Bucki, John F.
(Sept. 6, 1919 - Jan. 24, 2006)
Electrician and Navy veteran of World War IIBucki families have lived in Buffalo, New York, for more than a century and contributed a great deal to its growth and development. Andrew Bucki, who came from Jarosowa, Austria, in 1907, and his wife, Mary, whom he married when he was 31 years old and she 23, raised four sons on Bristol Street, Buffalo, in a house valued at $9,000. In 1930, and he passed away in May 1965 after working most of his life as a carpenter and auto worker. When the subject of this sketch, John F. Bucki, entered the Navy during the Second World War, he used the education he received in Seneca Vocational High School to good advantage. He became an electronics specialist and during the battle of Guadalcanal in the Philippines he played an important role in landing Marines on the island and later in the occupation of Japan. He also had duty in China. For this, he got seven medals and decorations.
After the war, he married Adeline Graczyk, with whom he had three children, and worked in a post office for nearly thirty years and in a public school for ten more. No matter where he lived, he sent two of his children, Carl and Barbara, to a Polish school on Saturday. Another son, John P., learned more Polish when he went away to study for the priesthood. The family never missed Polish concerts, parades, and activities at St. Bonaventure Church, where they belonged. In addition to the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the war veteran belonged to the Polish Union of America and served as a branch officer.
Over the years, he did a lot of research on the Polish settlers of Buffalo which Carl L. Bucki used, first in his history classes at Cornell University and in recent years, while a U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge, in his weekly column, "My Travels Through Polonia," in Am-Pol Eagle. "My father," he wrote after his dearth, "became a role model for how to preserve Polish culture in America."
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)