Forever a Student
While most villagers were born and raised in Pennsylvania, many come from other parts of the U.S. and quite a few are first-generation immigrants, hailing from countries as diverse as Italy, South Korea, and… Lithuania. Alvydas Karasa, a villager since 2016, is known to us all simply as Al. When Al was a young child in Lithuania, this small Baltic country with a rich and eventful history was still independent. Soon, however, World War II would see Lithuania occupied by Nazi Germany, quickly replaced by Soviet forces. Many schools, including Al’s, were destroyed and the teachers murdered or exiled. Many Lithuanians, expecting the worst, managed to move away while they could.
On the move with his family, young Al became close to a teacher, who was also fleeing with his own family. As they traveled, Al learned from him, without the luxury of textbooks or even a pen. He took notes in his head and tried to memorize everything he heard. When his family’s situation became more stable, Al was eager to participate in organized schooling, sitting on the bare floor to learn. When he finally had “books,” some were handwritten by his teachers. Al recalls a teacher, in ruined Germany, saying to the class, “You’re going to have to rebuild all that the war has destroyed. That’s why you’re here.”
Exceptional learning abilities enabled Al to learn several languages during his formative years, starting with French, German, and English. Like other youths in his situation he was able to switch language at any moment to suit the need. Al migrated to the U.S. while he was still in high school, and at the time he could speak 5 languages with various degrees of fluency. In his adopted land, he could settle at last on one language, and that was the one he thought was easiest of all. He recalls having learned English in 4 months. Although he still thinks in Lithuanian, English is the language in which Al has written 6 books. It was also the language he spoke with his late wife Margaret, who grew up nearby in Emmitsburg, MD.
Today, Al still enjoys learning something new, especially if it is language-related. Like most things, if you don’t use it, you lose it. So he connected with a villager—a former French teacher—to polish and refresh his French speaking skills. Al continues to challenge himself. “What was impressed on me during the war was that we were going to lose everything except one thing—our knowledge. That cannot be taken from us. We would never lose that, no matter what happened,” he says. “To this day, what I value higher than anything in life, is learning something new.”
In addition to being CKV’s Chess Guru and a 10-mile-a-day practitioner of recumbent cycling, Al has been hosting a monthly virtual concert series called Stars of Europe. He loves sharing popular music from outside the U.S., introducing his CKV neighbors to artists who are superstars abroad, yet little-known here although some are American. The attendance grows with each concert. “Once people give it a chance, they are hooked,” says Director of Life Enrichment Holly Fetting. “They tell their friends!” The upcoming Christmas concert will feature a virtual concert from Beirut in 3 languages.