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, that region of Poland 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 only 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 each day with table salt, as did most people of that

era.  His two front teeth were slightly separated, causing a narrow gap, a genetic trait that he 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, exercising a bit 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 they eventually relented and sent her off

to Jozef's village in a horse-drawn carriage loaded with a generous dowry of silverware, crystal, china, linens,

and $2,500 in in cash.  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 did not

fit 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 had

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 the big city

of Chicago where he found a job polishing nickel-plated medical instruments.  The job paid well, and Jozef

provided for his family, but he also spent all 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 outside 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 through the streets

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

In 1926, at seventeen, Regina married and almost immediately began suffering from nightmares in which her

father died.  Her 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.   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 my father."  When Les returned to the

room a short time later, his face looked white as a ghost.  "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.

Had he not been drinking at the time, the doctors thought they might have been able to revive him.  The verdict:

accidental death, five days shy of his 48th birthday.  Jozef was buried in a Catholic cemetery in Niles, Illinois,

but the grave site no longer exists, having been removed during construction of a new church building.  Jozef's

name does still appear in the 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)