One Hundred Years Ago

One hundred years ago today, a twenty year old Polish girl from Poznan and a twenty-one year old Polish farmer (whose family came from Danzig) are wed. Her name is Victoria Fieskia and he is Alexander Dronzinski. They begin their life together with the purchase of a small farm just south of the Adirondack Mountains, in Fulton County, New York; in the town of Perth.

Two years later, they start a family. And it is because of that family that I am here; I am their third grandson. My grandfather Alexander (known to me as Jah-Jah, a shortened version of the Polish affectionate form of the word Grandfather) died in 1960 and my grandmother Victoria (known to me as Boppie) passed away in 1987; yet they both live on through numerous grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. They truly were two of the most special people ever to have walked the fields of God's green earth.

If there are farms in heaven, that's where they can be found. Boppie and Jah-Jah...married one hundred years ago...today.

Degrees of Treasure

I have boxes. And boxes piled upon more boxes. Some full of memories I call mine. Some full of memories that once belonged to wonderful people now gone from me. It is of the latter I write about here.

Two nights ago, in the basement room I use for storage, I came across a couple of such boxes. It happened while I was doing my best to reorganize a room where these containers seem more like boulders from the poem Mending Wall (Robert Frost, 1914) than boxes.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun...

Of course there is not much ground-swell or sun to speak of in my basement; still the boxes always seem to find their way to the floor and disarray. Nothing natural here, but more "the work of hunters" -- the result of a year’s worth of needing something stored “somewhere” in the room and the hunt that follows.

While reorganizing such a room it is fun to imagine stumbling across a lost treasure. And it is even more delightful to actually do it. One such box of  “treasure” contained more than twenty complete newspapers that belonged to my Aunt Theresa, and some partial newspapers that most certainly, because of their age, belonged to my Grandmother Victoria.

Upon realizing what I had found, I decided to take photos of the newspapers that most awe struck me and share them here.

All of them are uploaded in large format so one can click on them to make the image larger (and more readable).

1 September 1939

My grandmother's older sister had a son whom would be my great grand-parents only grandson; he died this day, one of many whom tried in vain to defend Poland from the invasion.

20 December 1939

5 June 1944

8 May 1945

And the oldest Newspaper in the box...

from the end of World War One.

27 June 1919

My grandmother left Poland in December 1909 to come to America, sparing herself two world wars and the atrocities of a madman. Unfortunately things were different for the family she had to leave behind.

These newspapers are indeed treasures, if for no other reason that my grandmother and aunt put them away for safe keeping.

However, it was after looking though the newspapers that the most valuable treasure was found.

What somehow made its way to me left me speechless for a bit. It is a photo of my Grandmother with her first born son Alex. On the back of the photo the year 1914 is written. The same year Robert Frost penned the poem I spoke of earlier. My grandmother is just twenty-three years old in this photo and only four years out of Poland. My mother would not be born until 1932.

The word treasure is often a relative term. And this, in my eyes, is a treasure of immense proportion.