Witaj Królowo Nieba

"Hail, Queen of Heaven" is an old Polish hymn, traditionally sung at the graveside.  The singers ask Mary, Queen of Heaven, to intercede with her Son on behalf of the deceased, to hasten his admission to Heaven.  The simple melody sounds exactly like the voice and the tones of a child, a well-behaved and serious, loving and beloved child, asking his mother for favor and blessing for an important and worthy purpose.  The lyric conveys that request in simple, reverent, serious, yet confident phrases.

John Zdrojewski, our JFZ, gave a moving eulogy at the funeral of his brother Eugene, our EJZ, and one thing he mentioned was "Witaj Królowo Nieba."  This hymn the Zdrojewski sons, each in his turn, sang at funerals when they were altar boys at St. Luke's, wearing their robes, swinging the censer, accompanying the priest, and moving those present to tears.

This is Eugene's Polish hymnal, which is all new to me.  John has one, too, he tells me; everybody at St. Luke's had one.

"śpiewać" is "to sing;"   (similar to "spiel" and calling to mind our phrase "Don't give me that song and dance!")

"śpiewnik" is "songbook;"

"śpiewnik koscielny" is "songbook for church," hence "hymnal;"

"wielbij duszo moja pana śpiewnik koscielny"  can be rendered as a title and subtitle: 

"My Soul Glorifies my Lord - Sacred Songbook."

The volume format seems more intended for an organist than a chorister, and not too many lyrics are given.  So choristers would perhaps use this to learn a hymn for performance from memory.

 "Nihil obstat" proclaims the censor liborum: "Nothing stands in the way."  No doctrinal error stands in the way of use of this work by the faithful.

"Imprimatur," third-person singular present passive subjunctive of imprimo, print.

Hence, "It may be printed."

"Pieśni za Dusze Zmarłych" -  "Songs for the Souls of the Dead."

You see it just gives four bars, for which I do not know the proper names.  But they are an introductory phrase, the melody line with little lyric-phrasing marks, a long "Amen" phrase, and a final chord.

 Click to enlarge.

The Polish-American Liturgical Center at Orchard Lake Seminary (yes, our Orchard Lake) maintains a collection of these hymns.  Here are their lyrics for "Witaj Królowo Nieba."

Witaj Królowo nieba i Matko litości,
Witaj nadziejo nasza, w smutku i żałości!

K'Tobie wygnańcy Ewy wołamy, synowie,
K'Tobie wzdychamy płacząc z padołu, więźniowie.

Orędowniczko nasza, racz swe litościwe,
Oczy spuścić na nasze serca żałośliwe.

I owoc błogosławion żywota Twojego
Racz pokazać po zejściu z świata mizernego.

O łaskawa, pobożna, o święta Maryja,
Niechaj będą zbawieni wszyscy grzesznicy i ja.

O Jezu, niech po śmierci Ciebie oglądamy,
O Maryjo, uproś nam, czego pożądamy.

Uproś nam żywot wieczny, grzechów odpuszczenie,
A przy śmierci skon lekki i duszy zbawienie.

O Jezu, Jezu, Jezu, Jezu mój kochany,
Jezu wielkiej dobroci nigdy nie przebrany.

Źródło: Śpiewnik Stulecia Orchard Lake

This translation is offered here, where you can listen to a priest singing this hymn on an All Soul's Day at St. Casimir's Oratory in Buffalo.

Hail our Queen of Heaven and Mother of Mercy,
Hail our hope in sorrow and all adversity.
We, the banished sons of Eve, are calling out to Thee,
Sighing and weeping in this prison valley.
O our Mediatrix, direct Thy gaze so merciful
Upon our hearts unworthy, ever so pitiful.
Deign to show us Thy womb’s fruit
Glorious and most blessed,
When it’s time we leave this world
Miserable and wretched.
Hail Mary full of grace, piety and devotion
Let all sinners, me amongst them, obtain our salvation.

Julie

Gene Studying

Exam time approaches once again.  Hurrah.   So that hardworking students everywhere can know that they are not alone, we feature today a snapshot of Eugene Zdrojewski doing the Polish equivalent of "swotting."

This looks like an Orchard Lake classroom, and the youth appears college-age.  So we guess it is c.1942.

Studiuj, Eugeniusz!

Mystery Photo Redux

Email has been flying around 'twixt Paul Zadner and myself;  speculation has abounded; we had a family viewing last night of the Orchard Lake sequence.  The results kept me sort of awake for another night - my thoughts were like ghosts bobbing around my bed.  I woke up this morning knowing who these people are, and knowing the identity of The Woman in the White Knitted Snood.

There are certain facts we must accept:

1.  Eugene, EJZ, was born October 7, 1923.

2.  1941 is the year of EJZ graduation from high school in Orchard Lake, Michigan, and the film sequence is clearly dated by the film director, JPZ.

3.  Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska, first wife of JPZ, mother of Eugene and Casimir, died in 1943.  My parents told me that she died while my Dad, EJZ, was away in boot camp in Fort Benning, Georgia.

4.  Therefore, the lady in the Orchard Lake clip is not Eleanor.  It is Julia.

Foolish of me not to have figured it out before.  I'll be correcting previous Orchard Lake posts.

Further, Paul Zadner spontaneously mentioned in email that the youth in the Mystery Photo "looks about 15 years old."  That was a very helpful comment, as I had not been able to date the lad.  He just looked familiar.

Well, duh!  The photo was dated 1938.  A lad of fifteen then was born in 1923.  That's my Dad. His freshman year at Orchard Lake must have been academic year 1937-1938; his sophomore year 1938-1939. The moment of this photo could have been either.

The man next to Ludwig is Uncle Frank.  Where is younger brother Casimir?  Off taking a nap or something, or old enough to have snapped the photo? How old was Casimir in 1938?  Somebody please click the "Comment" link and let us know his birth year.

And the lady in the dress with the lace collar is Julia. This is the same lady on the deck of the lake steamer across Lake Michigan, and present at the graduation ceremonies at Orchard Lake in 1941, and the touring that followed, all in the Orchard Lake clip.

The reason Julia is so chummy with The Woman in the White Knitted Snood is because they are sisters.  That is my Dad's "Auntie Ollie."  Right at the end of the clip there is a shot of a card that says "Cast:   Dad - Mom - Ollie.  'Poor Kasio stayed home!' "  It flickers by real fast, so be ready to pause the film.

I have no idea why Kasio stayed home in 1941.  Measles?  Chemistry final?  Hot date?

But I do remember Auntie Ollie, as my Dad always called her.  She and her husband Jim visited us in Marilla, and we went to their lovely, cozy home in Buffalo a couple of times.  So I can attest that in the 1960s Auntie Ollie was just as lively and affectionate as she appears in that film.  She had curly blond hair and a glamorous style.  When she decided to laugh, she would stop everything, hold her cigarette aloft, take a deep breath, and belt out a long, sincere laugh with everything she had.  No wonder her husband so obviously adored such a fun-loving, laugh-loving woman.  I miss her myself.

Whew!  Two Mostkowska sisters recognized for their descendants to know.  Ack!  Were there any others? How will we figure them out?

At any rate, the Mostkowski family appears to have been classically-minded, naming daughters Julia and Olivia.

Juliane Zdrojewski

   (named after Julia)

Part 3 of Zdro Films II, Disc 1, Scene 1: Orchard Lake, Michigan, 1941 - Repost of Comments - Corrected Post

Thanks, Tye, for putting this up!

Please note that the links for these films are posted in the "Links" section in the rightmost column of this web page.  We'll put them up in the same order they are on the DVDs.  Probably.

Here's a repost of my earlier commentary on this Orchard Lake film:

Zdro Films II starts off in a celebratory way, with a trip by Great Lakes passenger liner to Michigan, en route to Orchard Lake Seminary.  

Dim the lights - flip the switch - Where's my glass?

Three travelers:  JPZ, Eleanor, and who is the third?  That is, who is the woman with brown hair done up in a white knitted snood?

At 0:29 she is sitting on a bench on deck, with Eleanor.  She's pretty chummy with Eleanor.  Is she a Kotwas?

Correction: The lady is not Eleanor.  She is Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska, mother of Eugene and Casimir.  The other lady is her younger sister Olivia, "Auntie Ollie."

2:00 Ooh, look at the shoulder pads on the 1941 women's suit tailoring.

Correction: Auntie Ollie was a stylish woman, all her life.

Where is Orchard Lake, Michigan?  It's not in my atlas, which is scary. When I Google it I just get some vacation resort.  (Snort.)


Correction:  St. Mary's prep is right there in Michigan, and on the map, and on Wikipedia:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Mary's_Preparatory

2:16  JPZ has handed over the camera to the young lady;  here are JPZ and Eleanor in the frame. Nice lifeboat.

Correction:  Julia.

JPZ is wearing a boater.  How appropriate!  Oh, I love this.

2:34  Oh my - Detroit.  A city that is now totally wrecked and partly turned into garden patches.

2:53  I wonder if that is Henry Ford.  I mean a statue of Henry Ford. 

3:45  That horrible monumentalist architectural style, beloved of all dictators of the 1930s, turns up here on some Catholic monument?  Did the world go completely crazy mid-century?

6:04 Okay there's Dad:  Eugene John Zdrojewski as a high-school senior, I conclude.  He graduated high school in 1941.  He did his first two years of college also at Orchard Lake.  He was drafted into the Army in 1943.  

If you play the sequence from 6:04 in slow motion, with EJZ and the two ladies walking along, you can see him gesturing with his hands and turning his head as he speaks.  His manner is so strikingly characteristic.  Where's my Kleenex?

And the stride looks familiar: it's the stride of a sailor on land . . . or wait . . . a priest navigating around while wearing a cassock.  Heavy skirts make for that slowly rolling gait.  How about that theory?  After all, he was surrounded by priests and nuns, all with the gait.  Who could avoid subconscious imitation?

6:23 Mystery Lady is wearing Spectator shoes.  Aren't they gorgeous?

7:38  EJZ in quarter-profile.  Andrew looks quite a bit like him, doesn't he?

8:05 What's with the sow and piglets all of a sudden?  The Zdrojewski family must have strong agrarian roots, that's all.

9:18 That tan building looks like a dorm, doesn't it?  There were 8 boys in his class.  Did the cooks really put saltpeter into the oatmeal to dampen the adolescent longings?  Or is that just a story people love to tell?

9:45 They must be proceeding in alphabetical order.  Great place, end of the line.  Right?

10:30 Genie brandishes his high-school diploma.  And somewhere in these movies, Johnny does the exact same thing, but in a white jacket.  And somewhere in the photo collection, Casimir brandishes his diploma with a similar great big smile.  I'll have to find those and put them up.

11:23  Wow!  A windmill! Just like Chrosno!

11:45  What are we touring now?  Ford's birthplace? 

12:11 Statues rolling out to ring the bells in the bell tower!  This is great!  It says "?????-BENNETT" above the arch.  Is this building a train station?

12:52  Spectator shoes again, in case you missed them the first time.  Great styles in the forties: feminine, yet fitted and tailored suits and coats, with those notched lapels.  Very lively and sharp-looking. Was it the influence of all the military uniforms around?

13:15  See how in the display of little Ford automobiles in the Ford Rotunda, "Alaska" of course has its own section, separate from the United States.  It looks strange to us time-travellers, but Alaska Statehood was 8 years in the future.

13:30s  As our gent with the boater gazes at the correctly-rotating and accurately-tilted model planet, we notice that the balustrade has giant pink "V8" motifs.  It can't be the vegetable juice referenced here.  So Ford invented the V8 engine?  Who knew?

Clever of JPZ to finish the sequence with a shot of summer fun in summertime waters.

School's out!

Part 2 of Zdro Films II, Disc 1, Scene 1: Orchard Lake, Michigan, 1941

Tye has run up some of the family vids onto his YouTube channel.  Go, Tye!

The vids are named the same way as on the DVDs I mailed out a while back.  Those DVDs were transferred by a professional company from 8mm film in the collections of John and Eugene Zdrojewski.  The first one up is "Zdrojewski Films II, Disc 1, Scene 1:  Orchard Lake."

This film is discussed minute-by-minute in another post here.

Orchard Lake Seminary, in Michigan, is the school where John Peter Zdrojewski, our JPZ, sent his son Eugene for high school and then the first two years of college.

He had done well in the St. Luke's Parish grammar school, and at that time there were good public and private high schools abundant in Buffalo.  So why send the boy off?  To preserve Polish culture - one of the core competencies of this school?  To give him a really good chance to decide to enter the priesthood - kind of like me taking my kids on farm calls, and with approximately the same result?  We can't know.  But it's oral tradition that JPZ felt that way.

Graduation from high school was in the spring of 1941.  JPZ, Grandma Julia, and her sister Auntie Ollie traveled by train and by lake steamer to Michigan for the graduation.  Naturally JPZ produced, directed, and filmed this event.

EJZ as a serious senior.  I have some of his term papers upstairs. 

There he is again, on the bottom right: Class President.  If you click on this, it should open up in Preview or some equivalent.  Then you can zoom in and read the names.  Anybody know about any of these other people?

Anyone have graduation photos of Casimir?  I have one of JFZ somewhere.  Let's put up graduation pictures.  If you wish to guest-blog, please contact me.

Julie

Zdro Films II, Disc 1, Scene 1: Orchard Lake, Michigan, 1941 - Corrected Post

Eugene Zdrojewski's high-school athletics patch.  13.5mm by barely 1mm.  Red felt cutout applied to buff felt.

The film we discuss here is up on Tye's Youtube channel, here.  Thanks, Tye!

There is more on the background to this film here.

The link to this and to all the films will be on the right sidebar of the G&C website.

All the films have the same detailed names on the Youtube channel and on the DVDs sent out some time ago.



Zdro Films II starts off in a celebratory way, with a trip by Great Lakes passenger liner to Michigan, en route to Orchard Lake Seminary.

Dim the lights - flip the switch - Where's my glass?

Three travelers:  JPZ, Eleanor, and who is the third?  That is, who is the woman with brown hair done up in a white knitted snood?

At 0:29 she is sitting on a bench on deck, with Eleanor.  She's pretty chummy with Eleanor.  Is she a Kotwas?

Correction: The lady is Julia Mostkowska Zdrojewska, mother of Eugene and Casimir.  The other lady is her younger sister, Olivia, "Auntie Ollie."

2:00 Nice shoulder pads on the 1941 women's suit tailoring.

Where is Orchard Lake, Michigan?  Ah, here.

2:16  JPZ has handed over the camera to the young lady;  here are JPZ and Eleanor in the frame. Nice lifeboat.

Correction: Julia.

JPZ is wearing a boater.  How appropriate!  Oh, I love this.

2:34  Oh my - Detroit.  A city that is now largely wrecked and partly turned into garden patches.

2:53  I wonder if that is Henry Ford.  I mean a statue of Henry Ford. 

3:45  That horrible monumentalist architectural style, beloved of all dictators of the 1930s, turns up here on some Catholic monument?  Did the world go completely crazy mid-century?

6:04 Okay there's Dad:  Eugene John Zdrojewski as a high-school senior, I conclude.  He graduated high school in 1941.  He did his first two years of college also at Orchard Lake.  He was drafted into the Army in 1943.  

If you play the sequence from 6:04 in slow motion, with EJZ and the two ladies walking along, you can see him gesturing with his hands and turning his head as he speaks.  His manner is so strikingly characteristic.  Where's my Kleenex?

And the stride looks familiar: it's the stride of a sailor on land . . . or wait . . . a priest navigating around while wearing a cassock.  Heavy skirts make for that slowly rolling gait.  How about that theory?  After all, he was surrounded by priests and nuns, all with the gait.  Who could avoid subconscious imitation?

6:23 Mystery Lady is wearing Spectator shoes.  Aren't they gorgeous?

Correction: Auntie Ollie was a stylish woman, all her life.  She also had a terrific sense of humor.

7:38  EJZ in quarter-profile.  Andrew looks quite a bit like him, doesn't he?

8:05 What's with the sow and piglets all of a sudden?  The Zdrojewski family must have strong agrarian roots, that's all.

9:18 That tan building looks like a dorm, doesn't it?  There were 8 boys in his class.  Did the cooks really put saltpeter into the oatmeal to dampen the adolescent longings?  Or is that just a story people love to tell?

9:45 They must be proceeding in alphabetical order.  Great place, end of the line.  Right?

10:30 Genie brandishes his high-school diploma.  And somewhere in these movies, Johnny does the exact same thing, but in a white jacket.  And somewhere in the photo collection, Casimir brandishes his diploma with a similar great big smile.  I'll have to find those and put them up.

11:23  Wow!  A windmill! Just like Chrosno!

11:45  What are we touring now?  Ford's birthplace? 

12:11 Statues rolling out to ring the bells in the bell tower!  This is great!  It says "?????-BENNETT" above the arch.  Is this building a train station?

12:52  Spectator shoes again, in case you missed them the first time.  Great styles in the forties: feminine, yet fitted and tailored suits and coats, with those notched lapels.  Very lively and sharp-looking. Was it the influence of all the military uniforms around?

13:15  See how in the display of little Ford automobiles in the Ford Rotunda, "Alaska" of course has its own section, separate from the United States.  It looks strange to us time-travellers, but Alaska Statehood was 8 years in the future.

13:30s  As our gent with the boater gazes at the correctly-rotating and accurately-tilted model planet, we notice that the balustrade has giant pink "V8" motifs.  It can't be the vegetable juice referenced here.  So Ford invented the V8 engine?  Who knew?

Clever of JPZ to finish the sequence with a shot of summer fun in summertime waters.

School's out!