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Through cancer and trips to war, White family marches on

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Leelanau County resident Bo White knows the rails and roads into Ukraine. A former Air Force pararescueman, Bo has traveled to Ukraine four times since the war began in February 2022. A month into the war, he helped evacuate wounded Fox News reporter Benjamin Hall from a Ukrainian hospital. Bo’s handshake is a vice grip, but his wife Nicole is just as strong. Together they own Dune Bird Winery, which opened on M-22 north of Leland in late 2021. And they showed strength and resilience during their son Forrest’s 3.5-year battle with leukemia. “I’ve always been grateful that I can appreciate my husband, my family, and my life as a gift. It’s not guaranteed,” said Nicole. “A lot of us pretend that we can be safe. But I’ve never been able to pretend that. I’m grateful for what I have.”

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Ukrainians in Northern Michigan experience an anniversary of pain and mourning

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For Diana Grebennykova, a Ukrainian who lives in Traverse City near the border with Leelanau County, February 24—the one-year anniversary of Russia’s brutal invasion of her home country—is an “anniversary of pain and mourning.” Diana and her husband Viktor Grebennykov, the former coach of the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club, have lived in Northern Michigan since 2019. They are raising two young children here. Diana’s mother, Liubov, moved in with them in April after she left Kyiv on the morning of the invasion.

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A Ukrainian refugee arrives in Michigan to meet her grandchildren

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“Come here, my joy, my happiness,” Liubov Shchegelska tells her grandson, Tim, in Ukrainian as the 2-year-old boy plays in the yard outside his parents’ Traverse City apartment. Tim’s parents are Viktor Grebennykov and Diana Grebennykova, natives of Ukraine who moved to northern Michigan in 2019 when Viktor—an Olympian in the 2012 London games—became coach of the Lake Leelanau Rowing Club. Liubov, who is Diana’s mom, could almost tune out the war ravaging her homeland—the conflict that sent her across borders and into the United States just two weeks before—but also allowed her to meet her grandchildren, Tim, and his 4-year-old sister, Ellis, for the very first time. On this day she could almost tune out the war. Almost.

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“Ukrainian people are protecting the world with our blood”

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Lake Leelanau Rowing Club coach Viktor Grebennykov and his wife Diana—both natives of Ukraine who currently live in Traverse City— aren’t hiding news of the war in their homeland from their young children. But they moderate which videos and photos Ellis, 4, and Tim, 2, see on the television and computer screens, even as the Russian military continues its daily shelling of Ukrainian cities. Nevertheless, the children comprehend the human costs of this hellish war, and how it endangers family members whom they have never met but know from frequent video chats.

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