only intermittently. Her first job was hauling 18 bushels of coal dust out of a basement. She eventually came East and worked as a housemaid, until Uncle Sam called her to become Rosie the Riveter, producing ball bearings for the Fafnir Company in New Britain, CT. After the War, she moved to Forsyth St. in New York City. Her many jobs included housekeeping, wiring for Western Electric, and being an ILGWU seamstress in the Garment District for many years. Her last career was as a keypuncher/data entry operator for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in Manhattan for 18 years. She reveled in the fact that despite having had only several months of formal education in her entire life, she was working with computers before the age of the PC! In 1957, she married Theodor Szereg, whom she had known as a child and who had recently come to the United States. They were married in St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church on Van Buren Street in Passaic, and moved to Jersey City, where their daughter Sonia was born. In 1964 they moved to Brooklyn, NY, where Teddy was the building super and from where Mary commuted daily an hour each way in a standing-room-only subway to her job at MetLife. Upon their retirement, they bought the only house they ever owned in Clifton, NJ, returning to the parish where they had been married and to the many people they had grown up with in Jaselko. Having been orphaned of her own mother at a very young age, Mary was an extremely devoted, loving, and generous mother. Her cousins and friends remembered her always as an avid singer and dancer and fun-loving person who loved sharing stories of her life. She was an accomplished seamstress, crocheter, and embroiderer, who made virtually the entire wardrobe for herself and her daughter for many many years. She was a spunky fighter who always took the side of the underdog, and through 26 broken bones and surgeries, she delighted in proving the doctors wrong if they told her she would have less than a full recovery. In 1992, one year after Ukraine achieved independence, she and her daughter Sonia traveled to Ukraine, where Mary was finally reunited with her sisters, one of whom had been born after Mary had come to the US. It was the trip of a lifetime for her. Her many years of prayers and nagging were answered in 1999 when her daughter Sonia finally got married, a couple of weeks after Mary s 80th birthday. She loved her grandson, Mykhasyk , and spent many happy hours watching him draw, build pillow forts in the living room, and explore the many fascinating treasures in her room. She and Theodor celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary in 2007. The last two years of her life were spent peacefully at Arden Courts of Wayne, an Assisted Living for people with Alzheimers that is staffed by angels on Earth. Mary leaves behind her three half-sisters Justyna, Nadia, and Hania, along with many nieces and nephews in Ukraine. In the US, she leaves many cousins from Pennsylvania, her loving daughter Sonia, her devoted son-in-law Vlodko, and her beloved grandson, Michael. She lived her 93 years on Earth with great love, humor, tenacity, creativity, and spirit. Funeral from the Marrocco Memorial Chapel 470 Colfax Avenue Clifton on Saturday at 8:45 AM then to St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church at 9:30 AM. Interment Holy Spirit Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery. Visiting Friday 2-4 & 7-9 PM. Parastas at 7:30 PM. In lieu of flowers contributions to St. Nicholas Ukrainian School would be appreciated


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