Lydia Blonaraowycz Kyj, 84, a bakery owner

Lydia Blonaraowycz Kyj, 84, a bakery owner who was active in the Ukrainian American community, died of heart failure Wednesday at home in Wallingford.

Mrs. Kyj grew up in a Ukrainian community in Radymno, Poland. In 1949 she and her husband, Wasyl, immigrated to Calverton, N.Y. Two years later they moved to Chester, where he found work as a welder in a steel plant.

In 1954 the couple opened Kyj's Bakery in Chester. They lived upstairs and operated the store seven days a week selling babka, pierogies, fruit tarts, butter cookies, and other baked goods. As the neighborhood became more diverse, they added sweet potato pies to their selection, their son, Myroslaw "Myron," said.

When Mrs. Kyj would be out shopping, she would meet people who remembered her giving them cookies when they were children, her son said. She was very motherly and never had a problem with the neighborhood youngsters, he said. The bakery eventually expanded to three locations.

Mrs. Kyj's daughter, Christina Pluta, now runs the bakeries in Chester, Brookhaven, and Boothwyn. Mrs. Kyj continued to visit the original Chester location daily, advising the staff and socializing with customers, her son said.

Mrs. Kyj and her husband, who died in 1991, were sponsors of the Ukrainian Museum in New York City and the Ukrainian Studies Chair at Harvard University. They funded a classroom at Kyiv-Mohyla University in the Ukraine. She was past president of the National Ukrainian Women's League of America and supported numerous Ukrainian cultural, educational, and charitable institutions.

In the 1990s, she contributed to a scholarship fund at Widener University that assisted four students from Ukraine, and she often personally packed boxes of clothing for orphanages in Ukraine, her son said.

In addition to her son and daughter, Mrs. Kyj is survived by seven grandchildren.

A Parastas service will be at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Carr Funeral Home, 935 S. Providence Rd., Wallingford. Friends may call from 6 p.m. A Funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Monday at Holy Cross Ukrainian Catholic Church, 3015 W. Third St., Chester. Friends may call from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. Monday at Carr Funeral Home. Burial will be in St. Andrew's Cemetery, South Bound Brook, N.J.