Michelle Torppey still remembers the tears she shed when she and her husband Wade, parents of six biological children, adopted seven orphans from Ukraine nearly a year ago, leaving their two older sisters behind.
“We all lived in one apartment [in Ukraine] and we drove to the airport at 5 a.m.,” said the Wantage resident.
Since then, the extended Torppey clan has grown as its newest members began their new lives, mingling with their new family and enrolling in school.
Meanwhile, her older sisters Kristina, 20, and Snizhana, 21, find themselves on the frontlines of a Russian military invasion that has plunged their homeland into violent chaos.
“We Facetimed them almost every day and you could hear the bombs going off in the background,” Michelle said. “Sometimes you could see and hear shots. They were afraid for their lives, and so were the other children.”
It took Kristina and Snizhana three months to flee to Poland, then Germany and Amsterdam before arriving at Newark Liberty Airport on May 24 to rejoin their siblings and extend the Torppey family tree to 17, plus or minus grandparents and in-laws.
“It was almost like ‘What’s a few more’?” Wade joked.
But on a more serious note, Wade said recording her “was the only thing we could do.”
“What else could we do?” he said. “They fled their country and had no place to go. And they had family here.”
Politics in the region was tense when the Torppeys traveled to Ukraine last July to adopt the younger seven children who were sent to an orphanage after their father was stabbed in 2016 and their mother died in 2018.
But they never experienced the deadly fighting and destruction their sisters endured after the Russian invasion of Brovary, east of Kyiv.
“They would always Facetime with their siblings and tell stories about things shooting out of the sky and shooting across the sky,” Wade said. “I think they got out just in time before they saw something too horrible.”
With “the clothes on their backs,” Kristina and Snizhana made their way west to Lviv, where they had to wait several days before finally boarding a train bound for Poland.
“There were tens of thousands of people all trying to get across the border,” Michelle said. “People walked and waited all day, and if you couldn’t get on the train, you had to come back the next day. There was shooting all the time so you had to find a safe place to stay.”
They finally arrived in Poland on March 8 and had to wait 15 hours to enter a church that was taking in refugees.
“They were fed and provided with basic needs,” Michelle said. “There were cots lined up wall to wall. There were people fighting online. Children cried because they couldn’t find their parents.”
A week later, at midnight, they boarded a bus for a 13-hour journey to Germany. From there, their journey to America was easier. Michelle has relatives in the Netherlands who picked her up and took her to Amsterdam, where they stayed for two months while the paperwork to enter the United States was filed.
Michelle’s father flew to Amsterdam to escort Kristina and Snizhana to New Jersey.
“Their siblings knew they were coming but didn’t know when,” Michelle said. Her husband picked her up from the airport in the morning, and “when we picked up the kids after school, her sisters were in the car,” Michelle said. “They jumped out of the car and cried and screamed. It was cute.”
The Torppey Cluster
In Wantage, the blended family caught national media attention and even received an offer to develop a reality show, which Michelle said they turned down.
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“We don’t watch much TV,” said Michelle, whose family has run the Sussex Meat Packing stores in Wharton and Wantage for 40 years.
They instead turned to their parish at Lafayette Federated Church, where parishioners still send them Shop-Rite and Walmart gift cards to help them make ends meet.
“Some of them even cook for us, which is a pretty big deal when you’re cooking for 15-20 people,” Michelle said.
Language continues to be a barrier for the newcomers, but Kristina and Snizhana are happy to get involved in anything Torppey-related.
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“We stopped by a carnival in Franklin over Memorial Day weekend and they all had a great time,” Michelle said. “They’re so generous and kind, always hugs and ‘thank you, I love you.’ I’m always helping out. All my girls have jobs in the kitchen. They’re on the job chart now.”
Kristina, translated by her sister Leeza, said they are “happy to be here, not having to worry about a place to live and eat. But they are sad and afraid for their friends who are still there and don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Snizhana recalled, “It was scary at first when they went to Poland because they didn’t know where they were going to end up.”
Kristina said she hopes to return to Ukraine one day. Snizhana said she has no plans for now. She would like to return after the war, “but she doesn’t know how it will be”.
Until then, both hope to find work in the United States.
“We don’t know how long they will be here,” Michelle said. “This program only allows them to stay for two years. We don’t know what’s happening in their country. We don’t know what will be left of their town and their houses and everything.”
For now, the Torppey bunch is safe and happy.
“We’ve been saying all along that God was watching these children every step of the way,” Michelle said. “It’s just amazing to me how they came full circle and were reunited with their siblings.”
William Westhoven is a local reporter for DailyRecord.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email: wwesthoven@dailyrecord.com Twitter: @wwesthoven