Why I traveled 4,700 miles from Chicago to Lithuania

Why Lithuania?

That’s the first thing my editor asked when I proposed applying for a Pulitzer Center grant for journalists to report international stories. The center’s Richard C. Longworth Media Fellowships help journalists write about global issues impacting Chicago and Midwestern readers.

Chicago has huge ties to the tiny nation northeast of Poland and across the Baltic Sea from Sweden. About 60,000 Lithuanian Americans live in the Chicago area.

Upton Sinclair’s famous socialist novel “The Jungle” made me forever question eating sausage. Its protagonist, the exploited immigrant Jurgis Rudkus, who chased the American dream in Chicago, was Lithuanian.

Chicago has other famous Lithuanians: Valdas Adamkus, who became president of Lithuania twice; U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin and Matas Buzelis, the Bulls star who played for Lituanica Athletic Club in Lemont as a kid.

Lithuania is relevant for other reasons, too.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, many in the U.S. have worried about what would happen if Russian President Vladimir Putin tried attacking a European NATO country. Lithuania, a NATO member since 2004, is a prime target; it’s sandwiched between Russia’s Kaliningrad and Putin’s ally Belarus.

Meanwhile, Lithuanians are known for sticking their necks out for democracy. Chicagoans helped with that when the country pushed for independence, which we should remember as America celebrates its 250th anniversary.

But there was another reason I wanted to go.

My late mother was born in Lithuania. She fled as a child when the Soviet reoccupation began in 1944.

My cellphone’s screensaver is a photo of my mom as a baby, sitting on an unused beehive box (honey is big in Lithuania) with her smiling dad standing next to her.

So, with the blessing of the Chicago Sun-Times, I packed my bags and set off in April with Sun-Times photojournalist and editor Ashlee Rezin.

This was my third trip to Lithuania. I have cousins there, and I’ve been learning the language, though almost one-third of Lithuanians speak English.

I was amazed by the generosity of Lithuanians I met. They spent hours talking to me about democracy, defense, history, economics, Adamkus’ legacy and how their small country produces so many big basketball stars.

Maybe their generosity was because American media too often ignores this nation of just 2.8 million people.

We met Adamkus, who is turning 100 in November, at his elegant home in the woods on the edge of the capital, Vilnius. The former president had been the regional U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator in Chicago. He talked about his favorite Chicago newspapers (I gave him a Sun-Times tote bag) and wanted to know how the Deep Tunnel was faring.

I also interviewed the foreign minister, economics minister, several parliamentarians, including a signer of the 1990 independence declaration, academics, local officials, business leaders, lawyers, journalists and artists.

I spoke with ordinary people such as a driving instructor, a civics teacher, flea market sellers and high school and college students. More than 50 people shared their perspectives.

I learned Lithuanians are in a “dangerous neighborhood,” meaning where they sit geographically.

Even though they prepare for the worst, they’re proud to live in a country experiencing economic growth, where young people were deemed the “world’s happiest.”

In addition to Vilnius, our reporting took us to Kaunas, the second largest city and the heart of Lithuanian basketball; Klaipėda on the Baltic Sea; the town of Kybartai, bordering Kaliningrad; a Sunday flea market in Kalvarija, a short drive from the Suwalki Gap; Trakai, home of Lithuania’s most picturesque castle; and the town of Kazlų Rūda, deep in the pine forests.

One Sunday morning, we were driving on the back roads of southwest Lithuania with our translator, Karolis Vyšniauskas.

Vyšniauskas was planning to turn left, heading for Kalvarija, when the road got rough, so we went straight.

About 100 yards later, I yelled, “Stop!”

A road sign read “Pajevonys,” a name that seemed vaguely familiar. I flipped through my grandparents’ memoirs, which I’d packed with my reporting notes.

My hunch was right. They lived in Pajevonys when my mom was a baby. My grandparents were teachers, and they frequently moved to different towns for jobs.

Within a few years, they would flee Lithuania. Theirs is a story shared by many in the diaspora: They were “displaced persons” in camps in Germany at the end of World War II. My mom spent her childhood in Germany, then won a college scholarship to study in America and later became a naturalized American citizen.

Vyšniauskas pulled over, and I hopped out of the car to touch the sign.

We drove into the village, population 575, and walked beside a large hill where the Pajevonys Cemetery and Church of St. John the Baptist stand. I learned Pajevonys dates to 1524, and according to local legend, a queen killed a king on the hill with a stone from her sling.

I imagined my grandparents walking the same path with their baby daughter Rūta, looking up at the hill, not realizing in five years they’d be refugees in a foreign country.

Lithuania has changed immeasurably since those days.

It was time to move on, meet more people and bring home more stories.