Why Lithuania: What a Handwritten Memoir Taught Me About Bridges

“Why Lithuania?” Stephanie Zimmermann’s editor asked her. I’ve been on the receiving end of that question for the last 10 years. My body felt the jolt she described when a roadside sign matched a name in her grandparents’ memoir. It sent me back to my second trip to Lithuania, when I first visited Anykščiai.

I have chased that same thread across Lithuania more times than I can count. In 2016, I joined a Chicago company founded by Lithuanian immigrants, unaware of my own family connection to the country. That summer, before my first trip, my uncle Steven Kowalsky handed me a handwritten letter from his father, Larry, born Khona Leyzys Kovalskis, telling his immigration story from Lithuania to the U.S.

Larry was born in Anykščiai, the son and grandson of the town blacksmith. The family lived on a wooden-house street later renamed for the Lithuanian aviators Darius and Girėnas, about 100 kilometers from the capital, Vilnius.

In 2017, on my second trip, my Lithuanian coworkers drove me to Anykščiai. Using Larry’s letter as my map, I found the exact corner where his mother once kept her grocery store. I stood where, as a boy, he had run to the river and the great boulder called Puntukas. Larry, his mother and most of his siblings reached America; his father and one sister did not, and were killed after the Germans came.

Larry’s memoir was published in Lithuania in a collection titled “Gyvieji tiltai,” Living Bridges. Both Larry and Steven are gone now, but I know they would be proud that Lithuania has become such a significant part of my own story. In 2024, I joined the founding team at Gritmind, where I am a partner and head of AI products. We are co-headquartered in Kaunas, Vilnius and Chicago. In my own way, I’m continuing to bridge our family’s past and present.

Next summer I hope to bring my own family to that corner in Anykščiai, so the bridge reaches one more generation.