‘Sisters’ from Ukraine and Corvallis reconnect in wartime

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Evelyn Tokar had imagined what it might feel like to reunite with Julianna Betjemann after 29 years. As she walked through the airport with her husband, Victor, and her two sons, Oliver and David, she was scared, exhilarated and unsure what to expect.

But when she finally laid eyes on Julianna, sitting and waiting for the family’s arrival, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

“When I saw Julianna,” Evelyn said, “I understood that I am home.”

It was the first time they’d been together since 1996, and in the interim years everything had changed. Russia had invaded Ukraine, Evelyn’s home country, and remaining there no longer felt safe for her family.

Luckily, she had Julianna, her “sister” from an exchange program between Corvallis, Oregon, and the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod in which they’d participated when they were both 16 years old.

Their connection had been instantaneous, a bond Evelyn likened to that of a “soulmate.”

They lost touch a few years after their program ended, but they reconnected several years ago and began to stay in contact more regularly as the conflict in Ukraine escalated. Julianna helped Evelyn get her family to Corvallis, where they arrived in October through the federal Uniting for Ukraine program.

Since then, Evelyn has received what she called “unbelievable” support. And she feels comfortable in Corvallis, a place that she said shares similarities with her home city.

Corvallis and Uzhhorod are “sister cities,” an association that occurs when two geographically distant cities are linked for the purposes of social and cultural exchange. Since 2022, this linkage has become more than a source of cultural enrichment – it’s become a humanitarian necessity, and a safety net for people like Evelyn who no longer feel safe in Ukraine.

“Sometimes I hear some sounds which remind me of the air raid alarms. For a few seconds, I just pause,” she said. “And then, ‘Oh, no. I’m here. It can’t be that.’ ”

‘I have a sister now’

Looking back to 1996, Julianna’s favorite memory from Uzhhorod is walking along the river embankment. The Uzh River flows through the city, and beside it is a tree-lined path proliferated with benches. Elderly folks would stroll the path, young parents would push strollers and teenagers like herself would visit the embankment to see and be seen or to meet up with friends.

Julianna was one of five kids from Corvallis and Philomath who went to Uzhhorod as part of the Sister Cities Youth Exchange. They spent two weeks there, exploring and completing volunteer projects, while staying with host sisters and host families.

Julianna remembered feeling lucky to be paired with Evelyn.

“She’s an only child. I only had brothers,” Julianna said. “So it was really special for us to feel like, ‘Oh, my God, I have a sister now.’ ”

When the two weeks were over, the Uzhhorod host sisters came to Oregon for four weeks. A July 11, 1996 article from the Gazette-Times quoted Julianna as saying: “It’s really nice to be home. Home smells good and it feels right. Everything feels so normal again. But I hate to think that I might never be in Ukraine again.”

After the program ended, Julianna and Evelyn wrote letters to each other for three years, but they lost touch in their early 2000s.

Then, several years ago, Julianna stumbled upon a Facebook friend request from Evelyn she had somehow missed a year or more before.

She and Evelyn reconnected over the social media platform, and Julianna learned they both had sons, and that Evelyn had married the man she’d been dating when she and Julianna were together in Uzhhorod.

After the invasion, she said, the two began to stay in touch more frequently.

In the beginning, Evelyn said, leaving the country wasn’t on her mind. Her husband, Victor, served in the Ukrainian military for more than a year before being medically discharged.

It was the things he saw during his time in the service that planted the seed.

Their oldest son, David, was about to turn 18, after which point he wouldn’t be able to leave the country due to martial law. And Victor didn’t even want to think about David enlisting.

That’s when they heard about the program Uniting for Ukraine, a federal pathway for Ukrainian citizens to stay temporarily in the U.S. on a two-year period of parole. Participating Ukrainians must have a supporter in the U.S. who agrees to provide them with financial assistance throughout their stay in the country.

Julianna was happy to be their sponsor, and the Tokar family arrived in Oregon on David’s 18th birthday.

A second home

The generosity preceding and since the Tokars’ arrival, Julianna said, has been “incredible.”

A couple in the community offered the family a house they were refreshing after previous tenants passed through, Julianna said, and gave the Tokars the first two months rent-free. They live there still.

Brothers Hauling, a Corvallis estate sale, property clean-up and hauling service, furnished the place free of charge.

“We came to a house that was already a home,” Evelyn said. “Everything was here, everything we needed.”

One social touchstone they’ve come to rely on is Pete Bober and his wife, Alice. Pete is a retired community college administrator who works with Ukraine and its people through Zonta International, and previously through the Corvallis Sister Cities Association. He has family ties to Ukraine, as his grandparents immigrated from there.

Pete and Alice met the Tokars at a pizza party with some other Ukrainian families, and they really hit it off. Since then, the Bobers have been providing the family with advice and social support. Alice “fell in love” with Evelyn, Pete said, and provided her with some work as the family makes ends meet.

He’s also connected with another Ukrainian family that came to Corvallis via Uniting for Ukraine. Lada Endreson originally spent her junior year at Corvallis High School as an exchange student, and Pete was her “uncle” – a second family she could stay with to give her host family a little respite.

Lada was living in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, just before the war began. But she could see the writing on the wall, so she, her husband and her young son left for her hometown of Uzhhorod 10 days before the invasion. On Feb. 24, 2022, she woke up to a message from her neighbor saying that missiles were flying over her home in Kyiv.

Her son, now 7, was meant to start school in Uzhhorod, but because of regular air sirens and alerts, teachers were supposed to take their students to shelters, disrupting the learning process, Lada said. They applied for Uniting for Ukraine, waited for an answer and ultimately arrived in Corvallis in August, sponsored by Lada’s host mother.

“We were wrapped in a warm blanket of love and support,” Lada said. “Sometimes my husband would ask, ‘Where’s the catch?’ ”

Lada found a job as a patient coordinator at a Eugene dental clinic. Her husband is still looking for work. Her son is in second grade and “in love with school,” she said – on the weekends, he just wants it to be Monday again.

And she’s still in contact with her host family daily, she said.

Evelyn said it doesn’t feel like her family is out of place in Corvallis – it feels like they are at home.

“I’m not sure if it would be the same in some other place,” she said. “People are so friendly here.”

Promoting peace

According to Sister Cities International, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower established sister cities in 1956 as a way to promote peace between communities.

“President Eisenhower reasoned that people from different cultures could understand, appreciate and celebrate their differences while building partnerships that would lessen the chance of new conflicts,” the Sister Cities website reads.

In 1989, Corvallis citizens identified Uzhhorod as the best possible option for a new sister city relationship, which was endorsed by the City Council. The Corvallis Sister Cities Association was granted formal nonprofit status in 1991.

In 2005, the council approved a second sister city relationship between Corvallis and Gondar, Ethiopia.

According to the CSCA Uzhhorod Council Chair Carol Trueba, the purpose of the relationship between Corvallis and Uzhhorod is to make connections and share ideas. But since Russia invaded Ukraine, the association has leaned more into the humanitarian aspect of the sisterhood.

Since the invasion, Trueba said, CSCA has put together a fund at Citizens Bank and began collecting money. It’s offered legal assistance through the Uzhhorod National University to help people assemble their papers. And it’s provided beds and bedding, stoves, microwaves and more to local shelters – “anything that would make life livable,” Trueba said.

According to Pete, the Corvallis/Uzhhorod relationship was founded on the basis of peace and justice. Even outside of wartime, this idea of peace is promoted through bringing people together and learning from each other.

“Where that really happens is, I think it’s when you’ve done all the tours, you’ve taken them up to Newport, you come back,” he said. “You’re having dinner together at night. You’re learning all this stuff about each other and all the personal relationships that then support the sister city relationship.”

Julianna and Evelyn experienced this connection and mutual learning during their exchange in 1996.

When Julianna hung out with Ukrainian girls her age, they’d be laughing about something, she said, and someone else would translate it into English. “I realized they were laughing about the same things I would have been laughing about at home,” she said, “the same things my friends and I laughed about.”

“It seems like they came from another part of the earth and have to be very different,” Evelyn said in a later interview. “But they are the same like us and we are the same like them.”

Julianna said that reuniting with Evelyn in person was “wild,” to once again see the mannerisms she’d possessed since they were 16 years old.

“She remembered things about me that I’d forgotten about myself,” Julianna said. “A lot of time has passed, but there was the intimacy and care still there.”

‘My homeland’

Evelyn isn’t sure how this will all end. For the kids, she thinks, it will be smarter to remain in the U.S. But who knows what will happen, she said.

According to Kseniia Hnatovska, a Ukrainian Navigator with Salem for Refugees (which also serves Ukrainians in Corvallis), about 500 people have come to Albany, Salem and Corvallis via Uniting for Ukraine, the majority to Salem.

Officially, Uniting for Ukraine is currently open, Hnatovska said, although applications received since September or October are still pending. Re-parole applications, which allow for eligible Ukrainian citizens to apply to continue living in the U.S. after their initial two-year period expires, are in a similar boat.

And it’s not totally clear how the Trump administration will impact the program as a whole – a Jan. 20 executive order effectively froze all new applications.

“A lot of people, unfortunately, are stressed,” Hnatovska said.

Lada is worried about what might change under Donald Trump’s presidency, and hopes to soon have clarity.

“That will be a dream, if they continue this option of re-parole,” she said. “Because the war isn’t over.”

Despite her desire to stay in the U.S., Evelyn misses Ukraine – “it is my homeland,” she said. If not for the Russian invasion, she would’ve stayed in Uzhhorod and continued her life with her family.

“Maybe we would’ve come to the U.S. someday, but by our own wish,” she said. “This decision was made by force.”

But she’s proud of herself, her husband and her children for being brave and taking such a big step. Right now, she is teaching Hungarian online, a carry-over from her work back in Ukraine.

Victor and David just completed temporary jobs at Western Pulp Products Co. in Corvallis, and David found himself a new role working with cars in Albany. Victor is currently looking for his next gig, and Oliver is attending Adams Elementary School.

“I have a lot of admiration for Victor and Evelyn,” Pete said. There are a lot of barriers to success for a Ukrainian immigrant coming to Corvallis, he said – credentials don’t translate, there’s a lack of access to traditional foods and no Greek Catholic church close by.

But in this case, the Tokars – and Endreson’s family – have really strong support, thanks to the connections they made many years ago.

“They don’t view these people as their friends,” Pete said. “They view them as their family.”