CYO Sweater

Gene came home in 1946.  His assets: cultural inheritance, family, a good education, the support of civic and religious institutions, photography skills, warfighting experience.  Missing from that list: cash savings, an actual bed to sleep in (Casimir had the bed now, so he bedded on the floor,) employment, connections in "high places," a plan, and a wife and family of his own.

He pressed trousers at a dry cleaner's until his Uncle Stanley wangled him a job at Lackawanna Plant of Bethlehem Steel.  The GI Bill was in the future.

His family's parish was St. Luke's, where an excellent mentor and friend greeted his return.  Father Tomiak encouraged Gene to active participation in the youth group, the St. Luke's chapter of the Catholic Youth Organization.

John, our JPZ, of course was photographic consultant to the CYO and documented everything on film. No doubt the group shot below was used in the club's publications.  Left to right are Casimir, John, Eugene, and Eleanor Zdrojewski.

Boy, they're snappy dressers!  Check out Casey's sweater and the JPZ necktie!  What is that confusing white blob between Gene and Eleanor?

It is a paper he is holding under his left arm.  That paper mostly obscures, but allows us to be sure of, a big white Club Officer patch that had been sewn onto the left front of the sweater.  The patch is gone, without leaving a trace: maybe he passed it on to his successor in the CYO Presidency.  Yeah, CYO Prez!  Total chick magnet!

Meanwhile, here are Clara and Clara, Jr. Matynka peeling potatoes on a Girl Scout camping trip.

Girl Scouts was okay, but St. Luke's CYO looked interesting too.  Gene was wearing that CYO sweater when he met Clara, on a bus heading out for a CYO trip.

Mom and Dad gave me the sweater when I was in my late teens.  Most of the time I took pretty good care of it, even unto sewing in a metal chain for hanging it on a hook.  One time, though, the moths got to it.  In fact, on two separate occasions, one grandmother after the other picked it up, muttered sad imprecations in Polish, and took it away to take crochet hooks and knitting needles to it.  The results of their professional ministrations are all over the garment, including interior patches to repair exterior appearance, in two slightly different shades of blue yarn.  I would not have those changed for anything.

Psychoanalyze this, if you like:  I've not worn it much over the last 30 years.  Now that the CYO sweater is all photographed and blogged about, I'll wear it often, starting today.  No worries!  I have a cedar chest.

For related posts, you can browse the long list of "Labels," or keywords, that I have been attaching to posts all along.  If you click "St. Luke's," for example, you get a page with all the posts bearing the "St. Luke's" label.

Try also clicking on "Uncle Stanley" and "Tomiak."

For a Christmas-themed St. Luke's field trip story, go to the Search box and and type in "Story Arcs Intersect."

Stay warm, everybody!   Love, Julie

Melania

Dad, our EJZ, and his brother Casimir had a younger sister, Melania.

Melania was ten years younger than Eugene, having been born 12/14/1933.  She died, at home, of whooping cough, when a young girl.  Dad was unsure of the year of her death, recalling to me only that she died when he was away at Orchard Lake high school. 

When Dad was 16, Melania was six years old.

There appear to be no photographs or effects of any kind of this little girl.  It is as if any reminder would be so painful that no reminders were permitted.

What did she look like?  Here is her mother, Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewski, shortly after her marriage:

And here is the same lady some years later, probably after having had three children.  Note that her husband, our JPZ, arranged a similar pose:

Pertussis vaccine was developed in 1926; by 1933 it had been around for 6 or 7 years.  I wonder if Melania had been vaccinated.  In any event, the vaccine has never been perfect; mutations of the bacterium do occur; there was no antibiotic to treat a case of pertussis in the 1930s.

Had she lived, she would have been Aunt Melania to the children of Eugene and of Casimir.  Her children would have been cousins to our generation; their children second cousins to our children.

Dad only spoke of his little sister a couple of times.  He used hushed tones and pretty quickly put an end to the conversation.  Thinking back on that, I realize that twice in his life, his womenfolk died while he was away.  First his little sister died of a sudden illness, when he was a teenager.  Then when he was in Army boot camp in Fort Benning, his mother died of a heart attack.  Medical advances having made such deaths less common, it is easy for us of a later generation to fail to realize what it was sometimes like for our elders, even in peacetime at home.

Speaking of peacetime at home, here is the back of Aunt Melania's birth certificate:

The line at the bottom, centered, italicized, and bolded, instructs Carefully preserve this certificate by having it framed.  My instinctive reaction is FDR has been elected 5 weeks and already we are being ordered around!  I am satisfied to report that our family disobeyed.  They stuck it in a file with other such documents, which I am now going through.

This means that there will be edits to the other pages of this blog, beginning with the Z side and moving along to the M side.  I would be so appreciative of additions and corrections to the data up on those family pages.

May Street Tapes - Marty's Production Notes

When Marty sent me the several May Street audiotapes which we've been considering in the previous several posts, he included some notes on his retrieval and archiving processes.

The geekily inclined will find them of intrinsic interest; anybody can appreciate the care and judgment that the effort required.

Thanks again, Marty.

Here are Marty's notes:

_____________________________________________________

"My long time lab partner from work has a reel-to-reel deck.

I went to his place last Saturday with 3 of the 6 tapes.

After a confusing and slow start, we recovered all the personal recordings.

There was roughly 30 minutes of personal audio taken from various sections of one reel.

All of this was stored in a .wav file.

I split this file into 3 parts,also .wav files.

I then converted these to mp3 files.

These are attached.

Details:

Starting out, everything played backward.

We tried various things including an inverted rewind.

Still backwards.

Finally, mid-reel, we took the reels off the machine and switched them so the tape would be going in the opposite direction.

It played correctly.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the tape was recorded in 2-track stereo (can be played in one direction only) and left in the box tail-out; and we were playing it on a 4-track stereo machine assuming there was a head and tail at each end (can be played in both directions).

The condition of the tape was remarkably good.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating a lot of personal content was filled completely with music.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating mostly music and maybe some personal content was where all the personal content was found.

The tape in the box with index notes indicating a 4-track stereo recording of music was completely blank.

The other 3 tapes have no index notes with them; except for one which says "brittle film", and sure enough, that tape looks poor.

When we first heard the grandfather clock, it sounded great.

Listening to it several times after that with cheap headphones, I wonder if we got it at the correct speed."

_____________________________________________________

I'd say the grandfather clock sounds just right, in pitch and tempo.

I'd also say some tech talent was evidently transmitted from grandfather to grandson.

May Street Tapes - Florida Trip and a Party at Home

For openers, JPZ/Daddy/Dziadzi reads a letter he has received from Eleanor, who has taken the train for a Florida vacation. At 0:33 Eleanor in her letter says "Emily and I."  Is Emily her sister?

At 0:57 she expresses in her writing the fond hope that JPZ will be "visiting Johnny" (presumably at the home of his Kotwas grandparents) so that Johnny will not be "missing her too much."  Hilariously, JPZ breaks in in his own deep voice with a hearty "Me too!!"

At 1:03 Eleanor's letter mentions "Gwennie and Dickie." These must be Kotwas relations also. Can somebody figure this out and let us all know the specifics? It would be terrific to have names and photos to associate with these voices.

At 1:24 she tells of their getting dolled up and going to a Martha Raye show. Raye was a very popular  singer and actress who did a lot of USO tours as well, during WWII and subsequently.

Correspondence now dealt with, we come to a mystery poem, or prayer in verse, at 1:50. Can anyone offer a hint as to what this is? Król  is "crown."  So it sounds like a reference to the King of Kings, in niebieski, heaven.

And there cannot be an event like this without a poem about an orphan. At 3:30 we hear of the sierota.  I'd love to find a transcription of this poem; let me know if you find one, please? 

(On a wall of the Marilla house hung a print depicting an orphan girl, weeping as she leaves the cemetery where she evidently has been visiting the grave of her parents. I cannot find that painting on an image search, which is a sad thing. There were several framed prints in the house which I suspect were purchased by Dad, our EJZ, while he was in Chicago in 1943-1944. One of them has a label on the back with the name of a Chicago art dealer. Sierota may have been one of those.)

Back to the sound file: They have Johnny back to praying again from 4:18 to 6:00. Spiritually, the partiers are covered.

What is the beautiful song at 6:25?  I'd love to learn that song! Can anybody come up with a title or first line or a keyword?

From 6:44 the celebration is for Grandma Victoria Zdrojewska.  "Let's all sing for Busia . . . na imieniny."  This day was her name-day. She was named after a saint, and this is the feast-day of that saint. Her family sings to her Vivat!  Sto lat!

Sto lat, sto lat,

Niech żyje, żyje nam.

Sto lat, sto lat,

Niech żyje, żyje nam,

Jeszcze raz, jeszcze raz,

Niech żyje, żyje nam,

Niech żyje nam!

           One hundred years, one hundred years,

           That she lives, she lives among us.

           One hundred years, one hundred years,

           That she lives, she lives among us.

           Once again! Once again:

           That she lives, she lives among us,

           That she lives among us!

Following the whistling performance, at 8:34 JPZ has a little visit with his grandson Mark. This helps date the file to about 1955; does that sound reasonable? JPZ jingles some Christmas bells and asks Mark Co to jest? - What are these/is this?  I wonder if he was hoping for an answer in English, "bells" or in Polish, dzwony.

Following the jingle bells is an interlude of conversation in which a lady says  the word południe repeatedly.  Południe means "noon," "midday." It also means "south." Think about how ancient a word must be, if the directional term, "south," is the same as the primitive astronomical observation a person can make just by standing outside at midday.

Stand there at midday, when the sun is as high as it ever is going to get that day. Raise one arm and point it directly overhead. Raise the other arm and point to the sun. If you walk in the plane determined by those two line segments your two arms, and walk on a line in the direction from the overhead-pointing arm and toward the sun-pointing arm, you are walking south. 

You need noon to determine south. That's the way it is in the Northern Hemisphere of our planet. We use words invented by very distant forbears living the lives of pastoralists, farmers, and hunters.

By 9:10 in this file the partiers are starting discussions on singing Christmas carols. Johnny livens things up by bringing out his new toy six-gun. Merry Christmas, everybody!

Hey! Finger off the trigger and out of the trigger-guard!

What a ride this file has been!  Thanks, Marty, for your rescue operations.

Related, previous posts: 

Three Bears;

Good Night Prayers - Our Father;

Good Night Prayers - Hail Mary;

Good Night Prayers - Conclusion and Mystery Poem.

Grandpa Ludwig, Grandma Victoria, and Uncle Stanley

Casimir, John, Eugene

May Street Tapes - Good Night Prayers. Conclusion, with Mystery Poem.

Angels are the subject of the mystery poem, the prayer in verse, that runs from 2:43 to 3:43.

JPZ and JFZ Johnny read it together - is sounds like four lines - after which we hear JPZ's voice saying teraz razem. That is "now once".  Razem is a time, an occasion, an instance of something occurring.

So JPZ says teraz razem, whereon the two of them repeat the verse.

Then, in what is the most poignant part for me, we hear our JPZ say OK teraz Daddy.

JPZ performs the verse, in a way that emphasizes the phrasing; quite beautiful.

Then JPZ says teraz Johnny. Following the demonstration, the pupil has another go at the verse.


The show ends with the Goodnight Song in duet. There is a break in the tape, followed by a JPZ solo rendition, in a lower key no doubt more comfortable for him, and very possibly after a little nip, a little nightcap.

I've searched so far in vain for the text to this angel prayer. Can anybody make a suggestion?

Marty, thanks so much for retrieving these files for us so they can be archived.

May Street Tapes - Good Night Prayers. Zdrowaś Marjo, Hail Mary

We continue with Johnny's recording debut. Last episode featured Ojcze nasz, Our Father. This time we consider Zdrowaś Marjo, the recitation of which runs from 0:55 to 1:30.

Zdrowaśka is the name of the prayer itself:  Ave Maria, or "Hail Mary".


It starts off with the greeting attributed to the Angel Gabriel:

Zdrowaś Marjo, łaskiś pełna, Pan z tobą!

AVE MARIA, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.

Hail, Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee!


Next it offers a different greeting to Mary, this one given to her as she approaches the front door of her cousin Elizabeth's house, to stay and help her out during Elizabeth's last trimester of pregnancy with the future John the Baptist:

Błogosławionaś Ty między niewiastami,

Benedicta tu in mulieribus,

Blessed art thous among women,



i błogosławion owoc żywota Twojego, Jezus.

et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus.

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.


           (I repeated this prayer for several years as "FROO dove THY woom". Finally I figured out what the words were and meant.  In the meantime the adults surrounding me were spared being asked strange questions. But instantly on figuring it out I pounced on Sister Mary Ora and demanded to know why Mary married Joseph. Shouldn't she have married God? Wait, why hadn't she married God previously? Sister Mary Ora kept herself together there in Sunday school class, but the convent walls must have rung with laughter later on.)

The prayer concludes with direct speech from the person to Mary, asking for her intercession with her Son on behalf of the supplicant:

święta Marjo, Matko Boża, módl się za nami grzesznymi

Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, 

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners,


teraz i w godzinę śmierci naszej!  Amen.

nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

now, and in the hour of our death.  Amen.


The particulars of the Annunciation are expressed very beautifully in the Advent hymn Archanioł Boży Gabryjel.

And then of course, Gounod set the prayer to a Bach Prelude, transfixing hearers with the beauty ever since.

Kocham was - 

Julie

Picnic Supper in Marilla, 1970s

JPZ, Dad, Dziadzi.

It's the back yard picnic venue in Marilla.  Some shirt-and-tie event has taken place earlier.  Now at suppertime, even though the shadows are long, it must be kinda warm, for he has undone his tie.

Marty, did you take these pictures?

John has taken his tie clean off!  And Dad has changed into a sport shirt, since he's home and can do so. This is the first appearance of the EJZ mustache on this blog. Dad is in his Lech Wałęsa lookalike phase - although Solidarity is a decade in the future at this point. 

Sideburns!  How could you menfolk stand them?

A Militello must have come over on a Militello horse.  That's not Queenie; she had light beige mane and forelock.  Marty, do you remember this horse's name?

Dad hung onions out to dry on the front porch.

So does anyone recall what occasion this was?  Please comment on the site if you can supply any details.

"Wartime Series" Post of May 12, 2012 - in re Grandfather Clock

Putting up the grandfather clock photos recalled the May 2012 post "Wartime Series."

I ran across those prints again, and wanted to show them to you before I file them away.  Matter of fact, they are now in a Ziploc baggie along with a little piece of paper that says "Wartime Series."  Hey, I'm not going to live forever - who does? - so, heirs and descendants, understand and appreciate these artifacts, and take care of them.

In the meantime I shall bend every effort to solve the mysteries involved, as and when possible.

Deal?  Good.

JPZ - EJZ - USA

Grandfather Clock, Then and Now

John Peter Zdrojewski, our JPZ, came to America on the boat in 1903 with his parents, Ludwig and Victoria Zdrojewski.  As a young man in Buffalo, he worked for a time in a carpentry shop.  We have a photo of the crew in the shop.  JPZ is second from right, identified for us by his son John, our JFZ.

John Peter built a grandfather clock, a "case clock," at home.  Family legend has him just finishing it up on the kitchen table when his firstborn, Eugene, our EJZ, was born in the next room.  That was October 7, 1923.

So it was always in the house, on St. Louis Street and then on May Street, in Buffalo.  Below we see Eugene home from Orchard Lake - high school? or college? - at Christmastime.  The grandfather clock is in the background, obscured by that lamp.

In 1940, JPZ's younger brother Casimir Zdrojewski and his wife Cecelia brought their firstborn, Paul, to visit.  Here is the photo of the young family seated by the grandfather clock.

During World War II, while Eugene was away 1943-1945, JPZ made a photo series about being a parent on the home front.  We have seen the photo below, here and also here.  This is the best photo we have found so far of that clock.

The grandfather clock moved to the Marilla house some time after its completion in 1957.  We have yet to find a photo of that clock in its place in the Marilla house!  That is a shock.  With luck we will find some.  It was important; it was a fixture; so where are the pictures?

In the 1980s Gene and Clara took the clock to somebody for refinishing.  We have a couple of Polaroids from their visit to the clock while it was in rehab.  Tye found them inside the case.

When the Marilla house was closed in 2008, the clock went to its new home with Tye and Kim Zdrojewski.  Thanks, Tye, for the photos.

The old, dark varnish had historic-sentimental value, but the new finish shows off the wood so much better.  Looks like curly maple, doesn't it?  

A treasure beyond price.

Induction and Basic Training, August through November 1943

The True Tardis continues smoothly on course in its little epicycle off of the Chicago Language school trajectory, in order to survey what we have from end-sophomore year in June 1943 to the start of the Chicago studies.

Last post we saw, in Mind's Eye, Gene with a bunch of Buffalo guys entraining at Central Terminal in Buffalo.  Destination was Fort Upton Induction Center on Long Island.  His vaccination record form says at the bottom "HQ 1222d Reception Center, Camp Upton, NY."  Looks like tetanus toxoid and triple typhoid vaccine were given August 8, 1943, maybe the day they got off the train.

Variola vaccine against smallpox was given a couple weeks later: August 28, 1943.

He had to wait until 1-22-45 for his plague vaccine.

Here is a carbon of the Will they had him make.  First beneficiary is his father, our JPZ.  Second, in the event that JPZ would have been no longer living, is brother Casimir.  What about his mother, Julia?  She is not mentioned, although I will offer proof next post that she was still alive at that time.

So either this was the way they did things, or this is a carbon of a replacement Will, following his mother Julia's death a few months later.

Life insurance pre-application.

Below are the orders saying "You're in A.S.T.P. so come to A.S.T.P. Basic at Fort Benning."  Seems like he would have received this at Upton, then been sent on a train down to Georgia.

Notice that the recommendation is for "Foreign Area Language Polish Term 4."

So as he sat on that train going down the Eastern Seaboard, he must have figured that he was going to Europe - to Poland.

Something happened.  What?  Why did he end up studying Japanese?

Hypothesis #1:  They recorded his Polish speaking voice at Fort Benning, not in Chicago, and thought his Polish too American-sounding for covert work in Poland; he would blow his cover.

Hypothesis #2: The Army was already planning for a land invasion of China and other areas held by Imperial Japan.  It had been more than a year since Midway (June 1942.)  At Midway, Tojo's military was strategically done for - it was obvious that it would lose -  as I understand from my scant reading.  Yet they did not surrender - we know what it ultimately took for Tojo to surrender.

Hence the War Department was already preparing in 1943 to interrogate Imperial Japanese prisoners.

In fact a Fort Benning item, not Chicago?

Here are the Fort Benning things.

So Basic Training was August 30-November 27, 1943.

Your true Dr. Who

Posting Updated

There's an update on the previous post, incorporating Kotwas family data John sent.  To see the corrected version, Wedding and Graduation Season, 1946? - Updated and Corrected with Kotwas Family Members, is up on Gene and Clara's.

Dziękuję, Janek

Julianna

Wedding and Graduation Season, 1946? - Updated and Corrected with Kotwas Family Members

The previous posting featured Casimir Zdrojewski in his high school dorm at St. John Kanty preparatory school in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Here is Casimir all robed up for graduation therefrom.  It looks like the basement at Kanty; maybe it rained that day.

Grandma Victoria Zdrojewska, her daughter-in-law Eleanor Kotwas Zdrojewska, and to her left (in white dress and black hat) Eleanor's mother, Ludwicka ("Louise") Chmielewska Kotwas.

John, our JFZ, writes of his maternal grandmother Louise, our LCK, as "the kindest person I have ever met."

Also, "And, interestingly, Louise' parents came to America in the late 1870s and were among the first parishioners of St. Stanislaus Church in Buffalo."

Continuing around the table, we have 3 mystery people, JPZ nattily dressed, and to the JPZ's own left is, as John writes, "Eleanor's father, who came from the Russian partition of Poland in 1902."

Then we have the man of the hour, Casimir with boutonnier and mortarboard.  Oh, and diploma!

Does someone have more photos of this event, or the diploma to scan?  If so, please send them; I would love to put them up!

And here below, a terrific find from the New Trove - thanks, Marty!  Casey and Gene and a very cool car, all right at the front doors of Kanty Prep.

Andrew, you are the Spirit and Image of your grandfather at that age.  Come walk around Krakow with me so I can have fun watching you run into a doppelganger around every corner. 

A Google Image search on "Ford coupe converible 1941" returns many pretty pictures of cars like Gene's, including these two:

Must be Eugene took the photo below, probably in 1946.  JPZ and Eleanor were married in August of that year.  Casey is grinning wickedly in his James Dean hairdo still.  And a similar Ford is prominently included in the shot.  Paint job? New car? JPZmobile?

Le pique-nique with Grandma Kotwas, Eugene, JPZ,
the picnic basket and percolator, Casimir, and Eleanor.

Below, we see Eleanor, at right, and Clara, at left by Eugene, gamely smiling as they realize the antics their new family gets into at the drop of a hat, or some napery, or a potted plant.

Paul Zadner's lovely Mamma is unfazed. Paul has no idea that there is Chow Mein in his future. We saw this photo near the beginning of this blog, in - let's see - "Wedding Photo on the Wall".