Polish Girls and Irishmen

The Daycare
The Nanny

This is not a book review per se, but what I have to say was inspired by a book I just finished reading.   It's called The Grasinski Girls: the Choices They Had and the Choices They Made (Ohio University Press, Athens, 2004, 290 p., $24.95) and was written by Mary Patrice Erdmans, who is perhaps a kind of "shirt-tail-cousin-by-marriage" to me, so keep in mind there may be just a tiny bit of nepotism at work here.  It is a well-researched and exquisitely written book and a marvelous tribute to her hard-working and close-knit Polish-American extended family.   Erdmans, who grew up on the southwest side of Grand Rapids, is now a Sociology Professor at Central Connecticut State University.   She was the second of six children.   The author's mother explains her large family quite simply as "what happens when a hot-blooded Hollander marries a good Polish girl with morals.   You have a houseful of kids."

I know something myself about good Polish girls, because I married one nearly forty years ago.

Like Erdmans and the Grasinski girls, I grew up in a big Catholic family too, with four brothers and one sister.   I was the fourth boy, which could have been something of a disappointment to my mom -- not another boy!  But if it was, I never heard about it.   Instead I got to be the "baby" for seven years, until Mom finally did get her girl (my sister, Mary), so I know what a mother's love is all about.  Our family was mostly Irish, with some Germans way back in the pack on Mom's side, and, with a name like Bazzett, there must have been a Frenchman somewhere in the woodpile too, probably by way of Canada.   As was the case with the Grasinski family, Mom was always there for us, at home.   Dad earned the money and provided the discipline, and Mom made sure we always had enough to eat and decent clothes to wear.   (I wore plenty of hand-me-downs, but thought that quite normal.)   And somehow my folks found the money to send us all to Catholic school too, where the good School Sisters of Notre Dame knocked the Baltimore Catechism into our heads, taught us our times tables and long division, as well as how to diagram a sentence and even to dance.   So yeah, I suspect my childhood was, in many ways, similar to that of the Grasinski girls, except for one thing.   I was a boy.  And boys did indeed have more choices once they got older.   And although Irish-American kids like me did perhaps hear our share of Irish "Mick" jokes, I doubt if it was anywhere near as hurtful as the anti-Polish sentiment that was prevalent a generation or two earlier.  Erdmans makes some references in her book to the "dumb Polack" jokes that were common when her mother and aunts were young, but also notes that the same jokes could be quite easily turned back on the "dumb Hollanders" who often told them in the largely Dutch Calvinist neighborhoods of Grand Rapids.

My late in-laws were both first generation Polish-Americans.   Chester Ziembowicz was born in the coal-mining country near Carnegie, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the steel-mill town of Wierton, West Virginia.   He only completed six years of formal education, and by the time he was sixteen he had migrated to Detroit, where he lied about his age and found work on the Ford assembly line.   It was the 1930s, a time when Poles were still a much-maligned and often persecuted minority.   After enduring a few years of futile fist-fights (which he usually won) and name-calling slurs ("Zim-buvitch, sumbitch"), Chet finally went with his brothers to Detroit's city hall, where they had their name legally changed to Zimmer, a fine German name.   (Unfortunately, the following year, Hitler began his infamous march to power.   Sometimes you just can't win.)   I pried this history piecemeal from Chet over the years.   He was proud of his Polish heritage, but because of his earlier "troubles" he didn't talk much about his youth.   He stayed at Ford for over forty years, finally retiring as a scheduling supervisor at the River Rouge steel plant, a staunch union man.

My mother-in-law, Wanda Bartuzel, was born in Detroit's Polish enclave of Hamtramck, where your neighborhood was determined by which Catholic Church was in it.   She met Chet Zimmer when she was just thirteen.   Decades later he still remembered that she loved dancing and candy bars.  Although she was barely five feet tall, Wanda was a fiercely independent woman all her life.   She worked as a nurse's aid in hospitals in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, cleaning floors, bottoms and bedpans, until she'd saved enough money to go to Beauty School.   She loved and protected her children with the single-minded ferocity of a mama bear, and she worked off and on as a beautician for over forty years while keeping a neat house and always ensuring her four kids and husband were adequately fed and clothed.   Much of her "extra" income was directed towards her kids' education, first for Catholic school and then for college.   Like the Grasinskis and the Erdmans, Chet and Wanda Zimmer wanted their kids to have a "better" life.

Perhaps Polish girls are "name-sensitive".   The youngest Grasinski girl, Mary, arbitrarily changed her name to a more exotic-sounding "Mari" later in her life.  My wife-to-be, baptized Treva (after her Mom's best friend, Treva Sobecki), decided, after finishing eighth grade at St. Anthony's, that "Terri" was a more modern and American-sounding name, so she adopted it, or tried to.   Her family and her Catholic school friends refused to go along with her new, chosen name.   She had always been Treva to them, and that's what she stayed.   But the name worked for her new public school friends when she started high school, and it kept working for her a few years later when she left home for college.

Yes, Terri had more choices than the Grasinski girls.   Her mom wanted her to go to a real college, although Wanda would have no doubt tacitly acknowledged that the most important degree her daughter could earn at school would be her MRS.

I met Terri at Ferris State in 1967.   I was fresh out of the army, full of juice and "lookin' for love", as the song said.   She was gorgeous, stacked, brown-eyed and blonde (at the time).   I didn't have a chance.   I didn't know much about Polish girls, but I was a goner from day one.   Terri made no secret of her Polish heritage, and once I met her family her "secret identity" (Treva Jean) was soon out of the bag too.  Chet was initially a bit intimidating with his stern face and demeanor (you know how dads and daughters are), but Wanda welcomed me with open arms, at first feeding me traditional American fare like steak and fries, but then, gradually, my education about things like golubki, pierogies, and kapusta commenced.  Another thing I quickly learned was that Polish girls believe in marriage, as in "show me the ring!"   No commitment?   Then no games, no foolin' around.  Period.   And by God, it worked!   Here we are 38-plus years, three kids, a few career changes and fourteen moves later, still together, thank God.

I should probably point out here that the Bazzett tradition of marrying a Polish girl started back with my Uncle Bernie, over fifty years ago.   He first spied my Aunt Mary when she was only fifteen or sixteen years old.   Mary Pawlowski grew up with the Grasinskis and the Icieks, her cousins, down in the Wayland-Hilliards area, about twenty miles south of Grand Rapids.  Uncle Bernie wasn't Polish, which may have been a strike against him, and he was also "too old" for Mary.   So he waited around until he wasn't too old, and, in the meantime, somehow wormed his way into the affections of the large Pawlowski family.   I was an altar boy at their wedding.   I was only eleven, but I knew "beautiful" even at that tender age, and Uncle Bernie's bride was unquestionably one of the most beautiful girls I'd ever laid eyes on.

The Grasinski Girls is about the supposedly "limited" choices young women had back in the 40s and 50s, and how most of them chose marriage and motherhood.   In the extensive interviews conducted for the book, the author's mother and aunts often spoke about being "just a mom".   Well, it is my contention and fervent belief that there is absolutely no job more important than "being a mom".  The fruits of that job done well are simply incalculable.   My Uncle Bernard and Aunt Mary raised eight children.   Those kids are now, in birth order: Christine -- an early childhood development specialist who runs her own daycare center (and writes poetry on the side); Brian -- a geo-physicist, who also earned an MBA and is now a far-ranging world-traveling administrative trouble-shooter for a major oil corporation; Eric -- a civil engineer; Joe -- a commercial artist; Terry -- a neuro-psychologist, who has authored numerous papers on brain function and is a college professor; Maureen -- an attorney who was made a full partner in a prestigious law firm while pregnant, and is now at home (her choice) being "just a mom" (HA!); Denise -- a college English teacher and counselor and co-editor of an on-line literary magazine; and finally, last (but certainly not least), Lisa -- a women's cancer surgeon, or a "gynecological oncologist" (Uncle Bernie says, laughingly, "I can finally pronounce it, but I can't tell ya what it means").

These eight people, now making untold contributions to society, are largely who they are today because of their mom.   Over fifty years ago a young Mary Pawlowski wanted to go to nursing school after graduating from high school.   But her parents already were helping another daughter through school in a convent and couldn't afford to help her too.   You have to understand that this was a time when people like the Pawlowskis (or the Bazzetts) would never have dreamed of borrowing money or taking out a loan, even for something like school.   So Mary was reluctantly told she'd have to wait.   Instead she got a job with the telephone company, where she worked for two years and actually saved enough money to go to nursing school at St. Mary's in Grand Rapids.   But then there was this handsome and persistent young Irishman, who must have kissed the Blarney stone.   Mary Pawlowski opted for love.   She didn't go to nursing school.   She decided instead to be "just a mom".   This was the choice she made.

I don't know what the achievement track record is for the children of the Grasinski girls (at least one of them though is one helluva good author and a sociologist), but I'd be willing to wager it's probably pretty darn good.

The Polish-Irish tradition continues in my family.   Nearly ten years ago our son, Scott, married a smart, wonderful Polish girl (and yes, she's beautiful too) he met at college, and a little over a year ago they presented us with our first grandson.   His mom, Kathy (who also made the financially difficult choice to stay home and raise her own son) recently asked us each to write down some words of wisdom to put into his baby book for him to read when he's older.  I dashed off something flip and stupid like, "Don't ever fart in bed and then pull the covers over your wife's head.   It's funny, but not a good idea." (Sorry, Kathy.)   What I should have written, and I'm doing it now, is this: "Nick, find yourself a Polish girl.  You can't go wrong, and you'll never regret it."

Thank you, Mary Patrice Erdmans, for writing your family's story and sharing it with us.   I'm telling everyone I know about it.

Tim Bazzett
February 2, 2006

Tim Bazzett is the author of Reed City Boy (Rathole Books, 2004) and Soldier Boy: At Play in the ASA (Rathole Books, 2005).   He is retired from the Department of Defense and lives in Reed City with his wife and two dogs.   For more information visit his website .