THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610270153
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: BY PAUL SOUTH, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 58 lines
The names Julia and Julian Kiryluk will not register with most of you. Unless you've taken a charter flight from the Dare County Airport or visited the Outer Banks Chamber of Commerce, you've probably never met them.
They haven't done anything to get them on the front page, like winning the lottery or dating a Kennedy or inventing the Macarena.
But for many of the folks who live in our little apartment complex in downtown Manteo, this weekend is a sad one. Julian and Julia are leaving.
They're off for Utah, where Julian has taken a job with SkyWest Airlines, based in Salt Lake City. It will be their third stop in America since coming to the states 12 years ago from England.
On the face of it, you might think that's nothing special. We live in a moving-van world, where folks come and go all the time.
But this is different.
From the day I moved to the wonderful flat on the third floor, Julian and Julia have been my downstairs neighbors. When their charming British accents ran up against my Alabama trailer-park twang, I'm surprised they didn't call the U.N. for an interpreter.
But they didn't. Instead, we became friends.
We met the first day I moved in, and almost every evening we'd chat. Often, we'd visit over beverages or burgers on the deck, and talk about neighbor stuff. What was going on around town, the rumor mill, that sort of thing.
I think we connected for a lot of reasons. First, they shattered the stereotype that some of us Americans have that Brits are a staid and stuffy lot. The Kiryluks are a warm and caring couple. Last winter, while I recuperated from surgery, they stopped by twice, sometimes three times a day, picking up my mail, doing my laundry, things that go above and beyond the call. And on the really bad days through those dark months, they provided a listening ear, and good company.
They'd help with carrying groceries up the wide wooden stairs, or in potting geraniums and impatiens that actually survived a summer. For me, the Grim Reaper of the plant world, that's a feat indeed.
Rarely a day passed - even in pouring rain or raging wind - that they did not have a kind word, and a smile.
They were good neighbors.
After they're gone, I'll miss sitting on the deck and talking about their home and my home so far away, expatriates exchanging memories like precious currency. I'll miss Julian's stories about flying, and the sad look he gets when he talks about not getting to see Larry Bird play when he lived in Boston. Now that they're off to Utah, I hope he gets to see John Stockton and Karl Malone, two of the NBA's best. I'll miss talking hoops with my good neighbor.
I'll miss Julia's bean soup, and the marvelous accent that has earned her the nickname ``Emma Thompson'' in our building. I'll miss her bright smile and unfailing kindness, and the fact that, like me, she cries easily at sad movies.
By the time you read this, they will be on the road, off to a new home. Granted, it's not usually front-page stuff. But in these days where many of us don't know our neighbors, Julia and Julian have taken a place in my heart. by CNB