What? Not One
Hundred Percent Polish?
by Don Drewniak
By the time I
was in first grade, I was led to believe that my
mother was one hundred percent Ukrainian.
Sunday mornings were reserved for mass at St.
John's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Fall River,
Massachusetts. Seating in the church was divided
in two sections, left side for women, right side
for men. My mother and my maternal grandmother,
Sophie Lenartowick, sat together, while I sat
with Grandpa John.
In addition, there were numerous church events
held at a nearby building owned by the church.
There were also summer picnics held on picnic
grounds in nearby Tiverton, Rhode Island.
I attended church and the special events until
shortly before my teenage years when I declared I
would no longer do so. My mother was horrified.
My father, a non-church goer dating back to his
pre-teenage years, backed my decision. The two-to-one
vote carried the day.
Both of my father's parents had emigrated from
Poland. His father, Frank Drewniak, made two or
three yearly business trips to the mother country
until he passed away of a heart attack at age
thirty-six.
My father's family attended a Polish Catholic
church in Fall River and he spoke fluent Polish.
Until several months before this writing, I never
doubted that he was anything but one hundred
percent Polish.
It wasn't until my mid-30s that the belief I was
half Ukrainian came to an end. I happened upon a
book of surname derivations. I first looked up
Drewniak. That left no doubt that it was of
Polish origin.
To my surprise, there was no listing of my mother's
maiden surname, Lenartowick. However, there was
an entry for Lenartowicz that said it was of
Polish origin and meant the son of Lenart. Lenart
was derived from a Polish word meaning brave.
I began counting the days until my wife and I
made our every-other-month visit to see my
parents. The big day finally arrived and I waited
until our early afternoon meal was finished and
we had retired to the living room to spring the
evidence on my mother.
Tears welled up in her eyes. After struggling to
put words together, she confessed that the family
surname had been Lenartowicz, but that her
parents were only slightly Polish.
How did you get the name Lenartowick? I asked.
My parents, two brothers and I considered
ourselves to be Ukrainian. We could speak, read
and write in Ukrainian. Most of our friends were
Ukrainian and, of course, they were members of St.
John's.
But how did you change it?
Tony, Stanley (her brothers) and I saved our
pennies, nickels and dimes until we had fifty
dollars. Then we went to city hall and had it
changed.
What about Grandpa John and Grandma Sophie?
They signed it.
You spent fifty dollars to change your last name
by one letter during the Great Depression?
By this time, my father was laughing to tears.
When he finally gained control of himself, he
looked at me and said, Donald, you are now all
Polak!
He is not! protested my mother. He's just a tiny
bit Polish.
Both my maternal grandparents had passed away by
then, so that ended my detective work.
As the years passed into decades, I came to view
myself as being solely Polish. I first learned of
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Poland's most
famous native son, when I was in fifth grade and
as a result I took an interest in astronomy. That
interest turned into a dream of becoming an
astronomer. The dream ended when I encountered
calculus in my senior year in high school.
Copernicus is, of course, remembered for having
created a model placing the Sun rather than Earth
at the center of the universe.
I was surprised to find out that Frederick Chopin
(1810-1849), the noted composer and pianist, was
of Polish extraction, not French. He was born in
Zeilaazowalam, a suburb of Warsaw.
Ditto for being Polish is Marie Curie (1867-1934),
winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
her discovery of the elements polonium and radium.
She was born in Warsaw and named Maria Salomea
Sklodowska.
The list of Polish notables goes on and on.
My belief that I was one hundred percent Polish,
or anywhere remotely close to one hundred percent,
was shattered on Thursday, September 14, 2023. My
baby sister Rose (she is fifteen years younger
than me) emailed me the results of a DNA test she
had taken to determine our ethnicity.
What?
Moldovan – 28%
Polish – 23%
Italian – 14%
German – 12%
English – 8%
Scandinavian – 6%
Romanian – Gypsy 6%
Russian – 3%
Thud!
Moldovan! Less than a quarter Polish! Not a hint
of Ukrainian! Romanian Gypsy!
If nothing else, a fair number of my ancestors
seemed to have had most interesting lives.
My wife subsequently gave me as one of my
birthday gifts a t-shirt with MOLDOVA splashed
across the top and a copy of the country flag
below it.
I could only laugh. Perhaps I will wear it
sometime during this decade.
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