Donald Tyminski

Donald Tyminski

Of course. My name is Donald Tyminski. I believe I'm the youngest grandchild of Everett Makowski. My memories are not extensive of my grandfather. I remember going to his tailor shop as a child, maybe between 6 to 10 years old. I remember his tailor shop seemed very large to me at the time. As a child I remember climbing under tables, up on racks, and seeing bolts of fabric lying on shelving in piles around, sewing machines and things that I really didn't understand. He lived in an apartment above the tailor shop, and my memories of that are scant as well. One memory that sticks in my mind is on the wall, he had a picture of a photo, kind of a sepia-colored thing that had been watercolored. And on the bottom, it said, Pyzdry, Poland, place of our birth. It sticks in my mind. For some reason, as a child, I don't remember why. Other memories of his apartment were his feather bed. As a child, it seemed to be about two feet thick, and I would roll around in it and climb under it. It was very unusual since we had nothing like that in our home. I don't have any memories of him cooking or anything like that. I'm sure he fed us. But actually, my memories of my grandfather were... He was kind of intimidating to me. He was a large man, and I was as a child, and my memories are that he was kind of scary. He didn't speak much English. When my family visited him in the tailor shop, they all spoke Polish, and I understood maybe "usiądź", "get over there and get out of the way". And that was pretty much it. As my memories of my grandfather, he grew older, and I grew older, and we were distant from each other. As a teenager, he came to live near where we were in McHenry, Illinois. He was in a home, but I only saw him there maybe twice with my mother, and I have little memory of other than seeing him in that home. And that's pretty much it.

The journals that my grandfather wrote, primarily during World War II, starting in around 1939, when Poland was attacked, my wife and I had no knowledge of those, that they even existed until some communications with my cousin Dennis and his wife Candy, that they had them. So we had one in our possession, and we had a neighbor at that time who actually came from Poland, married in the States and she spoke fluent Polish, and her husband did, too, although he was born in the States, but he was Polish as well. They frequently had visitors from Poland, her family. And one year, her niece, I believe, I believe her name was Ania, came to visit, and we showed her the journal that we had in our possession. And she said "This is good stuff. I'm going to take it back to Poland and see if we can find something". Previous to that, my cousin's wife, Candy, had tried to place them in the States in various museums and had no luck. And then we got one, and Ania took it back. And she's a government employee a translator, and she's a wonderful girl. And she made inquiries around various museums until she contacted somebody at the Polish History Museum here, and thank God, they were interested. So over a period of time, Dennis and Candy had all these journals in their home, how they got them. But really, I had no knowledge of that before that period because they were passed between their side of the family and my side of the family. I really wasn't even aware of it. But anyhow, we got it. Ania brought it back, found a contact here and they were interested. At that point, we signed a lot of paperwork, had a lot of communications. They were all packed up and shipped here to Poland. And now they're resting in the museum being conserved and protected and digitized for future references and use for whoever would be doing research on that period. Most of the journals that we saw were that concerned the war years from 1939 to 1945, '46, '47. They consisted of his writing in Polish in longhand, but hundreds and hundreds of newspaper clippings that he would paste. He would paste several on a page and then write his comments about that in longhand. We saw cuttings from Polish newspapers, English newspapers, neighborhood newsletters, all sorts of things that at that point, we hadn't even known it existed until we flipped through a couple of these. We didn't open a lot of them because they were getting so fragile. And we put it all back together, and Dennis and Candy and arrange to have it all shipped here and the family all pitched in to pay for the freight, and all the papers got signed, and here they are. And we are so pleased that this information is being preserved here in the history museum. That's about it.

As I said earlier, I saw this photo on my grandfather's wall about Pyzdry, place of our birth. And we became interested in coming here. We were invited to see the manuscripts and the journals here in the museum. At that point, our contact here, Konrad, arranged for us to meet extended family that basically we didn't know existed. It was such a wonderful trip the last two days to meet and travel and dine with our extended family that we didn't even know we're here. As at this point, I think I have a younger brother that I never had before who happened to have the same grandfather that I did. But no, his grandfather was my grandfather's brother. So we were an extended family, and we had such a wonderful time, even though we don't speak the same language. It was the experience of a lifetime, and I really don't know how else to express it. It looks exactly like that photo that I remember as a child. We visited the church. We boated on the river with our family. The church was locked, but we walked all around it and walked around the town square, saw the statue of... I guess the gentleman's name was Pyzdry or similar, and dated from 1254 or something similar to that. And it was just fascinating to see history that old. In the United States, we have nothing that old. Our history dates from the early late 1600s, and nothing nearly as ancient as that. And the buildings there looked like many of them were original, basically kept up and repaired, but pretty much the same as it looked in that photo. A question.

I believe it was mostly a discovery of here in Pyzdry. As I said, I had no knowledge of our extended family here at all until this came up. Some of the family artifacts that we sent over were family photos and things that had been knocking around for years. They were just in terrible condition in most cases, and I'm glad to find a safe repository for them where they can be preserved. We also included some family history from our American families and from the Warners as well. From my brother and sisters and their families, they're all being preserved here as well. I'm not good with words. It's a chance of a lifetime to see our family preserved. Our new family members here are excited to know that their Makowski name is being preserved here in the museum as well. And we've encouraged them to come visit, and I'm sure they will.