Jurate Krosniunas - a Life

Several of you asked me to write more about Jurate, so here it is.

Jurate was born in a refugee camp in West Germany. Her family is Lithuanian, but her mother spoke fluent German and was able to convince an SS officer in February 1945 that they were really “Volks Deutsche,” the ethnic Germans that had lived across eastern Europe for the previous two centuries. That got her mother and father and brother, at that time a toddler, on a ship that left Vilnius headed for Hamburg at the end of the Baltic campaign, just ahead of the Red Army. The refugee convoy the ship was in was attacked by the Red Air Force, but escaped while two others were sunk.

Jurate’s older sister, Ramunea was born in 1946, 14 months ahead of her in June 1947. During the three years they remained in the camp, her mother would take the American cigarette ration her father got and go out in the countryside, where she traded the cigarettes for food for the three kids.

In 1949, they received word they were being sponsored to come to America by the Lithuanian community in Chicago. They arrived in New York in the spring of 1950, aboard a troopship. Jurate often talked about how her first view of America was literally seeing the Lady in the Harbor though a porthole. At age 3 it was one of her first solid memories.

They were poor and life was hard at first in Chicago. Her younger sister was born there that fall of 1950. For the first 5 years, they lived in a basement on the South Side, and Jurate had a closet for a bedroom. I think now about her lifelong problem with letting go of things - which really was a problem - and see now that it came from the many times she lost things without having control over that. There were other things that happened to her growing up that shouldn’t happen to any young girl, and they too had their later effect. With 20/10 hindsight, I see that too often I managed to channel Anne (“Mommie Dearest”) despite my desire never to; she was always able to find fault with people and turn a problem into a moral failure. Nobody likes that. I didn’t, and neither did Jurate. I think I atoned for that over her final years. I just have to keep my awareness up, that Anne’s stuff doesn’t sneak back.

The family eventually got a house where the children had their own rooms, and Jurate grew up on the Chicago South Side, not far from the Museum of Science and Industry, but not in the “good part” of that neighborhood. When she was in high school she turned away from the Catholic Church and graduated from public school.

Being an artistic, creative type, she naturally went to the University of Chicago and got a BA in mathematics. During that time she got married - ten years that turned her off of further involvement with the institution.

While she was in school, she also became involved with the Friends of Jane, as a low-level person, one who went and got the women they were helping and taking them to where they received care. Choice was her lifelong political commitment. Here in Los Angeles, she took part in several clinic defenses against Operation Rescue. I know last summer, when Roe was overturned, was hard for her - she might not have fully comprehended everything else that was happening, but she saw that for what it was, harm to her life’s work.

She came out to Los Angeles in 1978, and eventually went to Otis College of Art and Design here, getting an MFA in painting in the mid-80s. She was talented, but like too many creative people, she wasn’t certain of that and feared failure enough that she didn’t risk enough to get success, though gave her art to friends. Creative people together will be competitive no matter that their expression differs, and I think that the fact I was doing what she wished she was underlay some of our argument. Regardless, her support of my efforts, and her suggestion that I turn away from writing what I no longer liked, merely for money, and take up writing what I did like, is why you all know me today.

She worked for ten years at ABC as a teleprompter operator; for five of those she was Diane Sawyer’s teleprompter operator, before @#$$##@!! Disney bought ABC in 1995 and laid off half the staff, including her. She then turned to doing that work in advertising here. She managed to find opportunities to do it for entertainers on cruise ships and was able to exercise her lifelong love of travel with that work. The next year we met.

Jurate was always curious about things. She could watch Masterpiece Mysteries on PBS and always figure out whodunnit from the clues given in the show. She loved her kitties and they loved her; I’m sure they were all there to greet her when she arrived at the unknown land beyond the sunset.

Roscoe - the abandoned kitten Jurate raised, feeding him every two hours fir six weeks.

I’ve found that there is a difference between the departure of a family member and that of a life partner. The family member - no matter how much loved - was always there. The life partner was chosen; and there were choices after that to affirm the choice in the face of difficulties and stick around. It makes the space that’s left behind different.

I think I am a better person than I was 27 years ago this March 9, for the choice I made and the choices I made after.

The photo below is the last Halloween she celebrated, in 2019 before the pandemic and the accident. She always liked to create a costume and dress up for the kids who came by.

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