Fathers – It's All About Family

My Veterans

In honor of Veterans Day, I’m sharing the story I wrote in June of 2024 for the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. It’s called, The Effects of War. There are links within that story that share the details of their time served.

Beginning with World War I, there was my biological maternal grandfather, Jacob Engram and my paternal grandfather, Charles Jakiela.

My Great Uncle Bronislaw Liro went back to Poland before World War I broke out, fought for the Austrian Army, was captured, and escaped from Siberia.

World War II saw my Uncle Connie and my dad enlist in the Army Air Force and my Uncle Walt and Uncle Mal in the Navy. My Uncle Walt lived through the horror of Pearl Harbor 3 weeks fresh out of Navy radio school.

While cleaning out my aunt’s home, I found a letter from my Great Uncle Antoni written in 1947 describing the aftermath of World War II.

My father in law Harold served in the Korean War as a cook, his brother Ronald as an infantry tank driver, and my step father in law Paul was in the motor pool.

It’s an honor to have these brave men in my family.

Angel Antonia

She died in the early morning hours of April 2, 1927. Alone in her hospital room while her husband and five children slept in their nearby apartment.

She knew something was wrong the previous afternoon. She sent her 12 year old son for the midwife and then went to the hospital.

“She’ll be fine” is what they told her husband when he left the hospital that evening, only to be alerted by the grocer with the neighborhood telephone.

Her obituary said, “She was very well and favorably known to a large circle of friends among the Polish residents of the town”. Small comfort for her family.

She was buried in St. Thomas Cemetery in Southington on April 4th. Her husband carved a wooden cross for her grave and mourned her death until his in 1935.

Years later, her son, Edward, who, at her request, stayed home from school that day, had a headstone made for his mother.

*St. Thomas Cemetery, Southington CT, Section 12*

Her husband was never the same. Two of the younger children went to an uncle in Massachusetts and the youngest, to his godmother in town. When he and his older sons found a permanent place to live in Wallingford, he brought everyone back together. But how many months had gone by suddenly without a mother and then a father?

I try to imagine what their lives, and ours, would have been like if she lived long enough to watch her children grow up and to know her grandchildren. Would we call her Babcia? Would she teach us to speak Polish? Would we tease her about being so short and would my boy cousins rest their arms on the top of her head trying to be funny. Who would be her favorite child? Who would be her favorite grandchild?

We’ll never know.

Time and Memory

Reflections on the anniversary of my father’s passing

Friday, March 28th, marked the 15th anniversary of my dad’s death in 2010. In February of that year, after a month of turmoil for us all, he was finally settled into the nursing home after leaving his assisted living with a short stay in the hospital. He’d begun attending the events and, as always, enjoyed the music. My sister Gail said she’d had a nice visit with him, taking him for a walk around the grounds and spending time sitting and talking outside.

It was a Sunday, when I received the call from the nursing home to tell me he had passed away. He was sitting in bed eating breakfast when someone walked by, and when they walked by again, he was slumped over. Just like that. Gail and I contacted the funeral home then headed there and sat with him for a while. It was Palm Sunday and the home left a frond in his room that I took and have in a box with my parents personal belongings.

I’ve written more than once about my mother’s eight week journey from diagnosis to death with Glioblastoma. My dad’s death occurred one week prior to the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death.

After my mother died, my father carried on. He was 63 and still working in the facilities department at Gaylord Hospital in town. He really loved that job! He was such a people person, he was an awesome painter and wall-paperer, my sister Gail worked there, and the Farms Country Club was next door so he’d look for golf balls during lunch or hit some balls.

He loved “his girls”, his grandkids, golfing, and riding his bike. During my 8 years in California, he visited both with my sisters and by himself and I never had to entertain him. He’d take off for the day on my bike or head to the golf course in town.

I won’t go through the litany of health ailments starting with his 1996 knee replacement, but they were enough to slow him down and significant enough that he was not able to live on his own after 2000. After that, it felt like from late January until April, he, and we, were dealing with one health issue or another.

During this week every year, I think about that. I’ve written about my dad’s childhood, how his mother died when he was turning 3 and his father died the month before his 11th birthday. He and his older siblings were then raised by his 12 years older brother.

What do I think about? I think that he didn’t want to leave his girls alone. I think that he wanted to be with us, to be our dad for as long as he could even if that meant fighting through whatever pain he had. I may sound crazy, but I think after 22 years and 51 weeks my mother said, “Honey, they’re going to be fine, come home” and with that, he went home.

Favorite Photo

The Week 2 Topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “Favorite Photo”.

This photo started me on my Ancestry Journey:

My mother’s oldest sister, Antoinette, known as Toots and Tootsie, was the family picture keeper. When I visited her in her little one room apartment, she would bring out the photos and tell me about the people in the photos. Some of the stories didn’t match the previous ones, but it was fun to just sit and listen to her. When she moved to a nursing home, my cousin Judy had the pictures and when she passed away, her husband gave them to me.

This photo is of the entire Posluszny Family, the maternal side of my family tree. In the front row is John Posluszny and his son John, Ann Straub Posluszny with her daughter Ann, Mary Posluszny (later to become Mary Biega), Caroline Straub Posluszny (at this time Bonk) and her son Walter, Elizabeth Posluszny (later to become Elizabeth Laçz). The back row is Joseph Posluszny, husband of Ann, Frank Posluszny, Charles Posluszny, John Bonk (the men’s stepfather and Caroline’s second husband, Walter’s father), Julianna Ingram Posluszny, and Conrad Posluszny (my grandmother and grandfather).

I have stared at this photo for so many years, just looking at the faces and wondering about them and their lives in Wildenthal (now Dzikowiec) before coming to the United States.

I marvel at the handsomeness of my grandfather (ok, he’s not really, but I am still related because he and my grandmother were 2nd or 3rd cousins), and I can’t get over the resemblance of Mary Posluszny Biega to my cousin Ann who has passed away.

I have individual pictures of a few of them, and some wedding photos that I treasure, but this photo is my favorite. It keeps me digging.

In The Beginning

It’s a new year and a new list of topics for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks! We’ll see how it all works out, but hopefully, I can also get some subjects on my hit list written.

Week 1 Topic for 2025 is In the Beginning. I’ve written a post already about how I got involved in Ancestry so I’m taking this in a different direction. What better topic than my parents who started it all!

My mother, Elizabeth Ann Posluszny was born in 1922, and my father, John Steven Jakiela in 1924. They attended Lyman Hall High School together and my dad’s brother Walter was in my mother’s graduating class. I don’t know if they knew each other through their school years.

After high school, my mother went to Lauren Business School in Meriden and then went to work at Factory A of the International Silver Company. My dad worked at the Wallingford Steel Mill during high school and continued afterward until he headed to England in 1943. He returned to that job when he came home in 1945, and then he moved on to the paint store.

My mother and my dad’s sister Helen worked together at International Silver and belonged to a bowling league. My Auntie Helen told me that he would pick them up and drop off my mother at her home at 121 Clifton Street, and then he and Helen would go home. Auntie Helen realized something was happening when my dad started dropping her off first and then taking Betty home!

She also told me that “your mother said he’d better get off the pot and do something or she was moving on”. Suffice it to say they were married on November 9, 1952.

A little fun fact: Before their wedding, in January of 1952, John took a trip to Florida. I have an undocumented memory of him and his older brother Steve going there to see their brother Walter when he arrived stateside from wherever he had been. I wrote about him in March of 2024.

John sent some cute postcards to Betty while he was gone. He even put little notes under the stamps.

Betty was 30 on her wedding day and John was 28. Her mother was a widow and John lived with his oldest brother and his family so there was not likely a lot of money for a wedding but it was still beautiful. She had a timeless dress that was later worn by my sisters for their weddings. John and his groomsmen were in handsome morning suits.

*Steve Jakiela, John, Betty, and Tootsie Posluszny*

They left for a Florida honeymoon from the reception.

They lived in Meriden early in their marriage as Betty continued to work in the office at International Silver and John continued to work for Lacourciere Paint Company.

They hung around with John’s sister Helen and her future husband Ticker (Joseph) Jordan. They were married in May of 1953. They all loved to spend time at the Rocky Neck State Beach and vacation together in South Carolina.

They moved from Meriden to a cute rental on Carlton Street in Wallingford which was 2 blocks from her childhood home. Janice, Gail, and I were born when they were living there and we were likely busting out of the seams when we moved a year later to our beloved home at 15 Atkinson Lane.

Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but it worked for them. My dad loved having three girls and always said he wouldn’t want it any other way. He took us on bicycle and walking adventures and my mother instilled in us the love of reading.

They were the beginning of our family and the families my sisters and I created.

Mental Health

The topic for Week 36 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is “We Don’t Talk About It”.

My grandfather, Konrad Posluszny, committed suicide in the early morning of December 28, 1944. He was a night janitor at the Wallingford Steel Mill, where he had access to the offices and storerooms and that is where he got the gun he used. It was written up in the afternoon Meriden Daily Journal on the 28th, and then the next day, the morning paper, the Meriden Record, had a much more dramatic telling of the tragedy.

Years after it happened, my Aunt Tootsie told me “a gypsy told my father he was going to die by a gun and so he didn’t allow them in our home”.

As the second article mentions, he might have been “brooding over the dangers that might befall his son” my Uncle Connie who was assigned to duty in New Guinea. My uncle was a cook in the Army but I never found any records for him in the Fold3 website. My Aunt Judy did talk about him having to “pack up the kitchen” when they were being relocated.

*Julianna (Gram), Connie, Konrad (Gramp*) *1943 or 1944*

Would he have committed suicide because he was worried about his son? Not likely, unless there were mental health issues to begin with.

Which brings me to something else my Aunt Tootsie told me in one of our conversations. She said “when he was in the hospital”, the doctor allowed him to have beer because “he needed it”. Crazy right? It makes me think he was maybe in a hospital for mental health issues. This post from conversations with my Aunt Judy and my cousin Judy, talks about my grandfather and grandmother relationship.

*Konrad with his daughter Julia in 1937*

Another piece of the puzzle comes from my first experience with a medium in 2013. I realize a lot of people don’t believe in mediums or what they say, but hey, my grandfather believed what the Gypsy said! This medium said my grandfather committed suicide, was there with my mother, he later mentioned the gun shot and the depression he suffered from all his life. If you’re interested you can go to YouTube, search for CT Buzz and the look for Medium and Life Guide Phil Quinn. It’s 7:40 long and you might recognize a younger me in the screenshot. During either this reading or another, Phil told me that my grandfather suffered from profound depression and he didn’t have a joyful day in his life.

That makes me think about how he started out as a hatter, ended up with a hat company of his own, he had a patent for a cleaning solution for straw hats, but died as a janitor at a steel mill. I told the story about the family profession here. I feel such sadness for him to have had so much and then nothing. Was it because of this depression that caused my aunt to say her mother had more balls than her father?

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only person in the family suffering from mental illness…

My great-uncle Frank Posluszny, spent at least 10 years in the Essex County Hospital (for the Insane) in Cedar Grove, New Jersey. The 1910 and 1920 censuses, show his occupation as a Hatter. However, by the April 27, 1930 census, he was an inmate at the hospital and was there again in the 1940 census. A section in this census asks if this is the same residence as 1935, and the response for Frank is “same residence”. I have not been able to find any death record for Frank but it might be safe to say he spent the rest of his years at the county hospital. He and his wife had three children.

Frank and Josephine Posluszny wedding photo. Brother Charles back left, step father Jon Bonk, back third from left, mother Caroline seated left, sister Mary seated right — *Frank and Josephine’s wedding photo. His brother Charles is top left, stepfather Jon 3rd from left, mother Caroline seated left, and sister Mary seated right*

My great-aunt Elizabeth Posluszny Laçz, left her husband and two children behind and disappeared in 1923 or 1924. Her sister Mary, hired a private detective but he never found her. She came up in a medium reading I had years ago and I was told she had a complete breakdown and created an entirely new life. I have never found records of her or her children but I wonder if there is a trace of them among any of my DNA matches.

The Posluszny Family. Elizabeth is bottom right, next to her mother. She is approximately 9 years old. — *Posluszny family photo – Frank 2nd from left in back, Konrad back far right, Elizabeth front right seated*

I never had a conversation with my mother about the death of her father. She was 22 when it happened and I can’t imagine how they felt getting that knock on their door that morning. All I knew as I was growing up was that he died a long time ago.

Today we are all better educated about mental health and we are able to express how we are feeling either to each other or a therapist. A little part of me knows that the DNA we got from our dad’s side of the family evened us all out!

All Mixed Up

The Week 35 Topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is All Mixed Up.

If you’ve ever known twins, if you are a twin, or if you have family members who are twins, you know what I’m talking about.

*My mother asking Janice to pick out a specific twin*

Through elementary school and beyond we have been mixed up. Our children have turned to “the other one”, and people in grocery stores are embarrassed when they realize we’re not who they think we are, no matter how much we reassure them “it’s ok! Just tell me your name and I’ll tell her you said hello!”

I’m dealing with an All Mixed Up situation as I’m combing through Birth, Marriage, and Death records of my grandfather’s birthplace in Poland. A distant cousin received the records from a researcher and he passed them on to me. I’ve added information to Charles Jakiela’s immediate family including his sibling’s birth records, and his father’s remarriage after his mother died. But the jpg file are out of order of the books so I’ve been flipping back and forth trying to follow the dates. I finally made a list showing the page numbers in the books along with the file number.

My intention is to go through the records and chart the family names, dates, and house numbers to see where the matching parental names are. There are so many Jakielas, Murdzeks, and Pernals, all names I know are part of our ancestry. Then I plan to take names and birth dates and cross reference them to naturalization records and enlistment forms processed in Connecticut because I know there is a Lubatowa connection from looking through them in the past. There is also a Jakiela and Murdzek connection in Pennsylvania that I’d like to finally uncover. It would also be sweet to finally figure out where connect on the family tree!

This kind of research is what I love to do so hopefully it will be fruitful.

The End of the Line….

The week 31 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is End of the Line. This story will not go in the direction you automatically think of when hearing “end of the line”.

If my teacher was putting the class in order of height, “Nancy, you go to the end of the line” would not come out of her mouth ever in 8 years at Holy Trinity School. Only if I was being separated from my sister or friends because I couldn’t stop talking!

My ancestors did NOT bring the height to my family. At the time of their ocean voyages, my grandfather Charles Jakiela, at 17 was 4’9”. My grandmother Antonia Liro, at 21 was also 4’9”. I have no ship manifest for my grandmother, Julianna Ingram, but her sister Mary’s record says she was 4’8”. My biological grandfather, Jacob Engram Jr, is listed as 5’9” on his WWII draft registration card. He’s a jolly green giant compared to the others.

The height issue is evident in Charles and Antonia’s 1912 wedding photo which looks like they put their heads into cardboard cut outs of a bride and groom.

*Charles and Antonia Jakiela June 24, 1912*

Their four male children ended up between Steve at 5’5” and Walt who reached 5’9”. If his parents had been alive when he registered for the draft, he would have towered over them by a foot!

My dad, John Jakiela, was 5’6” and my mother was 5’3”. I always say, “if I wasn’t born a twin I bet I would have been taller!” But, in all seriousness, I’ll take my twin over the height.

*2nd and 3rd in line (Dana Smith leading the way)*

Janice, at 18 months older, always had 2-3 inches on us. Just enough to not have to hem every pair of pants she got! Gail and I had a 4” growth spurt in 6th grade and except for a few more inches between then and 18, we were done at 4’11”. In standing in a line by height, we’re forever in the front and the shortest of all the relatives.

It pays to marry up! All five of the next generation are over 5 feet and the two of the next generation look like they will be able to take their place at… the end of the line.

More Cousin Memories

I started my memories of my cousin Mal here and I’m going to continue the story now.

In Mal’s senior year of high school, he and 5 other young men in the state were selected by Senator Thomas Dodd to take the special examinations for an appointment to the Naval Academy. The senator “bypassed” the standard selection of principal and alternate and instead placed all of them chosen on a competitive basis and he was one of the two.

*Mal’s graduation from Notre Dame HS West Haven*

Mal headed off to Annapolis in 1960, the same year my twin and I were born, and our older sister was 2 years old – and he was our first cousin – a whole different generation.

Mal went to Annapolis with plans to play football. My Aunt Judy said he had to stop because of headaches but according to his obituary it was “an epic boxing match” that put an end to his football career.

Parents weekend freshman year

When Mal was in high school he started dating Margaret Donroe – Margie – from Hamden. My aunt would tell us how they would be on the phone and Mal would have the phone resting on his shoulder as Margie just chatted away on the phone and he would grunt occasionally to let her know he was listening. Margie was so vivacious and pretty and I just thought they were the most beautiful couple in the world!

*Margie at Bob’s Holy Trinity school graduation 1960*

Naval Academy graduation June 3, 1964

June was a busy time for the Bellafronto Family! Mal graduated from the Naval Academy on Wednesday, June 3 1964.

He and Marge were married three days later in Hamden Connecticut on Saturday, June 6th. My sisters and I were 6 and 4 and we were at the wedding but I’m not sure about the reception.

After their wedding and honeymoon, Mal and Marge headed off to his duty station in Yokosuka Japan where he would be aboard the guided missile light cruiser the USS Oklahoma City, the flagship of the 7th Fleet.

While they were in Japan, I would look out my bedroom window and watch the sun come up over the hill and I would think that on the other side of the hill was Japan and as the sun set there, it came up here! Their oldest son, Malcolm III, was born in Japan and their second son, Eric, was born in San Francisco after his tour was completed.

*Japan was going to sleep on the other side of this hill…*

Whenever they would come to the east coast, Aunt Judy made sure everyone got together to visit with them.

After Mal left the Navy, he got into the paper industry. I remember them living in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe Illinois, California, and finally Oregon. It was too bad that by the time I moved to California, they had already moved!

As the years went by, we didn’t see them as often because Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal moved to Florida.

When my cousin Bill got married in Illinois in 1987, we were together with Mal and Marge (known as Maggie by then) for the first time in a long time. Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal were there too, and we’ve always had such a fun time being with them, this visit was no exception.

*Marge, Mal, Aunt Judy, Uncle Mal, and my twin Gail*, *his goddaughter*

I saw Marge one last time at their son Eric’s wedding in San Jose in 1993 or 94 when we were living in California. Sadly, she passed away in 2009 after a reoccurrence of breast cancer.

Fast forward….

In 2013, Mal’s brother Bob was hosting a family reunion at our cottage in Lebanon CT for his daughter Cathy and her family visiting from Morocco. Mal, young Mal, and Eric came out from the west coast for the party. Bob and his wife Teri brought Aunt Judy who was now 96 years old. We had a wonderful time visiting with everyone! It felt like one of the Posluszny Fourth of July parties I’ve written about. We shared hours of memories and a lot of laughter.

The following year, 2014, Mal and Mary, his partner of a few years, were heading east. Mal would be attending his 40th Naval Academy reunion. I met with Mal during the week and we took a walk around the home on Clifton Street that his mother and mine grew up in. It was in bad shape after water damage and (probably) foreclosure, but the walkway to the back of the house was still there and the odd little entry into the basement.

I also contacted the owner of the family home on Lincoln Avenue to arrange a visit there. Their parents bought the house from Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal and they bought it from their parents. It really is a great neighborhood! We both enjoyed walking through the house, seeing the changes, and seeing what stayed the same.

Mary came out the following week, we had dinner together, and they stayed at our cottage in Lebanon Ct. The cottage his family had for the majority of his years growing up was in the next town so he and Mary spent time driving around the area and visiting the former family cottage on Pickerel Lake.

That would be the last time I saw him, but I enjoyed an email exchange, infrequent but more frequent than that with other long-distance family (hint, hint).

I talked to Mary, his partner last week and we had a nice conversation about their time together and my memories of him.

Malcolm James Bellafronto Jr 1942-2014

Automobiles

The week 29 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Automobiles. There’s no one better to tell you about than my father in law Paul Reinhart!

Paul was born in Iowa on his family farm in 1929. Living on the farm he learned to repair the machinery they owned. He told us when he ended up in Korea in 1950, he took aptitude tests for a few different jobs in camp and they put him in the Motor Pool and his experience just grew from there. After the war, Paul grudgingly went back to the farm in Iowa, but when one of his friends from the Army suggested he head out to California, he hopped on the opportunity. For the rest of his employment years, he was involved with automobiles.

One of his biggest loves was racing and his cars. His first race car was a 1957 Corvette when he entered the Southern California Corvette Association race world in 1960.

*1957 Corvette raced between 1960 and 1962*

The bright orange and purple were the official colors of Union Oil 76 where he was a partner at one of their services station/garages. If you look close, the “Big Three” refers to the station Big 3 Tire & Brake Inc.

It was while he was a rookie in 1960 that he got his first major win at Cotati (northern California) Raceway and a kiss from Jayne Mansfield! In addition, he ended the season as Rookie of the Year.

His success on the race track continued through 1961 and 1962 ending both years as the B Production SCCA Divisional Champion.

*1962 Pacific Division B Production Champion*

October 1962 began the showdown between the (Chevy) Corvette Z06 and the (Ford) Shelby Cobra. Four Z-06s were on the track again a Shelby Cobra. The Corvette won the race but it was only the start of a heated competition. Chevy and Ford were in it to win it. Paul stuck with Chevy and in October headed to St. Louis to pick up his Z06 and drive it back to California. No fancy sponsor or delivery for him! His first race in the new car was in November of 1962.

He quickly learned the Z06’s brakes and suspension were junk. Chevy sent out a crate a parts but by the beginning of the 1963 season the Z06s were in trouble. The Ford Cobras were just too hard to beat and to make matters worse, two of the stars of the Z06s, Bob Bondurant and Dave McDonald defected to Ford. By March of 1963, he decided he had had enough and sold the Z06.

But he didn’t stop there! He picked up a BMC Genie Mark 8 from Joe Huffaker because “he liked the looks of the car”. It had been built for Pedro Rodriguez but the year prior, Pedro’s brother, Ricardo, was killed in a crash and Pedro temporarily retired from racing.

*BMC Genie Mark 8 raced from 1963 to 1967*

Paul had success in the Mark 8 for a few years, but by 1965 he was racing against Mark 10s and the big names of Ken Miles, Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, and Parnelli Jones. Between that and not having any big named sponsors to pay the bills, he sold the Genie and in 1968 drove a Camaro for a friend. In his words, “After a couple of events, I realized how much I missed the thrill of racing with the greatest drivers in the world and conceded that if I couldn’t race at the top, it was time to move on to other things”.

In 1981, while browsing through the local trader paper, he came across someone selling a 1963 Z06 and it just happened to be his original car.

He bought it thinking to use it as a street car, but he missed the racing and with the blessing of my mother in law, Wanda, he began driving it in historic races along the west coast with the most notable being Laguna Seca and Sonoma Raceway. Those two locations are where I had the thrill of watching him race, and they DID race!

He raced the car from 1984 though 2000 and had so much fun, he sold the Z06 in order to go back to his roots and rebuild his first Corvette – the 1957. Although he had some parts to the original car, it became more of a re-creation of the original.

*Paul Reinhart and his “restored” 1957 corvette*

He stayed true to the Union 76 orange and purple and the Big Three theme. He raced this car from 2002 to 2013 when he sold the car, but raced it for them in 2015!

*The Z06 on the auction block 14 years after he sold it*

*A Genie MK 10B model car with Paul listed as one of the drivers!*

*1957 Corvette Paul in the original / Cody in the restored*

Both cars continue to race in vintage races on the west coast and their owners were friends and fans of Paul during and after his years of vintage racing.

In the years after racing and before he died in October of 2021, Paul was in the process of restoring a 1957 Chevrolet truck. The parts had all been painted and were stored around the house and the frame and engine were in the garage. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen and we were fortunate to find someone to purchase it at the beginning of our week of cleaning out his house (with plans to bring it all home)! How lucky we were to find that person!

As I said at the start of this, there is no one better person to talk about when I talk about Automobiles. The amount of information I have could fill a book, and there are already books either about him, mentioning him, or quoting him about other drivers. It’s a thrill to comb through the information and see how much he was revered as a driver, a person, and a Chevy man through and through.