Lindsay Ann (Rackauskas) Ross

Perhaps because Lithuania is a small country, it’s in the national character to want to explore every corner of the world. Fifth-generation Lithuanian-American Lindsay (Rackauskas) Ross of Springfield has followed her own wanderlust to Shanghai, China, where she works at the American Chamber of Commerce coordinating resources for American companies doing (or wanting to do) business there.

To date, Lindsay has spent nearly six years, post-college, living and working in the world’s most populous nation, first in marketing and business development in Shanghai, and then in public relations and marketing communications for a five-star international hotel in industrial city Guangzhou. In 2012, she returned to Shanghai, joining the growing community of expatriates attracted to what Lindsay describes as “the glittering, glamorous ‘It City” where everybody wants to be.”

Lindsay and her friend Eri outside the Forbidden City, Beijing

Living and working in the exotic Far East seems like a dream for any young person. But due to the required language and cultural background, it didn’t happen overnight for this Sacred Heart-Griffin graduate. Lindsay became interested in Mandarin language and Asian Studies programs during her sophomore year at Lake Forest College, after she went to China for three weeks on a study grant. The next year, she studied abroad for a full semester at Peking University, in Beijing. Altogether, she studied Mandarin for four years before moving to China in 2008.

Growing up in Springfield the daughter of pediatric dentist Mary Ann Rackauskas and the granddaughter of Helen (Sitki) and George Rackauskas, Lindsay remembers being brought up with several Lithuanian traditions. The Rackauskas clan used to unite for the traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve Kucios dinner. Lindsay remembers the oldest male in the family signing the cross in honey on the forehead of each family member, and the eldest female sprinkling poppy seeds outside to rid the household of bad luck—a tradition Lindsay has since learned may be of German origin, but which the family still practices each Christmas season. The Rackauskas-Sitki family also made Lithuanian straw ornaments for their Christmas tree.

Lindsay still observes one of her favorite Lithuanian Christmas traditions in China, where she makes vyritos, a whiskey-based hot drink with orange juice, cinnamon and other spices, including caraway seeds, for her expatriate friends. “I taught them all to say svekas (cheers),” Lindsay laughs.

Lindsay with her Lithuanian-American expatriate friend Julia Bakutis, of Maine

Her coal-mining great-grandfather “U.S. Mike” Rackauskas would be proud. (Lindsay is actually fifth-generation Lithuanian-American tracing back to her maternal great-great-grandparents through her Yezdauski-Sitki line, but fourth-generation through U.S. Mike.)

After writing about the Mack/Makarauskas fast food “dynasty,” I was reminded by Barbara Endzelis that there is another local Lithuanian-American family that’s almost as big with the initials “M.D.” as the Macks were with “Mc.”

John Kwedar, M.D., opthalmologist, Springfield Clinic

How many of you or your families were treated by deceased Springfield GP and surgeon Dr. Albert Kwedar, his deceased ophthalmologist brother Dr. Edward Kwedar, or Albert’s retired ophthalmologist son Dr. Stephen Kwedar? Do any of my readers currently see Edward’s son Dr. John Kwedar, a long-time ophthalmologist with Springfield Clinic?

Today I talked briefly to Kwedar family matriarch, Helen–Drs. Albert and Edward Kwedar’s 97-year-old sister–and Drs. Stephen’s and John’s aunt. Helen told me that she and Albert and Edward also had a sister, Anna, deceased.

The family got started in America when Helen’s father Thomas Kwedar immigrated from Lithuania, probably around the turn of the century. Helen said Thomas was 21 when he came to America, first to Pittsburgh, where he worked in a steel mill. He married Pennsylvania-born Lithuanian-American Victoria Shupenus, daughter of Anthony and Helen Zwinak Shupenus. After the steel mill where Thomas was working closed, he and Victoria moved to Springfield because of relatives here, and because of the availability of work in the local coal mines.

When frequent mine closures, especially for the entire summer every year (due to a lack of demand for heating coal), put too much pressure on the family’s finances, Thomas and Victoria put their heads together. They decided to buy a small farm near Pana that Thomas could work during the summers while he was idled by the mines, and where they could grow their own food and raise milking cows. Helen says it was called a “truck farm,” maybe because produce could be trucked to Springfield for sale. She says she was only two when Thomas, Victoria, Albert, Anna and she moved there in 1918. (Edward was not yet born.)

Helen also says her parents were diligent savers because they planned for all their children to go to college. Unfortunately, the Pana bank holding the family’s accounts failed after the 1929 stock market crash, when Helen was 13. Her two brothers somehow still managed to graduate from college and U of I medical school. Helen attended night school at Springfield College in Illinois.

Sister Anna has an interesting story, according to maternal cousin Jim Shupenus. He says “Anna was single and apparently a disbursement officer with the CIA in Washington, D.C. When she came to visit in Springfield, she was preceeded by the FBI, who interviewed any person she might talk or have contact with on her trip. Also, I was told by my parents that when there were air raid drills in Washington, a helicopter would go to CIA headquarters and she would board it (probably along with others).”

According to Edward’s son, Dr. John Kwedar, Dr. Albert was a classic GP of his era, working 80 hours a week and rarely seeing his family as he made house calls all over Sangamon County, setting broken bones and delivering babies–in between office hours, hospital rounds and performing emergency appendectomies and other types of surgery. John says Dr. Albert’s most cherished memories were of the two sets of triplets he delivered at home–all of whom survived. One set of triplets he delivered on a farm had to be placed in the family’s oven to keep warm.

Another interesting fact about Dr. Albert is that he secretly married his sweetheart Ruby, also of Pana, in Chicago while he was a resident at the U of I’s Chicago Medical Center in resident housing and she lived nearby. Ruby was accomplished in her own right and later served as president of the Illinois State Medical Society Auxiliary.

Dr. Albert’s son Stephen “re-activated” the Eye Department at Springfield Clinic (which had been dormant for eight years) when he joined the Clinic in 1972. A graduate of Northwestern University Medical School and residencies at the University of Oregon and Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, Dr. Stephen preferred practicing in a large multispecialty group.

He brought many new techniques to Springfield, including: intraocular lens implantation, phacoemulsification, trabeculectomy, and trabeculoplasty, photocoagulation of diabetic retinopathy and retinal holes, dacryocystorhinostomy, the YAG laser and laser iridectomy. Dr. Stephen also helped Springfield Clinic’s Eye Department found its Optometry section.

Dr. Albert’s son Michael, who died at 51, had a successful career as an administrator for the City of Springfield and the Illinois Dept. of Corrections and held advanced degrees in political science and public administration.

Dr. John’s father, Edward W. Kwedar, who taught at the SIU School of Medicine, died at 79 in 2011 at his home in Springfield. He was born on Thomas and Victoria’s farm near Pana in 1931. He had married Dorothy Lashmet in Evanston, IL in 1957.

Dr. John says ophthalmology appealed to the Kwedar M.D.s who followed in Dr. Albert’s footsteps due to the more predictable schedule and the fine motor skills involved in surgery on the eye. The Kwedar M.D. tradition continues with one of Dr. John’s daughters currently in medical school at the University of Missouri and another daughter in nursing.

golden rod, fuschia, flax

Though our father had been a subsistence farmer in Lithuania, he worked in a factory here in Springfield. Since he seemed pretty much finished with growing his own food by the time my five sisters and I came along, we never got to plant much growing up. So, how could I imagine that my next-younger sister, Cindy, a senior construction engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers in Sacramento, Calif., would become a self-taught master gardener?

Read on to learn about the fabulous gardening talent Cindy “transplanted” from Springfield to her own patch of bare earth not far from the banks of the Sacramento River.

lorapetulam, giant sequoia in background

From Cindy Baksys: I first got interested in gardening when we all got to choose a flower to grow in our backyard growing up, and I chose bachelors buttons. Also, the one time that we got to grow pumpkins was terrific. However, I did not do much growing until about 25 years ago, after my husband Jay and I built our new log house in a cornfield that was bare, so it was out of necessity that I started to plant. First, like most novices, it was just about flowers: plants that were evergreen and had the most blooms.

ruellia, lantana, petunia, crepe myrtle

As my interest grew, I started to plant things more suited to our semi-arid Mediterranean climate, which is the climate of the coastal and central valleys of California. Plants such as lavenders, sages, nandina, California fuschia, barberry, butterfly bush, teucrium–even camellias need little water. I often would notice and “recruit” plants from our travels. For example, I probably have 12 or more types of sage from Europe, California, Mexico, and Colorado.

hibiscus, blue plumbago

By now my interests go way beyond flowers or drought-tolerants. I like everything. I have a friend who is a botanist for the state of California, and he gives me oddball or native plants that are not common in the store like Mexican sage, Fred’s Red (a sage that he sort of discovered), some thorny shrub from Brazil, kat (the stuff they chew in the Middle East–died from frost, unfortunately), and romneya- a sensitive California native that I killed and want to try again. I have become a collector.

I no longer care if plants are evergreen. I like it all. I have especially come to love the native eastern hibiscus that I first saw in Springfield. Some of my other favorites are ruellia, California fuschia, and rosemary, though it’s hard to choose favorites because it depends on the season.

I also have a vegetable garden and I am still getting tomatoes this year. My Atlantic Giant pumpkin plant has two good pumpkins on it.

Cindy’s 2013 Atlantic Giant pumpkins

Like any long-time gardener who collects and experiments, I have killed a lot of things over the years, and have actually had a hard time with squash and pumpkins due to squash bugs every year.

I especially love working on my plants in the winter. The ground does not freeze here, and I have plans every year to move things that didn’t work out the year before. In California, winter is a very forgiving season and you don’t have to worry about killing anything.

One area of gardening that is drudgery is weeding. We get a very long growing season that starts in February, so lots of weeding. I also do not like pruning because I have too much of it to do.

Gardening is the one area of my life where I am a total optimist. Every year I have hope for a better garden!