Reverend Bohdan Ochrymovych

Rev. Bohdan Okhrymovych was born in 1877. He completed theology in Lviv and was ordained in 1902. He was married to Anna "Annuntsia" Martynkiw . She was born on August 17, 1882 in the city of Skole, Ukraine. Her parents: Rev. Volodymyr Martynkiw, parish priest in Skole (died in 1904) and Teodora Horalewych (died in 1888).

Rev. Bohdan and Anna had nine children: Osyp Julian, Stefan, Yurij, Teodozij, Maria, Markian, Zenon, Martha and Lida.

The first parish of Rev. Bohdan was in Korchyn, in the Stryi county, by the river Stryi. This was an interesting village: Almost all the villagers were named "Korchynsky" ( with the accent on the "o"). But one half of the village was Korchyn "noble", the Korchynskys had a coat of arms, while the other half of the village was Korchyn "bellowers", without a coat of arms. The life in the village was normal as one side was the same as the other, but they still had their separate churches and the parish priest celebrated mass in one church and the other.

In 1924 Rev. Bohdan moved to a different parish, to Zavadiv, only 7 kilometres from the city of Stryi. This made it easier for Rev. Bohdan to send his children to school, to high school and to Lviv to attend university was far easier to travel from Stryi than from the boarded up village of Korchyn.

The Zavadiv eparchy was enormous: three villages belonged to it - Zavadiv, Nezhukhiv and Holobutiv. In each village there was a church, so Mass was celebrated in sequence in each village, with a different church each week. To travel from Zavadiv to the other villages was a bit of a distance (several kilometres), and the parishioners dispatched a wagon and horses to pick up the priest. In the summer, with most of the young people at home, everyone walked as a large group to the neighbouring village to attend church, and also walked back home. Rev. Bohdan after celebrating Mass would spend some time with his parishioners in the church chancellery, so he could not sit down right away to have his lunch, and only drank a cup of coffee. For the young people there was the tradition of a small snack waiting for them every Sunday comprised of "servants" varenyky made from rough-ground flour (with sour cream and bacon). Thought their full plate of food would "disappear" , as if there had been nothing in it, nobody lacked an appetite when Rev. Bohdan finally completed his paper work of registering marriages, births and deaths, and everyone sat down to lunch.

The Zavadiv eparchy had a lot of land, and Rev. Bohdan was a good farmer. When his third son Yurij was growing up, he would increasingly help his father with the farming, and when he grew up and got married, he completely took over the farming and managed it very well and took care of everything, not only with the working of the grounds, but also with the other farm animals, the horses, the milking cows and poultry.

Near the entrance there was a nice, big orchard,with apples, pears, plums and mainly cherries (when they ripened, then almost everyday there were cherry varenykys for supper). the orcard produced a lot of friut, because Rev. Bohdan was an excellent beekeeper, having close to sixty hives near the orchard. The bees fertilized the fruit trees and the sown fields, and there was plenty of honey in the house, as much as you wanted.

The Okhrymovych home in Zavadiv reigned a peaceful, pleasant atmosphere. The home was full of people, mainly during the summer, when nobody was going to school or attending university. In addition to the nine children ( though someone was frequently missing, becaose he would be arrested by the Poles for their "wrong-sided" activities) and the wives and younger children of the two older sons, joining the family for lunch or dinner were also several of the nieces. During the summer, was also Roman Hankevych, Anna's nephew, and from the mid- 1930s also Rev. Bohdan's nephew, Julian Salisnjak. A long dinner table in the dining room, which sat all the clergy deanery members (around 20) at their council meetings, was always nearly full. Rev. Bohdan, the patriarch of the family clan, sat at the head of the table in front of the doors to the kitchen. On the left side sat the older children and their families, and on the right "the younger people", Markian's children and younger and the nieces and nephews. Anna seldomly sat at the table, always engaged in serving the meals. At the table there was usually an interesting discussion. Nobody every argued, not even raising one's voice, "agreement within the family" always dominated. An example for this tranquility was provided by the parents: Rev. Bohdan never scolded anyone, never yelled, did not raise his voice. If one of the children or grandchildren got into trouble, he lectured them in a calm and balanced voice, telling them how to, and how not to behave, and the guilty party was usually more contrite than in those families where the father would knock them around or yell at them. And Anna was a golden soul. She never to anyone or about anyone said anything that was minutely bad. She was anxious about everyone, worried about them, wanted to help. It is also worth mentioning that, that their children would often get into trouble for their activities in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), but neither their Father nor their Mother would ever question them about it, their activities were never even raised as an issue.

On September 12, 1939, when Poland under pressure from the German army began to unravel, the young men from Zavadiv tried to take over the municipal buildings in Stryi. They were not successful, and on the next day, on September 13, 1939, Zavadiv was visited by the Polish criminal (penal) expedition, the police and the K.O.P. (Border Defence Corps). En route, they captured the youngest son, Zenon, tortured him and eventually executed him. They also wanted to take into custody Rev. Bohdan, but the villagers were able to take him way from the parish home in time and hide him in a cave by the river Kolodnytsia, so that the Poles could not find him. While trying to find him, the Poles forced his daughter Martha to ride her bike across the village (they followed her in a car), and to call out at every house "Father! Father!" so that they could capture him. They burned to the ground all the parish buildings - the residence, stable, barn, granary, and everything that was inside the buildings, and they continued on to do their bloody work in the village. From his being in a damp and cold cave, Rev. Bohdan caught a cold, became gravely ill and never came back to full health. He died in Zavadiv on March 22, 1942 and was buried there. He was buried at the parish cemetary in the village of Zavadiv, Stryi district, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine. His grave (with photo) is listed in the Stryi Eparchy list of priests who died in the Stryi District of the Lviv Oblast.

Following the death of her husband, Anna for a while lived with her daughter Martha in Zavadiv - they suffered from poverty. When Martha married Rev. Ivan Syrotynsky, Anna moved with the young couple to the Rev. Ivan's parish church. When the war forced her older daughter, Marijka and her family to escape the war tempest to the West, Anna joined them and became a refugee. She died in Chicago, Illinois on March 18, 1955 and was buried there.

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Охримовичі в Завадові — це була скромна, багатодітна, священича родина, що прибула сюди з гір, з Корчина б. Сколього в 1921 р. Отець Богдан Охримович обняв парафію з трьома селами, Завадовом, Голобутовом і Нежуховом. Батько о. Богдана, о. Юліян Охримович був парохом села Сенечола б. Долини до 1908 року. А його батько був парохом Велдіжа і там помер. Також священиком був дід Юліяна Євстахій і прадід Григорій, обидва парохи Гущанок біля Тернополя.

О. Богдан Охримович мав п'ятьох братів та три сестри. Найстарший із них — Володимир був адвокатом у Львові, Роман і Остап були священиками, Любомир суддею, а наймолодший Юліян був публіцистом, автором книжки „Розвиток української національно-політичної думки"; був розстріляний большевиками в Києві в 1918 р. Сестри: Оля, Слава і Олена (Залізняк). Всі були українськими патріотами, а Володимир відомим громадським діячем. Сам о. Богдан був людиною доброти й вийняткової привітности до всіх. До людей і до природи. Коли приїздив до Нежухова на лекції релігії до школи, то все мав у руках квітку. Пам'ятаю, як мама одного разу післала мене за браму пошукати на возі квітку, що її о. парох загубив і безупину за нею оглядався. Я не могла знайти її. Зірвала на нашому городі гілку щойно розцвілого жасміну.

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Богдан Охримович: (1877—1942) ординований у духовний сан 1904 р., працював на парафіях у Козьовій (1904—1907), Голині біля Калуша (1905—1906), Тухлі (1906—1907), Корчині на Сколівщині (1907—1908), Завадові біля Стрия (1921—1942).