Little Cullenstown native Julie Kurylo travelled the world
Many people in Wexford were saddened to learn of the death of Julie Kurylo (nee Walsh) of Cornmarket, Wexford who passed away on June 26.
Born in Little Cullenstown in 1930 Julie enjoyed a happy childhood as the third eldest of seven children of Mona Forde, head teacher in the local national school and her husband Michael Walsh, a poet and journalist from Westmeath who fostered in her a love of the Catholic faith, literature and poetry.
After primary school in Little Cullenstown, Julie attended secondary school as a boarder in the Loreto and at the age of 16, she joined the Missionary Sisters, moving to England to train as a nurse before travelling to Africa to work in hospitals.
Julie spent 23 years nursing and running hospitals in Zambia and Zimbabwe, then Northern and Southern Rhodesia, learning Silozi, the language of Barotseland where one of the hospitals was located.
As a hospital matron, she participated in the Zambian Independence celebrations in 1964, meeting many of the African leaders, including Kenneth Kaunda, Haile Selasse and even Idi Amin.
Later, she was asked to go to Aman in Jordan in the Middle East to run an ante-natal and infant welfare clinic in a refugee camps for Palestinians who had been evicted from the West Band.
For this four-year posting which was organised by the American Pontifical Mission for Palestine, she learned Arabic which was the only language the refugees wanted to speak.
Julie decided to leave the Missionary Sisters and made her way to England where she joined a nursing agency, her early training in an NHS hospital in Guildford standing as a good recommendation. It was in London that she met Mykolo Kurylo, an engineer who had fled the Ukraine as a teenager during the 2nd World War.
They were married in the Ukrainian Cathedral in Mayfair and continued to live and work in London.
Mykolo sadly died in 1986 and though he had never returned to the Ukraine, Julie decided to make the trip herself in his honour after the fall of communism in 1989. She travelled with a cousin of Mykolo and his Italian wife. They were on the first plane that travelled from England to the Ukraine which was full of people going home for the first time in years.
Julie stayed wuith Mykolo’s family in the small village of Buchach and on her return to London, decided to start learning Ukrainian. The following year, she brough Mykolo’s brother Sefat and his wife Mainka to London and Wexford for a holiday.
Julie returned to the Ukraine on several occasions, getting to know the extended family. She grew to love the Ukraine and its hardworking and resourceful people.
Julie returned to Wexford and settled into an apartment in Cornmarket but she continued to take up agency nursing in London and loved to travel especially on pilgrimage to religious locations.
She promoted the poetry of her late brother John Francis Walsh who followed in the footsteps of his father, a writer of poetry and prose who died from pneumonia when he was only 41. Julie’s mother Mona, formerly of St. Patrick’s Square, Wexford, was also a keen writer.
Julie published a book of her brother’s poems and read some of his work at readings in the town.
Julie is survived by her sisters Mary and Olive, her nieces and nephews and extended family and many friends. She was predeceased by her husband Mykolo and her siblings, Paddy, John, Alice and Margaret.
Her funeral took place in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Rowe Street, followed by burial in St. Ibar’s Cemetery, C rosstown.