Michael Kupetz
Michael Kupetz was an American of Eastern European heritage who became an iconographer whose work can still be seen in a number of Orthodox Churches in the United States.
Life
Michael M. Kupetz was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early 1890s. While still a child, the Kupetz family moved to Hartshorne, Oklahoma, and became parishioners of Ss. Cyril and Methodius Church there. Already as a young man, he showed interest in art, and even as a teenager in 1910, the United States census shows his occupation as "Artist".
This passion would lead him to go to Eastern Europe to study iconography at a monastery there. It was there that he started writing the icons for the new Ss. Cyril and Methodius Church located in Hartshorne. Once he returned, he continued to work on the icons throughout the church.
Throughout the years, he would work on icons in many churches, including the following:
- St. Basil Church in Simpson, Pennsylvania
- St. Mary Church (Antiochian) in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
- Holy Trinity Church in McAdoo, Pennsylvania
- St. Nicholas Church in Reading, Pennsylvania
Records show that he was married and had a child, but that by 1940, his wife had remarried, though he was not deceased.
Sources
- 1910 United States Census record FamilySearch.org
- Ss. Cyril and Methodius Church History
- History of Simpson, Pennsylvania church OCA.org
- History of St. Mary (Wilkes-Barre) St. Mary Church history
- History of McAdoo, Pennsylvania church OCA.org
- St. Nicholas (Reading, PA) history St. Nicholas Church history
- 1940 United States Census record for the former Mrs. Kupetz and child FamilySearch.org
