In addition to serving as a parish priest, in the 1920s Omelan Pleszkewycz's father was an active community organizer, founding a cooperative credit union, a Prosvita reading room to foster literacy among the people, a Ukrainian language children's school, and other Ukrainian organizations in his town.

[7] During the German occupation, from 1941 to 1944 he served the Ukrainian cooperatives and credit unions in the Ternopil region as a comptroller.

[7] In 1946 he moved to Germany, where he served as the director of a refugee camp outside of Munich for displaced persons run by the United Nations.

[7] In 1949 Omelan Pleszkewycz emigrated from Germany to America, where he initially worked as a laborer for Ryerson Steel in Chicago.

For the first two years the credit union operated out of a desk at a local Ukrainian community center, and its founders worked on a voluntary basis.

Omelan Pleszkewycz was responsible for overseeing the credit union's daily operations and for keeping complete and accurate records.

[10] This credit union grew to become the seventh largest in the state of Illinois with assets of over $450 million at the time of his death.