- Date Of Birth: May 5, 1928
- Date Of Death: May 4, 2017
- State: Colorado
Antanina Bulota died on May 4, 2017, one day shy of her 89th birthday. She was born in Kaunas, Lithuania on May 5, 1928, the youngest daughter of prof. Steponas and Janina Kolupaila. She entered high school in Kaunas, but fled with the rest of her family to Kempten, Bavaria, ahead of the advancing Soviet army. She finished Lithuanian high school in a Displaced Person’s camp and married Julius Bulota on June 13, 1946. Julius died on February 22, 2011. In 1949 she emigrated to the US along with her husband and settled in South Bend, Indiana, where her father had been invited to teach at the University of Notre Dame. It wasn’t long before she organized a student Lithuanian folk dance group. A few years later, she and Julius started a family. In 1967, her husband was transferred to New Jersey, where the family participated in American and Lithuanian cultural activities including Lithuanian Saturday School and Lithuanian Scouts. In 1973, she moved once again to Connecticut and took over as scoutmaster of the Waterbury Lithuanian Girl Scout troop. At the same time, she founded a Lithuanian youth folk dance group. In 1978, she and her husband moved to Colorado and settled in metro Denver, where she assumed directorship of the Ruta Lithuanian folk dance group. She remained in this capacity until 2008, with a four-year break. She prepared two different dance groups to participate in a total of nine Lithuanian Folk Dance Festivals. From her first days in America, she worked in banking and finished her career as an internal auditor for Wells Fargo. She is survived by a sister, Eugenija, son Steve, daughter Elizabeth, son-in-law Robert Belzer and two grandchildren, Antanina and Vytas.
