Volodymyr Kedrowsky was a military officer, political activist, diplomat, writer, and radio broadcaster who for part of his life served as co-editor of the Svoboda newspaper and made his home in Metuchen, NJ His second wife Katherine Schutock (Shattuck) was a Ukrainian-American who was involved in scouting and Ukrainian American women’s organizations. She was a founding member of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America (Soiuz Ukrainok Ameryky).
V. Kedrowsky was born in Kherson in 1890 into a family that had considerable land holdings along the Inhul and Inhulets rivers. As a young man, he was influenced by the Ukrainian Socialist Revolutionary Party, and was active in Ukrainophile revolutionary youth groups in Kherson, which (among other things) staged performances of Ukrainian plays as propaganda campaigns among the Ukrainian peasantry. He studied at the Imperial Novorossiya University in Odesa from 1907 to 1911, obtaining a degree in statistics and economics. After graduating, Kedrowsky married fellow Kherson native Marta Odarik.
He worked at the Statistical Division of the Kherson Zemstvo (local government) until the outbreak of World War I, when he was drafted into the Imperial Russian Army, in which he served as an officer. In 1917 he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Military Affairs for the Ukrainian People’s Republic. He resigned in protest of the entry of German troops into Ukraine under the “Hetmanate” goverment of Pavlo Skoropadskyi and returned to the Kherson Zemstvo. After the fall of the Hetmanate, he was appointed by the succeeding Directorate as Chief of Mobilization and Quartermaster General for the army. In early 1919 he was the military attaché of the UNR to the Ottoman Empire. In December 1919 he began a string of diplomatic assignments as UNR ambassador to Latvia, Estonia and Finland. In 1920 he was a UNR delegate at the Russian-Polish peace negotiations that lead to the Treaty of Riga, and in 1921 was a special military representative of the Directorate and personal representative of Symon Petliura to the Turkish government.
After the Bolshevik takover of Ukraine, he and his wife settled in Baden, Austria, and then immigrated to the United States in December 1923. He was active in Ukrainian American organizations, served as Treasurer for the American Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the US, and was co-editor of Svoboda from 1926 to 1933. In 1932, his wife Marta died and he married Katherine Schutock. In the 1950-1951 time period he was involved in the negotiations that led to the purchase of Fredrick Rossman’s farm in Somerset/S. Bound Brook by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, the property that would form the nucleus of the Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolia Center. From 1955 to 1963 he worked for the United States Department of State and served as the chief of the Ukrainian Service of the Voice of America, where he was involved in the writing of the programs as well as an on-air reader. He died in Metuchen in 1970. Throughout his career, he wrote articles on political, military, and historical topics.
Katherine Schutock Kedrowsky was born in 1904 in New York City to a Ukrainian family originating from Bukovina. She was a graduate of City College. Having been active in Girl Scouting since her school days. she organized the first Ukrainian Girl Scout troops at Ukrainian American churches and settlement houses. She was a charter member and the first treasurer of the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America.