FREDERICKTOWN – Throughout the fall of 2021, Fredericktown resident Albina Ramey tried to convince her mother to leave their home country of Ukraine. When Russian troops invaded and started bombing Ukraine at the end of February, Ramey made another plea.
“She refused,” Ramey said, “and I know why, because it’s her life there.”
Her mother, 83, remains in central Ukraine amid the ongoing conflict. Ramey reminds her mother via phone calls to place pillows against her windows to prevent shrapnel and glass from shattering inward in case of an attack and to stock up on essentials, such as canned food and medicine.
“You never know how events can turn around,” Ramey said. “War is not over. Sirens are sounding.”
Ramey’s mother, aunt and several cousins still reside in her hometown of Kropyvnytskyi, which so far has been spared from Russian invasion and bombings, but is still impacted by the proximity of war.
Ramey was born in Kropyvnytskyi in 1971. The city is home to about 200,000 people and Ramey said it has a big-city feel. Major industry in the area includes the production of agricultural machinery.
The city adapted to conflict quickly this winter, to Ramey’s knowledge. Her mother and relatives have informed her that they turned basements into shelters overnight, established security teams to protect the city’s borders and launched efforts to provide humanitarian aid and weapons to those on the frontlines, who Ramey refers to as warriors.
While Ramey is physically separated from her family and home country by about 5,000 miles, the connection is ever present.
“It doesn’t matter how many years I’ve lived here, it’s still attached to me,” Ramey said.
Feb. 24, 2022
Ramey found out Russian troops invaded Ukraine and began artillery attacks the morning of Feb. 24 by seeing it on the news, while at work as a surgical technician at Ohio Health Mansfield Hospital.
Before daybreak in Ukraine, Russian forces started attacking from several fronts and explosions were reported in several major cities.
Ramey immediately called her mother.
“We knew it was coming, but nobody believed, truly,” she explained.
Ramey got in touch with her mother quickly to confirm her safety. Now, as Ramey hears information from her former neighbors and relatives about increasing difficulties with day-to-day travel and security, she said her mother is clinging to a waning sense of normalcy.
“The sirens are sounding and my neighbor says ‘Well, your mom is just walking with the dog on the street,’” Ramey said. “I was shocked. I was like ‘oh mom.’ She says, ‘it’s my time to walk on the street with my dog. She needs to go pee.’
“It’s just so sad and funny and not funny at all. I can’t even describe what to think about all this.”
Ramey’s early life
Ramey has long navigated between Ukraine and Russia.
As Ramey had transitioned from childhood to young adulthood, Ukraine transitioned from a Russian territory to an independent country. Ukraine emerged as an independent country around the time Ramey was finishing high school.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union, dissolved on Dec. 25, 1991, and Ukraine became part of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Ramey recalls her upbringing as being dominated by competition and structure.
“It’s kind of inevitable for all kids of the Soviet Union,” she said.
Her young adulthood, the late Soviet period and the beginning of independence, was marked by a strained economy.
“It was harsh times for all Ukrainians because all communications with Russia were being broken,” she said. “It kind of happened sudden — suddenly you have no food on the shelves and you’re buying everything with the cards, they gave you food cards.”
Ramey worked for a construction company, which ended up shutting down due to the trying economic conditions, so she took any work available — which ended up being at a local hospital.
“I became the archive person who collected the medical records and stored them in a nuclear bombshell,” Ramey said.
The divide, or rather the connection, between Russia and Ukraine is also steeped in her personal life.
Ramey’s brother moved from her hometown to Russia in the 1980s to attend a military academy focused on medical training. Her brother has lived in Russia ever since.
“Now, it’s kind of complicated for me because I’ve got relatives all over the world,” Ramey said. “Saying divide Russians and divide Ukrainians, it just doesn’t work.”
Having family in both Ukraine and Russia is not unique to her, she explained. Many people she knows from Ukraine have family on both sides of the border, which stems from the countries’ interwoven histories.
This is shown overtly through language. Ramey grew up speaking a combination of Russian and Ukrainian.
“No pure speaker of Russian is going to understand and no pure speaking Ukrainian is going to understand because it’s a great combination,” Ramey said.
While Ukraine has moved in and out of Russian control, its history is also intertwined with countries, ethnicities and religions extending before the creation of the Soviet Union.
Ramey described Ukraine as a “true melting pot.”
As a precursor to the current war, Vladimir Putin published an essay called “On The Historical Unity Of Russia And Ukraine” in July 2021 denying Ukrainian sovereignty, a tactic he has previously used to justify the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and continues to use to justify the ongoing conflict.
Ramey’s transition to the United States
Ramey immigrated to the U.S for love.
She and her now-husband of more than 20 years, Wayne Ramey, met through an international dating program. He traveled to Ukraine to meet her in-person after exchanging letters, which they each had to translate, for six months. He proposed on that same trip.
“It just fell in place,” Ramey said.
She arrived in Fredericktown, Ohio, in November 1998, along with her daughter from a previous marriage, Marina, who was six years old at the time.
Ramey knew only a handful of words in English when she arrived, joking that the few she knew would not be appropriate to share. She worked to learn English bit by bit, by taking General Educational Development courses at the Fredericktown library and practicing with her husband.
A new language had not been the only aspect of life she had to adapt to.
She switched to calculating distance in miles, rather than kilometers. She shifted from using 24-hour time (or military time) to 12-hour time in the U.S.
“It’s Fahrenheight here, not Celsius, so my first chicken was undercooked,” she said.
However, she has never adjusted to macaroni and cheese, she said with a laugh.
Ramey received a surgical technician degree from Central Ohio Technical College in 2012. She worked in labor and delivery for 13 years before taking on her latest role at Ohio Health in Mansfield. After moving to the U.S., Ramey and her husband also had a daughter, Krystal, who is now 21 and a student at COTC.
Ramey’s latest undertaking has been another feat of her ability to adapt.
She published her first book in 2020 in English, a children’s book titled “Maya in the Nimbus Valley,” which she plans to turn into a series. She is currently working on both the second and third books.
“It started because I’d had difficulty learning to write in English,” she said, explaining the ability to read and comprehend text in English came much easier.
Working on books has challenged her to hone her writing skills, she said, but it has also given her a means to combine her two worlds.
“Maya in the Nimbus Valley” is an allegorical story that incorporates lessons she has learned through her time working in labor and delivery with the Slavic fairy tales of her upbringing. The story follows Maya, who is born with scoliosis, as adventures with the help of folklore figures to connect with her mother who is beyond the earthly domain.
Since Ramey immigrated to the U.S., she has visited Ukraine a handful of times, specifically to introduce her children to the lifestyle, foods and culture of her home country.
But she also weaves components of her culture into her life in Fredericktown, through actions such as cooking and sharing Ukrainian meals, including borscht, a sour soup, or blini, crepes.
“I’m very adaptable,” she said. “It’s probably my gypsy soul.”
