On February 19, 2025, at The Valdas Adamkus Presidential Library-Museum, a presentation was held for the monograph “Loving Lithuania from Afar: Lithuanian Consuls General in Chicago, Juzefa and Petras Povilas Daužvardžiai” by Dr. Asta Petraitytė-Briedienė, a researcher at the Lithuanian Emigration Institute of Vytautas Magnus University. The event featured the book’s author, historian Dr. Daiva Dapkutė, and was moderated by historian Dr. Giedrius Janauskas.

This book, based on documents preserved in Lithuania and the United States, as well as the memories of living witnesses, tells the extraordinary yet unjustly forgotten life story of consuls Daužvardžiai, who remain little known to Lithuanian society. Diplomats Dr. Petras Povilas Daužvardis and Juzefa Rauktytė-Daužvardienė, husband and wife, served as Lithuania’s long-standing consuls in the United States. From 1937 to 1983, their consular duties in Chicago, along with their various public activities and private lives, were closely connected with Lithuania and its people both at home and in the diaspora. Their work, diplomacy, and patriotism serve as an example of how one can love, respect, and defend their homeland, even from afar, while living far from Lithuania.

Photographer: Jonas Petronis.