Ron's grandfather

Chicago, Illinois

Jozef Kaczmarek (1879-1927)

By all accounts, Jozef Kaczmarek had an outgoing personality, a wonderful dancer who also enjoyed tending bar at social events

in his hometown of Warderayn, Poland.  If Warderayn is difficult to locate on a map, that is because, at the time of Jozef's birth

on January 6, 1879, the town consisted of a mere thirty or so families . . . and has not grown much in all the decades since.  The

larger city of Kalisz (which is on the map) is located nearby, with Konin, the county seat, lying thirty miles north.  During Jozef's

youth, the region fell under Russian control.  Jozef spoke both Polish and Russian but had little formal education, limited to just

two summers in which he stayed at the home of relatives in a larger town and attended special classes.  As a grown man, Jozef

stood five feet six inches tall and weighed, at most, one-hundred-and-fifty pounds.  He had hazel eyes and broad, flat features

with thin sandy blond hair and a fair complexion.  A light smoker, Jozef had unusually white and beautiful teeth which he brushed

daily with table salt, as did most people of that era.  His two front teeth were slightly separated, causing a narrow gap, a genetic

trait passed on to his daughter, Regina.  When Jozef married, it was to a woman from above his class.  He met Franciszka

Ossowska on a farm, of all places.  She had been born on September 27, 1879, in Sliwice, near the larger city of Poznan in the

German section of Poland.  Her parents were wealthy by local standards -- the father a Prussian cavalry officer and the mother a

Dame, a titled lady.  Young Franciszka, exhibiting a mild streak of independence, decided to learn what real work entailed and

volunteered to labor on a farm for one summer.  There, she met Jozef, and the two fell in love.  Her parents were against the union

at first but eventually relented and sent her off to Jozef's village in a horse-drawn carriage loaded with a rich dowry of silverware,

crystal, china, linens, and $2,500 in in cash -- a fortune in those days.  Jozef and Franciszka, both twenty-one years old, were

married on November 27, 1900, in a simple ceremony in Warderayn.  Franciszka attended the wedding in her traveling clothes --

not the ornate gown her parents had bequeathed -- because Russian customs agents had confiscated her entire possessions

at the border, finally returning them some weeks later.  Jozef's parents owned five acres of land.  They split off one acre and

presented it to the newlyweds as a wedding gift.  Jozef immediately built a small one-room house on the plot and drew up plans

for expanding it into a tavern.  Two years after they were married, he embarked on the first of three trips to America where he

earned money to pay for improvements to his bar.  Owning a bar had been Jozef's dream, but living alone in one room surrounded

by his parents and fourteen siblings fell far short of Franciszka's vision of married life.  Shamed by the circumstances, she dared

not confide in her parents.  Jozef's lengthy absences only exacerbated the situation; however, after Franciszka departed Poland

with her two daughters and rejoined Jozef in Chicago, Illinois, the couple reversed roles.  Franciszka embraced life in the United

States while Jozef, mourning the loss of his bar, longed to return to Poland.  After only one year in Chicago, the family moved

250 miles to Bay City, Michigan, where, in an ironic and perhaps well-deserved twist of fate, Jozef found himself surrounded by

Franciszka's relatives.  In Bay City, Franciszka bore two more children, Joseph Felix (1914-1995) and Bronistawa (1916-1961).

Franciszka's half-brother, Anthony Kaczynski (1857-1937), farmed 360 acres in nearby Auburn with his wife, eight sons, and two

daughters.  The Kaczmarek children, now totaling four, thoroughly enjoyed the regular family gatherings on Uncle Anthony's farm.

Anthony located a fine six-room house on three acres of land which his sister and her husband rented.  The property contained a

variety of fruit  trees and a beautiful grape arbor.  The newcomers added a cow, a pig, and several chickens.  Franciszka and the

children were happy there, but Jozef remained morose, unable to find any work other than timber clearing in surrounding forests,

to him the lowest form of manual labor.  He and Franciszka could have purchased the house they lived in for the reasonable sum

of $1,800; Anthony even offered to make the down payment, but Jozef refused.  After more than four years in Michigan, he moved

his family back to Chicago where he found a job to his liking polishing nickel-plated medical instruments.  The position paid well,

and Jozef provided for his family, but he also spent the majority of his free time and most of his extra money down at the corner

bar.  The marriage soured, and, in 1922, Jozef left the family, only to return after nine months.  Franciszka accepted him back

on one condition: that he buy her a house.  He did so, a small farm located in Elgin, Illinois, a short train ride to the outskirts of

Chicago.  By this time, Martha (18) lived and worked in New York, and Regina (13) had graduated from a local business course,

found a job, and rented a room in Chicago near her work place.  Franciszka moved to the farm with young Joseph (8), Bernice (6),

and an infant, Evelyn Olga (1), to whom she had given birth in 1921 at the age of 41.  Jozef also remained in a rented room near

his work in Chicago and commuted home to the farm on weekends.  Regina occasionally spotted her father walking the streets

of Chicago, usually a little unsteady on his feet from too much drink.  Out of embarrassment, she avoided him.  At seventeen

years old, in 1926, Regina married and almost immediately began suffering from nightmares in which her father died.  Her new

husband (Leslie Norman Vincent) scoffed at the dreams, but Regina took them quite seriously.  As the month of December and

the Christmas holidays approached, the dreams increased in intensity.  Regina invited her father to her apartment twice, cooking

dinner for him and presenting him with Christmas gifts.  He appeared pensive, somewhat distracted, often staring out the window

at nothing in particular.   On New Year's Day, 1927, someone knocked at the door.  A call had come for Regina on the telephone

out in the hall.  She looked at her husband.  "Oh, Les, you better take it," she said.  "I just know it's about father."  When Les

returned to the room a short time later, his face was ashen.  "Your father is in the hospital," he said.  "They don't expect him to

live."  Eyewitness accounts varied.  Sitting on a low railing, some said he fell, others said he was pushed backward and landed

on his head eight feet below at the bottom of an underground concrete stairway.  The doctors thought, had he not been drinking

at the time, they might have been able to revive him.  Their verdict: accidental death, five days shy of his 48th birthday.  He was

buried in a Catholic cemetery in Niles, Illinois, but the grave no longer exists, having been removed during construction of a new

church building.  Jozef's name still appears in church archives, however, scant testimony that he once walked among the living.

Source: tape-recorded recollections of Virginia Plummer  (Oct. 28, 1996 and Nov. 1, 1996)