A Ukrainian Church In Wheeling Is Preserving Heritage Through The Making Of Pierogies

This story originally aired in the July 21, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

On a Tuesday morning in the kitchen of Our Lady of Perpetual Help — a Ukrainian Catholic Church in Wheeling, West Virginia — there’s a group making pierogies the way churchgoers have for more than 100 years.   

“Vareniki. It means to boil,” says Mary Ann Mysliwiec, one of the crew. “It’s the Ukrainian word for pierogi.”

Pierogies are stuffed pockets of dough that are boiled and then drenched in butter. They have roots in Poland, but variations can be found throughout Eastern Europe, including Ukraine.  

Over the years, pierogies have evolved, with some modern twists.  

“Pierogies have become Americanized,” Mysliwiec says. “People have now started putting jalapeño potatoes in it. Some people have started to do dessert ones.”   

At Our Lady of Perpetual Help, however, immigrant heritage and tradition remain the cornerstone of pierogi making.

“They’re always the same way; they haven’t changed,” says Olga Skvarka, who is 98. “We make three kinds each week — potato and cheese, and then potato, cheese and onion, and then we have a third one, sauerkraut.” 

Like Mysliwiec, Skvarka is part of the dedicated team that comes together weekly to make over 1,000 pierogies through an assembly line process. 

“We have a nice working group,” says Skvarka. “I come down earlier and I put the pots and pans and the water on, and then I set the table for the pinchers when they come in. We all have different jobs we do; it’s like a process.”  

While the fundamental process remains unchanged, the pierogi makers at the church have introduced some innovations. John Paluch, who is responsible for rolling and cutting the dough, says his grandmother and the other women who made pierogies had marble rolling pins. And they cut out the dough using water glasses. Now, he uses a dough-rolling machine as well as a specialized dough-cutting tool acquired from a monastery in Canada.

Once the dough has been cut into circles, a team of women with nimble fingers fills them and pinches them closed. Paluch says even with the help of the machines, “I still have to work very hard to keep up with the ladies and their pinching.”

The Historical Influence Of Immigrant Communities In Wheeling

The tradition of pierogi making in Wheeling traces back to the late 1800s, when immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe settled in the region to work in the mines and mills.

“Because Wheeling’s immigrant communities were so intertwined with each other, they couldn’t really be entirely separate. Everybody, in a way, kind of partook in that culture to one extent or another,” says William Gorby, author of the book Wheeling’s Polonia: Reconstructing Polish Community in a West Virginia Steel Town.

Part of that intermingling included sharing traditions like pierogi making. Those traditions continue to live on at cultural festivals throughout the region, such as Wheeling’s annual Polish Heritage Day. Gorby says it’s a way for the descendents of those immigrants to celebrate their roots. 

“It’s like the younger generation grows up distinctly Americanized and maybe doesn’t see themselves as attached to that sort of culture,” he says. “So we see a lot of these festivals come back in like the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s when the third generation was like ‘I really would like to know more about … my grandparents who literally came from Poland or Italy.’” 

An hour northeast of Wheeling, pierogies even make an appearance at the Pittsburgh Pirates’ home games, with a pierogi mascot race between innings.

From Boiling To Butter Bathing: The Final Touches, With Love

After the pierogies are pinched closed, they’re boiled and bathed in melted butter. Then they are drained and dried under fans before being packaged for sale on Thursdays.

When I was young, I was raised on another kind of pocket of dough — chicken and dumplings. I didn’t have my first pierogi until I was in my 20s, from a store-bought box of frozen Ms. T’s. After sampling the pierogies made by the team at the church, however, I quickly discovered store-bought could never compare.

When I asked Mary Ann Mysliwiec what makes the homemade pierogies at Our Lady so special, she says, “We always say you cook with love.”

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.