Blazowski, Victoria
(December 21, 1913 - February 19, 2007)Very few, if any, of the 8,716 persons of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, know where the radium refining mill of the Standard Chemical Co. stood that Madame Curie, the Polish co-discoverer of radium, visited in 1921. Victoria Blazowski was only a small girl when Standard Chemical Company was one of the largest producers of radium in the United States. After Madame Curie's visit, President Harding gave her a gram of radium worth $120,000, and it made the Polish people of Canonsburg, where it came from, extremely proud of the future Nobel Prize winner. Only vestiges of hazardous, radioactive waste remain of the mill that produced parts of the first atomic bomb.
When Victoria Blazowski left Canonsburg, 18 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, to enter the Felician congregation at Coraopolis in 1931, the borough was a beehive of activity. Her father, Mike Blazowski, one of the first Polish settlers in Canonsburg, worked in the Fort Pitt Bridge Works, and always came home covered with grease and grime. On the other hand, Charles, the oldest of nine children in the family, was an assistant foreman and came home as clean as ivory soap. Another brother, Andrew, five years younger than Charles, was a truck driver and delivered groceries. Still younger, Victor, who was born December 20, 1911, was an apprentice in a barber shop. Altogether Mike and Mary Blazowski had nine children, three of whom became nuns. Sister Mary Mercedes, as she was called, saw siblings marry at St. Genevieve in Canonsburg and her parents buried from there. The church is now closed.
Sister Mary Mercedes was a teacher in Polish parochial schools in Pennsylvania and Ohio. She served from 1969 to 1971 as principal and superior at St. Louise de Marillac parish, established on May 25, 1961, to meet the needs of the growing community of Upper St. Clair Township in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.
Upon her retirement to the provincial house, she served as an aide to the provincial head and played the organ in the infirmary. She was buried in the Felician Cemetery in Coraopolis. She was a member of Felician Sisters for 76 years.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2008)