Taras Szmagala, Sr. is an active member of the Ukrainian community in Cleveland, OH, where he was born in 1935. He received his BA from Allegheny College in 1955 and an MA from John Carroll University in 1967, after which he held a number of management positions at US Steel in Cleveland, for Parma Public Schools, and later  V.P. for Government Relations and Assistant General Manager at the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. Szmagala Sr. worked on a number of political campaigns, including Robert Taft Jr and Richard Nixon, while also holding leadership positions in various community organizations, including the United Ukrainian Organizations of Ohio, as a member of the board for the Ukrainian Credit Union, the Ukrainian Museum Archives and others. 

In 1991, Szmagala Sr. was appointed by President George H. W. Bush as a representative from the Ukrainian-American community as part of the official delegation that went to Kyiv for the opening of the memorial for the Babyn Yar Massacre in 1941. That year he also organized a meeting at the White House with President Bush after Ukraine's declaration of independence, shortly after which the White House recognized the country as a sovereign state.