Clara's "Snapfolio" - Part I

This little book of snapshots was a complete surprise.  It came to light from deep within a carton and settled in the palm of my hand, giving off vibes that eventually I was able to translate with a degree of confidence as "1946."

I took the snapshots out of the cellophane without wearing gloves, but then at least I put them back in the same places.  There's a blank place. Was someone's photo discreetly removed, perhaps in early 1947?

"Maid of the Mist" and a bit of mist on CAMZ's camera lens:

Unknown couple with the Falls power station in the background:

Check out the handbag!  It's bigger than Grace Kelly's:

I've no idea who these other people are.  It's sad when friends part ways.

In Part 2 shall be featured Church Camp and wrestling.  Get ready!

Z

Update to "Larkin Soap Company, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Buffalo Stuyvesant"

Paul Zadner wrote that his mother, Cecelia, worked for the Larkin Soap Company.  He said that it was a "catalog sales operation."

October 1945, St. Luke's Monthly Newsletter - Debate Contest Rules

At Eugene's funeral, his brother John gave the eulogy.  I recall John's voice as he reminded those present that Eugene loved debate and discussion, especially around the dinner table.  Paraphrasing here, I recall John saying, "But you had to follow the rules!  You had to be prepared to build and defend your argument!"

Now on looking over these St. Luke's Newsletters, we can discern one source of EJZ's conviction in these matters.  Father Walter L. Tomiak was Director of the PYC and the Debate Coach.

So here were kids in this working-class neighborhood learning the art and the discipline of rhetorical debate.  All of this was supported by voluntary contributions by households and individuals.  No one was forced to contribute; no one would be turned away from taking part or listening in.

Larkin Soap Company, Frank Lloyd Wright, and the Buffalo Stuyvesant

John D. Larkin and Elbert Hubbard in the 19th century founded the Larkin Soap Company, a highly successful American enterprise that innovated spectatularly in business structure, inventory control, marketing, commercial design, and design of corporate buildings and employee workspace.

Larkin Soap Company hired Frank Lloyd Wright as architect of its Buffalo corporate headquarters, completed in 1906.  Everyone from the executives to the minions to the cleaners got to work in this beautiful, airy palace with air conditioning, Prairie style furnishings, and stained-glass windows.

 

One Larkin Company executive was named Darwin D. Martin.  He did well, and his son Darwin R. Martin, used his own fortune and his inheritance of business skill to build the Buffalo Stuyvesant Hotel.

Here is a postcard from the Buffalo Stuyvesant Hotel. On the back is printed:
                         "Personal management of Darwin R. Martin
                Buffalo's most charming hotel with the best of everything
                                          245 Elmwood Ave.
              Home of the internationally famous Peter Stuyvesant Room"

I'm told that the dance floor had a glass floor with blue lights shining up from under it. These things sound like travelers' tales from a lost world.

The Larkin Building was demolished in 1950 - not by the Larkins, but by the people who picked it up when it was let go for back taxes.  The Stuyvesant Hotel is now owned by New York State.

There are not many photographs of these buildings; our best imagery comes from postcards and other ephemera. Which brings us to East Aurora, New York, as a matter of fact.

The East Aurora Village Shopping Center, to which folk trekked from Marilla to do grocery shopping, and where Clara (CAMZ) bought her daughter (JZ) her first and only pair of "gaucho pants," and where JZ bought her leather wraparound miniskirt for her senior year of high school . . . where was I?

Oh yes, the East Aurora Village Shopping Center was redesigned around 2000 by an architect named Patrick J. Mahoney.  Patrick J. Mahoney has a postcard collection featuring classic hotels of Buffalo and Frank Lloyd Wright buildings everywhere.  Good for him for putting it online.

October 1945, St. Luke's Monthly Newsletter - Peace and the Parish; Mentors at the Stuyvesant

JPZ must have taken these portrait photos, or coached boys and girls as they took them.  Was there a PYC darkroom in the church basement, or in the school?

The poses and facial expressions are strikingly well-done.  JPZ has been studying his photography magazines, apparently.

Was JPZ a fan of Gone with the Wind, by any chance?  Amelia Kasprzyk's Vivien Leigh tendencies are beautifully emphasized in her portrait, I'd say.

By October 1945, letters had reached the St. Luke's Rectory from parishioners overseas on VE-Day and VJ-Day.  The second letter, below, is from Gene Norman in the Phillipines. 

This must have been quite a common sight in 1945 and 1946.  What is this building?  It has fluted Corinthian columns and what looks like a screen door - an odd combination.

JPZ is likely to have taken this photo as well.  My Dad, EJZ, told me that as a youth his father took up wedding photography as a second job, and on weekends Eugene was his assistant.  They went together to many weddings, where EJZ hauled equipment and then posed groups of people while his Dad judged the effect through the viewfinders.

This is Eddie Nietopski, "The Durham Flash."  Evidently a parishioner went off to North Carolina to play minor league ball with the Durham Bulls.

Parishioners who volunteered to run the Parish Youth Council met to plan their work for the upcoming year.  The venue was the Buffalo Stuyvesant, at that time a wonderful, glamorous, thriving place.

Notice Father Tomiak's theme:  "He stressed the fact that less should be done for youth in (the) way of providing everything; that more should be done to have youth help itself."

The Training Course for Sponsors was the leadership training for adult parishioners.  Notice that our JPZ got his diploma for the Sponsor's course in teaching and coaching photography.  

Notice all the areas in which this big Parish had instruction, guidance, and fun for youth. This was strong civil society.  

Now St. Luke's church is a government-run drug-rehab clinic.  As the vitality of civil society drains, government expands. The numbers of people - the proportion of the population -  who cannot function without government expand.  Some people like it that way.

Father Tomiak Film Review: Bing and Bergman

The Assistant Pastor of St. Luke's Parish wrote a review of The Bells of St. Mary's for the October 14, 1945  PYC Monthly.  This is interesting, since the film's release was in December, 1945.  Father Tomiak had not yet seen the film himself, and was evidently looking forward to it.

It helps, in making sense of this review, to realize that "the writer" is Fr. Tomiak referencing himself; "Fr. Early" is a colleague who viewed a pre-release screening and wrote up a review of it;  "Father O'Malley" is the Bing Crosby character.

The anecdote about stealing an Oscar is Early relating a secondhand story;  the anecdote about Manny the projection operator is Early relating a first-hand story.

I invite readers to send up their own remarks on this famous, indeed iconic, American movie.  Here are mine:

1.  With no intent to detract or distract from the salient points in the Tomiak/Early review, I have to state for the planetary record that I found it revolting the way the screenwriters dragged out the guilting process whereby Sister Benedict guilted and schmoozed  an American businessman into donating an entire building to her project.  They made the camera linger on his reluctance to part with any of his wealth.  That is a smear.  Americans, including the wealthiest, are generous people - and often they are quietly generous, anonymous donors.

2.  It's hilarious - most of the time - to read accounts of American moviegoers coming to think of Ingrid Bergman as Sister Benedict.  Apparently they did this by the million, idolizing her as Sister Benedict.  But Ingrid Bergman was in fact an actress, and never claimed to be anyone else, only to portray someone else.  So all these starry-eyed Americans turned on her viciously when she came home pregnant from her European sojourn with the film director.  And we still do confuse (conflate? confound?) actors with their characters, in some cases very seriously.  I think of this movie as sort of the landmark case, if you will, of this phenomenon.

Julie

This is Ingrid Bergman.  Trust me.

Hot Times, Hot Dogs: Update

John has straightened me out about the hot dog post. 

"I think the caption is: "Taken in the summer",which is rather obvious, and it should be 1948.

The "three men with hot dogs" was taken at Glen Park, a small scale amusement park for children in Williamsville. It is Marty. And the young man on the right is my cousin, Dick Kotwas, then of Auburn, now a dentist near Plymouth, Ma. It was him and his two brothers that we visited with last summer in Saratoga."

Thanks, John.  That's why I put these things up: to get things straightened out.

Julie

Hot Times, Hot Dogs

Okay I'm invoking Curator's Privilege to travel, even lurch, forward in time here.  It's going to be 97 degrees today, so here for your sympathetic delectation we present "Jahew in the Summer."

That's Eleanor Zdrojewski's caption to this photo.  Too bad the Beach Boys never heard it; they could have run with the lyric.

So, John, can you verify for us that this is summer 1948?

Can you identify the location?  See that classic wood door in the left background?

See the update to this post!

On to hot dogs:

Hang on tight, here we go . . . 1954?  Is that Marty, or Mark, in the terrific hat with pom-pom?  He's chowing down with such verve that I can't really see his face.  Good work, kid.

John, is something the matter?  You're, what, six years old and you have a hot dog.  What could possibly go wrong?

Who is Mystery Boy, coolly regarding the photographer whilst tending properly to his own lunch?  And no mustard on that suit jacket yet!

And where is this taken?  Looks like a log cabin in the background, with tourists milling around.  A Santa's Village somewhere?

I invite you to send me photos of summer fun.  Our family is scattered around now, so it would be gratifying to be able to post pictures of all branches of the family.

Father Tomiak

JFZ sent some information about Father Tomiak from the bio that appeared in the Buffalo News  shortly after his decease.  Thanks, John.


"The Rev. Walter L. Tomiak, 86, a priest in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo for more than 60 years, died Sunday (Jan. 7, 2001) in Sisters Hospital.

Born in Buffalo, he attended St. Florian's School, School 42 and Hutchinson-Central High School. He graduated from East High School.

He attended Canisius College for a year and was a graduate of St. Bonaventure University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar and a poet laureate.

He graduated from Christ the King Seminary at St. Bonaventure in 1940.
After his ordination on May 18, 1940, he celebrated his first Mass in St. Valentine's Church in South Buffalo, where his uncle was pastor."

"Happy is the man who has found his work," they say.  Our favorite Rhodes Scholar-priest does look happy as a Pastor.

I Googled a bit more from elsewhere:


"Father Tomiak was born in Buffalo in 1913 to the late Walter and Cecelia Tomiak. He attended St. Florian School, Public School #42, Hutchinson Technical High School, and East High School, all in Buffalo; Canisius College, Buffalo; and St. Bonaventure University. In 1940 he entered Christ the King Seminary at St. Bonaventure and was later ordained at St. Joseph Cathedral by Bishop John A. Duffy. Father Tomiak celebrated his first Mass at St. Valentine Parish, South Buffalo.  
Father Tomiak ministered in the missionary apostolate in Cherry Creek; as assistant pastor at Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, St. Luke, St. Valentine, Queen of Peace, Assumption, Transfiguration, and St. Stanislaus parishes, all in Buffalo; as chaplain, Deaconess Hospital, Buffalo, Erie County Home and Infirmary, and Erie County Penitentiary, Alden; as pastor, St. Mary Parish, Pavilion, and priest in residence at St. Mary Parish, Medina. He retired in 1977 to St. Elizabeth Home in Lancaster. 

Father Tomiak was a member of the Knights of Columbus.
A funeral Mass was celebrated by Bishop Henry Mansell at Assumption Parish, Buffalo. Burial was in St. Stanislaus Cemetery, Cheektowaga. 

What is the "missionary" aspect of work in Cherry Creek?

And apparently, when he was at St. Luke's, mentoring and then marrying Gene and Clara, then baptizing John Francis Zdrojewski, he was an Assistant Pastor.

                             

While at St. Luke's he must have had already some connection to the Erie County Home and Infirmary, because Gene and Clara and the whole Parish Youth Council went out there regularly to sing Christmas carols and don their Krakowianki costumes to dazzle the old folks with some song and dance from the Old Country.

There has been a request for enlarged full text of Fr. Tomiak's "Thought for the Day," his 1945 pastoral letter urging better pastoral care of younger girls, excerpted in a previous post.  Here it is:

His parishioners were fortunate to be in the care of such a perceptive and benevolent man.

Julie

May 1945, St. Luke's Monthly Newsletter - Baseball, Stigmata, and the Advancement of Civil Society

The St. Luke's Parish Youth Council assembled for a photo portrait in the living room of the Rectory.  Clara, our CAMZ, kept a print of this photo.  Father Walter L. Tomiak is seated, center, with Clara to his left and Eddie to his right.  Who's Eddie?  Well, I never heard of him, but during these years he shows up now and then on the trail of broken hearts she left behind.

Clara is 16 years old in this photo.  The poise of these young people is remarkable.

Looks like there was a birthday party in the church basement.

This is the PYC Monthly from May, 1945.  Think what was going on in Europe in May of 1945.  Also Asia.  How many of these kids understood at all how lucky they were to have been born on their side of the planet?  How many of them came to understand it later in life?

Also, how did all the pastors deal with the returning veterans?  How could they possibly help them?  How could they, and the veterans themselves, deal with those two opposing mental forces:  the terrible memories and terrible knowledge of war, careening around the same brain as the fierce, overwhelming desire to return to normality, broadly defined as getting employment, a spouse, and children as fast as possible?  Did Bishops hold meetings for pastors to prep for this? Did they trot out experienced pastors from 1918?  If not, why not?

At any rate, the front page features two items: the baseball lineup and a report from a serviceman in Italy of attending Sunday Mass officiated by a priest who claimed to have the Stigmata of Christ on his hands.  See the mitts he's wearing?  

In the fourth item in this issue's "Over There," Walter Drzewiecki explains his feelings about the performance of the Buffalo minor league baseball team.  In so doing, he is quoted in a way that exaggerates, in order to laugh at, his own Polish-accented English.  Everybody did this.  All the Poles told Polish jokes.

(To hear Polish-accented American English from 1943, see "Eugene Zdrojewski at the U Chicago Language School.")

Father Tomiak in this "Thought for the Day" advances the cause of pre-teen girls.  He sees too many of them bored, ignored, lonely, lacking ambition, and ultimately, choosing to marry unwisely just for something to do.  Here he urges parishioners to pay attention to them, to fashion parish social programs that will include them more in the fun parts parish life and also encourage them to study harder, think more widely, think better of themselves, and aim higher.

(Margaret O'Brien was a child film star at that time.)

Ted and Dick Fabiniak, the "Twin Sluggers" featured on the photo page, grew up to own and operate Fabiniak Supermarket.  Clara would phone them from the Marilla house with a grocery order, Ted and Dick would bag it up, and EJZ would pick it up at the end of the office day and tote it out to Marilla.  They did this pretty often through the 1950s and into the 1960s.  How's that for service?

I went to the grocery few times.  It had wood floors - very pleasant and easy on the feet.

Did JPZ take part in the production of this monthly newsletter?  Did he help the kids with the photography?

Julie