With deep shock, family, friends and colleagues of Marta Kolomayets, former Kyiv correspondent and Kyiv Bureau chief of The Ukrainian Weekly, received news of her passing on Sunday, August 16, in her home near Kyiv. On behalf of the Ukrainian National Association’s General Assembly and the thousands of UNA members who waited each week to read Marta’s reports and columns, allow me to express our condolences to the many who loved Marta dearly.

I write here not only as a member of the UNA General Assembly, but also as a colleague of Marta. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, Marta and I crossed paths in Washington, Rome and New York City, and worked side-by-side with journalists in Ukraine. We were together during the 1988 Millennium of Ukrainian Christianity events in Rome – I as a member of the Ukrainian Catholic Church’s media team organized by Bishop Basil Losten and Sonya (Hlutkowsky) Soutus, Marta as a correspondent for The Ukrainian Weekly. It was then that I first witnessed both Marta’s strength of character and her skills as an intrepid reporter.

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