wake of devoid of all Christian symbols and rites.
Vadim's father sat at the foot of the coffin, numb to the proceedings.
As a few speakers addressed the crowd, he wiped tears away from his
weary, red eyes. Vadim's mother was too weak to make the trip from the
family's home in Svitlovodsk to Kiev.
Mykola Okhmakevych, the stagnant, Communist head of the State Television
and Radio, whose removal has been pressed for by both democratic
deputies and workers of the television station, said a few uninspiring
words. Often harshly criticized by Vadim and his colleagues, Mr.
Okhmakevych now spoke of how Vadim had always loved his job. An angry
mourner, who saw this hypocrisy, cried out: "He loved Ukraine above
all. He loved Ukraine, say it."
We all descended the steps with Vadim for the last time. The coffin was
then placed in a vehicle for Vadim's journey home to Svitlovodsk,
Kirovohrad Oblast, his final resting place.
x x x
It has been almost a week now since my phone rang just before midnight,
on Valentine's Day, February 14. It was my friend and colleague Dmytro
Ponamarchuk. Yet his voice sounded different.
"I don't know how to say this, Marta. Vadim Boyko burned to death
tonight." I could not believe what I was hearing: "What is this, a
cruel joke?"
Dmytro, working at the radio station, had been called about a fire at
Vadim's apartment; the fire department reported that his television had
blown up. Dmytro arrived at the scene just an hour or so after the
reported fire, only to find Vadim's body sprawled across the floor,
burned beyond recognition. There was nothing left of his apartment, a
dormitory-type dwelling in a building that housed quite a number of
State television and Radio workers.
News of Vadim's death spread quickly among fellow journalists - many of
whom had attended Kiev State with Vadim, many of whom worked with him on
numerous projects.
He was an elected democratic deputy from Kremenchuk, Poltava Oblast. He
had come from the neighboring town in Kirovohrad oblast, just across the
Dnipro River, arriving in the capital city of Kiev in the early 1980s to
obtain a college education.
And from then on, he gained popularity as the founder and host of
"Hart," one of the first serious investigative shows on Ukrainian
television, reporting on everything from Chornobyl to Shcherbytsky.
After he was elected a deputy to the Ukrainian Parliament in March 1990,
he was appointed vice chairman of the standing parliamentary Committee
on Glasnost and the Mass Media, a job he took very seriously, often
going to Moscow to discuss problems of disinformation in Ukraine, as
presented by central television.
But Vadim never forgot his first vocation - journalism - and he would
often join his colleagues, including a few of us foreign correspondents,
on the press balcony of Parliament during the sessions to give us some
inside news or highlights of his commission's work.
He was our friend, and with his death, our circle has been broken. Many