100 Aciu - Regina Bajoruniene

A+A Regina BAJORUNIENĖ

My earliest memory of Mrs Regina Bay is from my childhood when I was about 8 or so. She had just married Andrius Bajorunas and they came to visit my parents.

Mum and Dad congratulated them on their recent marriage. Their surname was changed to Bay which was easier for Mr Bay in his work as a pharmacist when he often took on weekend shifts in addition to his usual weekday work. We came to call them Mr and Mrs Bay.

Regina became Pirmininkė/President of the Adelaide Lithuanian Women's Committee (Adelaidės Lietuvių Moterų Sekcija) after having been a member for a few years.

Among many activities, these women provided morning tea for all of us who attended Saturday Lithuanian School and prepared Christmas Eve supper/Kučios at Lithuanian House. They also catered numerous other events.  Among popular events were the fashion parades which started in the early 1960s and the annual Kartunų Balius or Cotton Ball also a fancy-dress event, which was held in late spring Sept/October. Prizes were awarded for the best dressed at the ball and a lot of effort went into making the prettiest cotton evening dress. I went to a few of these events when I was old enough to start going to a ball plus I even participated in a fashion parade in about 1963.

During much of this time we did not have a family car. Regina visited us often and had long conversations with Mum over a coffee or tea. Mum drank tea while Regina drank coffee.  She and Mum both had terrific senses of humour and there was a lot of laughter.

They also had deep heart to heart conversations.
Regina was always excited if we did well at school and encouraged us to continue and do better.

She also told us off if we did not speak Lithuanian at home but also understood that there was a specific reason for that, courtesy of an education department psychologist but that is another story.

Nonetheless she often reminded us that carrying multiple languages in one's head was not a heavy load.

She spoke Lithuanian, German, Russian, Polish and English. She had also always worked very hard from the time she and many other young Lithuanians 'conscripted' by the Germans to dig trenches as forced labour right through her years with Moterų Sekciją.

She had worked at the Adelaide Railway Station cafeteria and was quickly made manager. She also worked at the Government printing offices near Parliament House in North Terrace during her early years in Adelaide.

She loved animals and had been very upset when she had had to leave her home in Tauragė and could not take her dog with her. She saw her parents and neighbours shot by Russian army soldiers. She was just 13 when WWII started.

She often took my sister Nemira and me out or to her house and we had a lot of fun with her pets especially her budgie who was multilingual.  He could say 'Kur Andrius', 'Labas rytas', 'Andrius dirba', Auf Wiedersehen', 'silly rabbit' and many other things.

She was an excellent cook too, she led Moterų Sekcija for 17 years and worked very hard throughout. In addition to the actual work, after a day's food prep she would drive home women who had come by bus in the morning.

In preparation for a big event she would go to the market at the crack of dawn for provisions, plus she got to know smallgoods wholesalers in the area and as a regular customer got good deals on behalf of the community.
With her help we often helped Moterų Sekciją prepare various events such as weddings, balls and parties at Lithuanian House.

Lithuanian House was already a home away from home as it was for many of us in the community, but we also learned much from interacting with the older women who were exceptional caterers and a lot of fun.

This was a time of not only speaking Lithuanian but also coming to appreciate what had brought these people to Australia.

My own pacifist leanings were a direct result of learning about these people's displacement from their home land and the trauma of having to start all over again in a very different country like Australia. Most of us had relatives in Lithuania or elsewhere whom we felt unlikely ever to meet at least in those early years.

Participating in community events under her tuition added to our parents' encouragement of 'lietuvybė'.

Regina's commitment to the Adelaide Lithuanian community was exceptional and she was a wonderful role model for me for when I was older and able to be involved in various committees myself.

On a more personal level she lent me books about deportations among other subjects and I used some material in radio programs.

She was proud of us as if we were her own children when we did well.

She also thought the world of our Mum and was there when needed on the death of our sister Nemira.

Her love of Lietuva and passion for traditions which she worked so hard to maintain in our little Adelaide community certainly rubbed off on to me and others.

I remain grateful to this day for Regina Bajorunienė’s role in my life.

Submitted by Juratė Grigonytė