Fairfield residents starts GoFundMe to help Ukraine refugees

FAIRFIELD — Fairfield resident Caterina Titus has started a GoFundMe to help Ukrainian refugees in Romania.

The charity is being run by a childhood friend of Titus’s named Michelle Kelso and her husband Silviu Alexandru Alexe. They are providing assistance to Ukrainians fleeing the war with Russia by giving them medical supplies, diapers, baby formula and other essential aid. When Titus learned of their efforts, she wanted to do everything she could to help, so she started a GoFundMe page where the public can donate to directly to supporting Michelle and Silviu’s work. The fundraiser can be found by visiting: https://gofund.me/07ff814b

Titus said she drew inspiration from the celebrity couple Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher, who have raised more than $30 million for Ukraine since the war started. She saw a lot of herself in the couple because Kutcher hails from Iowa, while Kunis was born in Ukraine. Titus has roots in those places, too.

Titus grew up in Ames with her mother and maternal grandparents, and that’s where she befriended Michelle. Her connection to Ukraine runs through her paternal grandparents, who were from Ukraine and fled the country in the mid-1930s. During that era, Ukraine suffered a terrible man-made famine known as the Holodomor in which 3.5 to 5 million people died.

Her grandfather was imprisoned in Russia for two years. While imprisoned, he met Titus’s grandmother. Upon his release, the couple tried to immigrate to the United States but were denied visas because her grandfather had spent time in prison. That forced the couple to choose another destination, and they settled on Peru.

On the boat from Ukraine to Peru, Titus’s grandmother wore a watch, which she later gave to her. The brand of the watch was “Titus,” the surname of the man Caterina would go on to marry.

Titus’s father, an aunt and an uncle were born and raised in Peru, but their parents spoke Russian at home, as well as Hebrew and Yiddish. Her father was an exchange student at Iowa State University, where her mother worked in the international student department, and that’s how the couple met. The two moved to Peru, where Caterina was born.

“I knew that my family in Peru was culturally different from other Peruvians, but I didn’t understand until later how culturally different they were,” Titus said. “I remember that my grandmother was known as the best Eastern European cook in Lima.”

Titus’s mother and father moved back to the United States when Titus was just a couple of years old, so that her father could get a master’s degree at the University of Santa Barbara in California. Her parents divorced when she was 5 years old, and she went with her mother to live with her maternal grandparents in Ames. That’s where she met Michelle, who lived across the street.

“We had an instant connection,” Titus recalled. “Michelle came over to my grandparents’ porch right away. She wanted to understand me, because I was different. She was just a very curious, empathetic person.”

Even after Titus moved to Fairfield to enroll at Maharishi International University, Michelle came to visit her. The two have stayed in touch via social media. Michelle moved to Romania and married a Romanian man. Today, she splits her time between Romania and Washington, D.C. where she is the Director of Human Services and Social Justice at The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences.

Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 of this year, Titus saw a social media post from Michelle about how she and her husband are on the Ukrainian-Romanian border helping refugees.

“I said, ‘Michelle, let me help you,’” Titus said. “I had given to three different GoFundMe’s before. It was a good feeling, but not the same feeling as seeing Michelle and Alex distributing food and medicine.”

Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com