History did not record what the weather was like on March 25, 1634 when Maryland’s colonists landed at St. Clement’s Island. But it is well worth noting 380 years later that the weather was very un-Spring like. As St. Mary’s County Commissioner Francis “Jack” Russell observed earlier at a commissioners’ meeting, the ceremony was about to take place at “Inclement Island.”
The weather scooted everyone inside the St. Clement’s Island Museum for the annual ceremony. It featured a poignant talk by Patuxent River Naval Air Station Commanding Officer Capt. Ben Skevchuk, who used the occasion to draw a comparison between his family’s history and the Maryland Day story.
The base commander said of the settlers who came to Maryland: “It was about spirit and freedom.” He then talked about his grandfather in the Ukraine attempting to come to grips with the church elders’ idea that the bible was too difficult for the common people to understand. Instead the parishioners were taught the bible’s story in an ancient language that was difficult for them to understand.
The question his grandfather asked, as did Maryland’s colonists, Shevchuk said, was: “What are you willing to do for your freedom.
The captain’s grandfather began reading the bible. When he sought the blessing of his wife, she responded, “You are drinking less and behaving better.”
Capt. Shevchuk’s ancestors lived in what was called the breadbasket of Europe. Family history is not clear in what form his grandfather heard the message from God, but it was a clear message: “You will plant this field but you will not harvest it.”
The family and about 40 others prepared to escape the approaching Russian army and did so just in the nick of time. Their farms were seized and turned into collectives. Those refuges, not unlike the English men and women escaping religious persecution and servitude, set out on a journey that would lead his grandfather to the Philippines and his father to South America before coming to the United States.
What his family went through is now being played out again with Russia’s occupation of Crimea and the threats to his family’s homeland, the Ukraine.
Captain Shevchuk then read Father Andrews White’s words written as the colonists were entering a new world and a new life. The priest who said the first mass on St. Clement’s Island talked about how the settlers were befriended by the Wicomico Indians which enabled then to live peaceably. They would create a colony based on freedom of religion, including the historic enactment of
