Electronic telegraph..OT
ONCE the world's "littlest defector" and now the father of his own six-year-old son, Walter Polovchak has a special insight into the plight of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban castaway.
Two decades after Walter, then 12, jumped on his bike and ran away from his parents because they wanted to take him back to the Soviet Union, Mr Polovchak said there were cases in which freedom was more precious than family. "I'm all for parental rights, but do they have the right to force a child to live in a country where their freedom and their future is foreclosed?"
Mr Polovchak, an office manager, lives with his wife, Margaret, and son, Alec, in the Des Plaines suburb of Chicago. He is remembered for his 1980 pledge in broken English: "Never I go back." He and his parents had emigrated to Chicago in January 1980, but his father became homesick almost immediately and after six months decided to return to the Soviet Union.
Walter Polovchak fled to a cousin's house and was arrested two weeks later. He spent five and a half years in foster homes and appearing in court, often wearing a T-shirt that proclaimed "I'm happy to be in America", before being granted citizenship at 18. Although Elian is only six, lawyers for his Miami relatives consider the Polovchak case an important precedent.
Mr Polovchak said: "You're dealing with two minors. Like my father in the Eighties, Elian's is under pressure from a communist regime to make public demands for his son." Last month, Mr Polovchak flew to Miami to visit Elian in Little Havana. "He was very cool and not very receptive for the first 10 minutes. I could relate to that probably better than anybody. He was scared.
"I remember meeting strangers and you didn't know whether they were coming to help you or to take you away. Once it was translated that I had gone through the same thing, he warmed up quite a bit. Perhaps when all this is over he'll be able to come up and play with my son. I would love that."
For many, Mr Polovchak embodies the American dream. He knew only a few words of English at the age of 12, but now speaks with a heavy Chicago accent. A year ago, he bought a four-bedroomed, Cape Cod-style house and became a member of the Des Plaines Jaycees, or junior chamber of commerce. As he sat underneath a basketball hoop in his garden, Alec rushed out to greet him.
Mr Polovchak said: "Goodnight. Love you. Sleep well." Even a six-year-old, he said, was able to understand the basic differences between living in America and in a communist country. "Would it be more important that my son grew up in freedom than with me? Absolutely. I'd do whatever it takes to give my son the best life possible."
Mr Polovchak still remembers being entranced by America when he first arrived from the Ukraine. "I'd never seen so many lights in my life. I couldn't believe that literally every house had a car. It was like the difference between heaven and hell." Mr Polovchak said that once he had made his stand against his parents, he faced being placed in a psychiatric hospital if he had been forced to return to the Soviet Union.
He said: "It would be the same for Elian. He would be brainwashed." His own parents now realised they had made a mistake in going back to the Ukraine. He said: "They ultimately regret their decision although my father's a little bit too much of a macho man to admit it. I help them out financially quite a bit."
Mr Polovchak is not optimistic about Elian's chances of remaining in America. If he had been a few years younger he, too, might not have won the right to stay. |
