Does NATO Affect Israel In Any Way?

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

NATO has kept the peace in Europe

The first NATO Secretary General, Lord Ismay, said in 1949 that the goal was "to.keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.  It's creation can be seen as the primary school of thought called Atlanticism which stressed the importance of trans-Atlantic cooperation against an armed attack against any one of them in Europe or North America.  It would be an attack against all.   

At present, NATO (North Atlantic Alliance) has 28 members. In 1949, there were 12 founding members of the Alliance: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. 

The other member countries are: Greece and Turkey (1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982), the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia (2004), and Albania and Croatia (2009).

• Dialogue and cooperation with Ukraine started after the end of the Cold War, when newly independent Ukraine joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (1991) and the Partnership for Peace programme (1994).

NATO is presently weighing the job of sending  4 battalions in Eastern States to deter Russia.  Donald Trump would like to get rid of NATO because the USA pays most of its expenses and he thinks its rather outdated, now.  Trump's timing of getting rid of NATO is bad because Russia has been displaying "increasingly aggressive behavior that is challenging the international norms.  They are often in violation of international law.

The Baltic state of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined NATO in 2004.  They have asked for greater presence of the NATO Alliance because they fear a threat from Russia after it annexed the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine in 2014.  Maybe they saw something brewing back in 2004.
                                                                                 

The Connected Forces Initiative (CFI) aims to enhance the high level of interconnectedness and interoperability Allied forces have achieved on operations and with partners. CFI combines a comprehensive education, training, exercise and evaluation programme with the use of cutting-edge technology to ensure that Allied forces remain prepared to engage cooperatively in the future.NATO Naval Drills Began in Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean in 2014. 

NATO is weighing the decision to rotate 4 battalions of NATO  troops through the Eastern member states  which means 4,000 troops. They will come from the USA and its allies and will be sent to the Baltic states and to Poland.   It's their latest proposal to guard against the aggressive behavior of Russia.

This information came from the testifying of US Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 28, 2016.  He was there testifying on operations against the ISIS.  Carter is now on a 3 day trip to Germany.
                                                                             

Deputy Commanding General, US Army Europe and Commander, US Army NATO General Richard C Longo, right, shakes hands with Polish general Adam Joks, left, ...

The USA budgeted to boost military training and exercises and announced last month about deploying continuous rotations of US based armored brigade combat teams to Europe.

Army General Curtis Scaparrotti will take over as the next NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.  He will be succeeding US Air Force General Philip Breedlove.

NATO  is based on the North Atlantic Treaty signed back on April 4, 1949.  The member states have agreed to a mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.  The headquarters of NATO is in Haren, Brussels, Belgium, where the Supreme Allied Commander lives.  Belgium is one of 28 member states across North America and Europe.  Albania and Croatia are the newest who joined in April 2009.  22 more countries participate in their NATO's Paretnership for Peace program.  15 other countries are involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes.  The combined military spending of all NATO members is over 70% of the global total.  Members' defense spending is supposed to amount to 2% of the GDP (Gross domestic product (GDP) is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period).  Since the USA's GDP is probably the highest, they have been carrying the highest amount that goes into their treasury.                                                
                                                                  

Afghan security forces are dying at five times the rate of NATO soldiers as Taliban insurgents step up attacks ahead of the withdrawal of foreign troops in 2014, the latest figures show.

Here's a problem.  Only 5 member states of the 28 meet the defense spending goal.  They are Poland, USA, Great Britain, Greece and Estonia.  Overall, six countries are raising and six are cutting their military spending as a proportion GDP this year when compared with 2014, and the rest are staying the same.   Russia invaded and annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2014.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization spending is set to decrease by 1.5%, to roughly $893 billion.Some of these countries, including Latvia and Lithuania, are among those that increased their spending this year.  With USA officials, the military has for a long time found this financing problem a sore spot, so it hasn't been that Trump thought this one up all by himself out of the blue.  He got it from those he spoke to.  

U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James was in Brussels last week to confer with NATO officials, and she urged America’s allies to reverse the trend.
                                                                                

Israel is not a member of NATO.  "Israel might become a NATO member-state if its neighbours also joined.   Alternatively, Israel might become a NATO member-state if NATO somehow became an alliance aimed against the Arab and/or Muslim world. Failing those scenarios, Israeli membership is a non-starter.  There is no alliance group except the USA for Israel.  She stands pretty much alone against a large Arab alliance.  However, she is a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue of 7 States .  I'm glad to see her close neighbors of Egypt and Jordan standing with her.  
                                                                                 

NEGEV DESERT, Israel — U.S. Army Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, National Guard Bureau chief, meets Israeli Soldiers who were training in urban warfare techniques at the Israeli Defense Force’s National Center for Ground Training here Nov. 21, 2005. (U.S. Army photo by Master Sgt. Bob Haskell)

" Among NATO's partners are the Mediterranean Dialogue states, consisting of 7 countries:
Israel, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Mauritania and Morocco. There is constant and ongoing connection between Israel and NATO, and Israel is regarded a Major non NATO ally, alongside Australia, South Korea and Japan."

Once upon a time, there was another force that was supposed to be protecting Israel.  "After the Suez Crisis in 1956, the United Nations Emergency Force deployed in the Sinai Peninsula in order to serve as a buffer between Israel and Egypt.   But in 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser demanded that the U.N. forces leave - which they did immediately. Nasser then threatened Israel with annihilation. The Six-Day War followed soon after."   So you can't put 100% of your faith in these outside forces.  Sadly, the NATO forces didn't help  Crimea.  

By May 13, 2015, "NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added: "We are deeply concerned by statements of possible future stationing of nuclear weapons and development systems in Crimea."  Russia  had annexed Crimea in 2014 in a move that was widely condemned by the international community but was greeted as a great patriotic victory at home.

NATO also warned President Vladimir Putin to waste no time in implementing a fragile peace deal to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine, after the Russian strongman's meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday raised hopes of a slackening in tensions. 

The latest news in April 2016 is that  "NATO has moved to bolster its forces in its east European member states as a result of the Crimea-Russian fiasco.  Russia is widely accused of covertly backing the rebels who now control much of eastern Ukraine after a bloody armed conflict with the government in Kiev, "  and Ukraine is a NATO member.  "A national security paper was updated to say that NATO's recent build-up of military potential around Russia's borders constituted "violations of norms of international law".

"Tension between NATO and Russia, which both possess huge nuclear arsenals dating back to the Cold War, has clouded international relations since the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine following the peninsula's disputed referendum on self-determination." 

  
This thing is too big.  Trump will not be able to give it up.  It's standing for peace, even though they failed already when bucking Russia.  The problem is money.  Other's have to shell out their fair share.  Some are already shook up and are doing it.  The right words may have been enough already  spoken by Trump in thinking that the biggest pockets are thinking of pulling out. 

On the other hand, can or will NATO do anything more about Russia's handling of Crimea and Ukraine?  Is it their role to do so?  If not, what are they paying for?  Can a WWIII start right here? 

Resource: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_52044.htm
 http://www.jewishjournal.com/world/article/nato_weighs_four_battalions_in_eastern_states_to_deter_russia
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28972878
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-calls-for-rise-in-defence-spending-by-alliance-members-1434978193
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-calls-for-rise-in-defence-spending-by-alliance-members-1434978193#:rwD_SInY51KWwA
http://jcpa.org/why-israel-opposes-international-forces-in-the-jordan-valley/
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/04/02/donald-trump-tells-crowd-hed-be-fine-if-nato-broke-up/?_r=0
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_37750.htm
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/international/europe/2015/05/13/nato-worried-by-russia-crimea-build-up/27272341/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35999657

Russian Takeover of Ukraine: 2014

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     

Fareed Zakaria of CNN spoke about the Ukraine takeover of Russia and NATO not being strong enough to prevent one  this Sunday morning.  It's something that the 484,129 Jews that were living there in 1989 didn't see coming.  "Nobody thought it would be a real war, a real invasion, a real occupation.  In the 21st century, it is very strange to conceive of it.  People tend to more easily believe in good and not bad."

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, sent "heavily armed militias into eastern Ukraine in early 2014" and said that they had no connection to Moscow.  Well, who did they have connection with, then?  This was never answered by him, and the international community didn't believe him and shouldn't.  He lied.

About 8,000 people have been killed, tens of thousands injured, and hundreds of thousands have fled to become refugees.  For Jews, this is like reliving the horrors of the Holocaust 75 years ago.
                                                                           

Putin is trying to regain land once belonging to Russia before WWI.  It was Catherine II who decreed that Jews were to live in the Pale of Settlement and not Russia proper.  Starting with Catherine I, the situation for Jews was bad.  She ruled from 1725 to 1727 and decreed in May 1727 that all Jews were to leave "Little Russia"  and that The Pale included the Ukraine. "Little Russia had with time,  developed into a political and geographical term in the Russian language referring to most of the territory of modern-day Ukraine before the twentieth century."   The 2nd Catherine ruled from 1762 to 1796 and her Jewish policy was marked by a  mixture of liberalism and coercion.  They were allowed to register in the merchant and urban classes in 1780, but permission was restricted to White Russia in 1786, which was the start of the Pale of Settlement.  She wound up preventing the extension of Jewish settlement and in 1795, kept Jewish residence in only the rural areas.  The Pale of Settlement was made up of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia in the countries of Poland, Lithuania, White Russia (Belorussia) , Ukraine, Bessarabia (formerly Romanian, now in Moldavian and Ukrainian Republics ) and Crimea, the only places Jews were given permission to have permanent residence.

Terrible massacres of Jews took place in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Chmielnicki massacres and the Haidamak uprising-massacres.  To be remembered is that the Ukraine has been the scene of pogroms in 1905 and from 1918 to 1920, the end of WWI.  The Soviets did promote Jewish settlement in the 1920s in the Ukraine with American Jewish funding.  By 1930 there were 90,000 Jewish farmers there.  Half of Soviet Russia's 3 million Jews lived in Ukraine before WWII.  Under Nazi rule, Jews who had not fled to Russia were wiped out by the Germans and Ukrainians in 1941 and 1942. Babi Yar was a most terrible event for Jews.  This is the name of a ravine outside of Kiev where tens of thousands of Jews were killed in September 1941.  The Ukrainians didn't bother to put up a memorial for the Jews until the 1980s.   By 1989, Jews had returned and numbered 484,129.
                                                                       

According to the UN, at least 250,000 IDPs (internally displaced Ukrainians have fled and flooded Kiev, the capital,  in the last 18 months.  More have looked for sanctuary in other major towns in central and western Ukraine, among them being probably thousands of Jews.  Back in July of 2013, Kiev's population was 2,847,200 and was the 8th largest city in Europe.  Now the population is up to at least 3 million and the cost of living is much higher than in cities people were driven from in the Russian occupation.
                                                                           

Donetsk, 5th largest city in Ukraine in 2001 with about 2 million living in metropolitan area,
and a population of 953,217 in the city itself.  

One Jewish grandmother is an English speaker,  relating her circumstance,  came from Donetsk, an industrial town in eastern Ukraine. She saw the town airport bombed and her daughter's home was bombed.   She has a PhD in Literature and her husband was an ear, nose and throat doctor in a major hospital.  A steady stream of self-sufficient Jews have had to give up their security in the past 18 months to head for Kiev, leaving bombed out homes of their past years.  Everyone, including Jews, have become refugees fleeing from a far superior, well-armed advancing force, fleeing with only the clothes on their backs from violent militias.  They've had to leave behind them their possessions, missing relatives and old friends.  Her son in law attended a meeting in Donetsk supporting Ukrainian independence and was attacked by Russian separatists wielding clubs.  It was his father in law who had to perform emergency surgery on him that saved his life after the attack.

This Jewish grandmother who had lived in Moscow during procuring her PhD saw up close the invaders from Russia, and they were not native Ukrainians.  Natives of Donetsk, Ukraine speak Surzhyk, a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian.  The invaders, she said, were speaking pure Russian.

They can't afford to live in Kiev since 2015 when Ukraine's currency, the Hryvnia collapsed. There are people who only have less than 2,400 Hryvnia a month to live on which is $110 in dollars.  It has declined from this figure already and as of Valentine's Day 2016, is worth  $91.7782 a month.  Some poor Jewish people in Kiev are living on only 700 Hryvnia a month which right now is only worth $26.7686.  Paul Alster, author,  had stopped at a cafe in Kiev and he and his 2 friends had had 3 cups of coffee with a few biscuits which cost over 200 Hryvnia! That would be $7.65.    Right now one Hryvnia = 0.038 dollar or 38 cents.

Incidently, Kiev  was founded in the 8th century, most likely by the Khazars, who were Jewish merchants who had visited the town in the 9th and 10th century.  Their country, Khazaria,  ended with a Russian takeover.  Peter the Great had allowed Jews to trade in Kiev from 1708, so in 1827, Kiev was decided to NOT be a part of the Pale of Settlement.   By 1857, Kiev  had become one of the largest Russian communities.

The Ukrainians have a horrible history of anti-Semitism.  The Holocaust only played up on what feelings were already shared with the Nazis.  Now they are experiencing just a tad of what Jews of 1941 experienced, along with today's Jews.  No one should have to go through such a horrible trial.  This is what Russia does in an occupation, so different from Israel's brief occupation of Judea and Samaria and Gaza.  The Russian occupation is much more like the Roman occupation of Judah, coming there in 63 BCE and fighting Bar Kokhba in 132-135 CE and stringing up thousands of Jews on crosses till death.  
                                                                             

Fareed Zarakia came out with the report on February 12, 2016, that a deal had been announced on Thursday to end the fighting in Ukraine and will face the same obstacle the previous such agreement has faced:  How to ensure that Russia will abide by it is the problem.  Frustrated by Russia’s continued support for Ukrainian separatists, Western statesmen have begun discussing military assistance for the Ukrainians.   Fareed said that Obama must take the lead from the front to bring this about.   He must show strength and skill.  The European Union has been ambivalent towards helping for years.  

Resource: The Jerusalem Report, February 8, 2016, Nightmare in Donetsk by Paul Alster-Kiev, a magazine
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev
http://www.xe.com/currencyconverter/convert/?Amount=700&From=UAH&To=USD
Fareed Zakaria, February 14, 2016 Sunday morning TV show
http://fareedzakaria.com/tag/ukraine/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-on-ukraine-obama-must-lead-from-the-front/2014/03/13/10b9359a-aaea-11e3-af5f-4c56b834c4bf_story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Russia
http://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2015/08/jewish-life-in-poltava-ukraine.html

How Jewish Was the Khazar-Russian Connection and What Happened to Them

Nadene Goldfoot                                      

   

The Khazars were a Turkish or Finnish tribe which settled in the lower Volga region.  They built their capital in Itil on the Volga delta.  The Russians called them White Ugrians.  Hungarians in that period were called Black Ugrians.
                                                                             

By the 8th to 10th centuries, the Khazar state was at its peak of having power in the area.  It extended west as far as Kiev which is the capital of the Ukraine, founded in the 8th century, possibly by the Khazars.  It was not a strictly religious center, such as cities in Lithuania.    Its royal house intermarried with that of Byzantium.  By  the 8th century, a powerful judaizing movement had happened among the Khazars.  From approximately  786-809, their king, Bulan and 4,000 of his nobles accepted Judaism which was  encouraged by Prince Obadiah, a successor of Bulan who was the next king. The people were choosing between Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and the king chose Judaism.  

Most Khazars practiced a shamanist-Tari religion. In the late eighth to early ninth century (but perhaps as late as 861), the Khazar ruling elite converted to Judaism.  His subjects were free to choose or not.  Obadiah had the religious zeal to convert.  So many more Khazar shamanists converted to Judaism than otherwise would have been the case. Shamanism is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world. 
                                                                         

Khazarian on horse

From this fact, Judah Ha-Levi  (1075-1141) (A Spanish Hebrew poet and religious philosopher born in Toledo, Spain and lived in several towns in Christian and Moslem Spain, mainly in Cordova, wrote his Kuzari., which presented the merits of Judaism and  which was of great influence among Jewish readers and is regarded as one of the classics of Judaism. He was a physician by profession, and lived a life of affluence and honor.  In his old age, his meditations led him to leave Spain and settle in Palestine, which was the time during the 2nd Crusade.  He died in Alexandria, Egypt when trying to reach his destination.  

 Hasdai Ibn Shaprut (915-970) a Spanish statesman, not a Jew, also a physician by profession, served at the courts of the caliphs.  His linguistic ability and  adroitness in negotiation made him useful in diplomatic relations.  He supported Jewish culture and scholars and used his high political office to defend Jewish communities and was widely regarded as the protector and spokesman of Jewry.   He wrote a letter to the king of the Khazars, King Joseph, expressing his joy at their independent Jewish kingdom.  He believed that the Khazars belonged to the Lost Ten Tribes, and started corresponding with their last king, Joseph in 950. Joseph's reply reached him in 944, stating that Joseph's ancestor, King Bulan, was circumcised and officially converted to Judaism, and drove out sorcerers and idolaters from the kingdom and trusted G-d alone.  King Obadiah, a successor of Bulan, invited Jewish sages from many lands to come to Khazaria in order to expain the meaning of the Torah, Talmud, Mishnah, and prayers.  

Another document was found in the Cairo genizah and it gives a romantic account of the origin of Judaism among the Khazars.  

The truth is that only the king with a good proportion of the nobility and some of his people became converted.  The Jewish element in the country constituted a minority at all times.   What we do know is that Khazaria became a refuge for persecuted Jews, so Kazaria was a haven for them, and they would mix in with the converted newbies to Judaism.  Some historians have said that the Khazars adopted Judaism as a conscious political decision designed to help preserve the political independence of Khazaria from the Christian and Muslim empires surrounding them.  They could hold the balance of power between the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Muslim Caliphate this way.  
                                                                   

What went on in this part of the world was that there were separate judicial systems for the members of the many different faiths.  The Khazars' power was broken by the Russian archduke Yaroslav in 1083. 

The remnants of the Khazars on the Volga disappeared in the Tatar invasion of 1237.  Kiev's Jewish community was destroyed by the Tatars in 1240.  

Italian merchants in Crimea referred to "Gazaria" (Khazarians)  until the 15th century. 
                                                                            

Descendants of the Khazarians probably survived among the Crimea Karaites, the Krimchaks, and other Jews of Eastern European origin.  Many of us could be carrying some segments of the original converted Khazarians along with other segments of Jewish origin DNA as well, but there is no scientific way to find out, even with DNA.   
                                                                     

"Eastern European Jews have significant Eastern Mediterranean elements which manifest themselves in close relationships with Kurdish, Armenian, Palestinian Arab, Lebanese, Syrian, and Anatolian Turkish peoples. This is why the Y-DNA haplogroups J and E, which are typical of the Middle East, are so common among them. Jewish lineages from this region of the world derive from both the Levant and the Anatolia-Armenia region."  The Armenians (mainly Christians) in Turkey suffered a genocide in 1915.  From 1915 to 1918, the Turkish government deported, enslaved, tortured, and killed 1.5-2 million Armenians in an effort to ethnically and religiously cleanse the Turkish nation.

 All existing studies fail to compare modern Jewish populations' DNA to ancient Judean DNA and medieval Khazarian DNA. There is no evidence from genome-wide data of a Khazar origin for Ashkenazi Jews.  This finding is from Doron M. Behar of Rambam Health Care Campus, Israel, Mait Metspalu and Bayazit Yunusbayev of Estonian Biocentre, Evolutionary Biology Group, Estonia, Yael Baran and Naama M. Kopelman of Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and several other scientists in their published study.  

Resource:  The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jews of Khazaria, 2nd Edition, by Kevin Alan Brook
http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Khazars.aspx
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html
 http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/study-finds-no-evidence-of-khazar-origin-for-ashkenazi-jews/2014/02/23/
http://study.com/academy/lesson/the-1915-armenian-genocide-history-causes.html

SAL Case Study: The Fred & Marlene Hawryluk Story

Quiet Self-Action Leadership from the Silent Generation

Part 2 

The Story of Fred & Marlene Hawryluk

I grew up in an age of unprecedented prosperity that was markedly different from the world my parents and grandparents inhabited (born 1943 & 1946 and 1899 & 1907 respectively). By the time I was born in the latter-end of the 1970s, the scarcity of the Depression and World War II eras—and to a certain extent the virtues they engendered—were becoming distant memories.

I was fortunate, however, to be close to persons who lived through those difficult times. Through their example, I was able to and observe some powerful lessons. In the memorable verse of Edgar A. Guest:

I’d rather see a sermon
Than hear one any day;
I’d rather one should walk with me
Than merely tell the way…

For I might misunderstand you
And the high advice you give,
But there’s no misunderstanding
How you act and how you live.

Once, as a young lad of 10 or 11, I went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant with my maternal grandmother, Ruth (1907-1992). I recall watching her take a single napkin from the dispenser, tear it in half, put one half in her purse for later use, and proceed to use only the other half throughout her entire meal. For a kid in the 1980s and 1990s, accustomed to taking as many napkins as I wished—and then inefficiently using and discarding them—I was surprised, and impressed, by this act. While I often heard my progenitors speak of leaner times, and their accompanying habits, practices, and mantras, they were never as real for me as they were for my parents and grandparents. Nevertheless, I always greatly respected family members and others born in the first half of the 20th century for the noble virtues they exemplified, and viewed their approval and praise as the consummate compliment of circumspect citizenship. While all generations have their faults, I recognized a deep well of wisdom within my predecessors from which I could receive upright moral instruction and glean life lessons. These models of modesty, fidelity, frugality, simplicity, and silent courage became my mentors, not because they forced their ideology on me, but because I admired them. I was motivated, therefore, to act in ways that would garner the approbation of my elders.

Fred, a part-time cobbler by trade, in his workshop (garage)

There is elegance in simplicity, and Fred and Marlene Hawryluk personify this statement better than anyone I’ve known. This chapter shares the common, yet compelling, story of their lives.

When I met the Hawryluks over a decade ago, they had been in their small and modest home for approximately 40 years. Despite its size, I have rarely—if ever—seen a home so clean and tidy, or one that possessed a more peaceful and pleasant atmosphere.

Fred’s father, John, immigrated to Canada from the Ukraine in 1912. At the time, 160-acre plots of free land were available to anyone willing to work it. But upon arriving, John was arrested. At the time, the United Kingdom (including Canada) was waging war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which encompassed present-day Ukraine. Fears of cultural and political subversion from disloyal sympathizers resulted in the arrests of many immigrants at the time, not all of which were justified. After his release, he returned to the same neighborhood he had tried to start a new life in and bought up all the land he could. He was not rich, but he was industrious, and had an eye for opportunity. He worked hard and avoided debt.

His son, Fred, grew up during the Great Depression. Fred went to school in a four-room schoolhouse that included two outhouses and a stable for the student’s horses.

When Fred and Marlene got married, John gifted a small plot of land to his son. Fred bought a small adjacent lot of land for $285 and began building a home. Like the Piersons, the Hawryluks started out with very little. However, they were hard working, self-reliant, and frugal. Determined to remain debt-free, they patiently built their home as they could afford it over a period of two years. As a result, they never had a mortgage. They invested sweat, tears, and even blood (from minor accidents) into the construction of a modest, but very comfortable and tidy home. Fifty years later, they still live there. The Hawryluks also have a large, well-kept, and productive flower and vegetable garden. Growing their own fresh fruits and vegetables has saved them countless dollars over the course of their adult lives.

Canadian winters are cold (often dipping into sub-zero temperatures), and for the first winter they lived in only one room and used an outhouse. Fred wired the house himself after proactively seeking out lessons on the skill. Throughout the construction process, he would often walk to where another home was being constructed and observe how the builders were proceeding. He learned a lot from these observations, and managed to progress with his own home’s construction by working a step or two behind another home’s construction crew. Marlene helped Fred with much of the manual labor, including sawing boards.

Like Charlie and Muriel, Fred and Marlene have a large family that includes five children, 23 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren. They taught their children the same life lessons that brought them success, and their children and grandchildren are, in turn, teaching those lessons to their children.

Fred & Marlene aren’t famous or rich—unless you consider wonderful family members, fresh and delicious fruits & vegetables, and zero debt as assets in their “portfolio,” in which case they are wealthy indeed. But the Hawryluk’s are happy, and you can’t put a price on happiness. In fact, they refer to their little heaven on Earth as the “Happy Hawruluk House,” or the “Hawryluk Haven.” Now in the twilight of their lives, they can look back on their long lives with satisfaction, contentment, and most importantly—inner peace. I’ve met a lot of monetarily rich folks who can’t do that. I’ll bet you have too.

Marlene at work out back of the "Happy Hawryluk House"
in her and Fred's productive vegetable and flower gardens.