CONNIE PINKOWSKI (1917-2008)
Connie Pinkowski of Cooper City, Forida, and Philadelphia, the wife of Edward Pinkowski, the founder of the Pinkowski Institute and the Poles in America Foundation, died Sunday, February 10, 2008, in the hospice of Memorial Hospital Pembroke, Pembroke Pines, Florida. She was 90 years old.She was treated for multiple ailments at Memorial Hospital Pembroke since Christmas and was under the care of Dr. Pablo Quintela, Cooper City, for the past ten years.
She was born on August 24, 1917, and raised in Bridgeport, Pennsylvania, the third of four children of Fiore, who worked in a stone quarry at King Manor for Bethlehem Steel Corporation, and Rose (Di Blasio) Rosiello, who came from Italy. After graduation from high school in 1937, she changed her first name from Concetta to Connie. She was employed in a woolen mill close to her home until she married Edward Pinkowski on September 26, 1943. Because her three brothers were in the service during wartime, she held up her wedding day for awhile and then moved to Washington, D. C., where her spouse was in the Navy and a writer in the Bureau of Naval Personnel.
In the first year of marriage she worked as a bookkeeper for Visek Brothers, custom tailors in Washington, who did a lot of business with Hollywood stars. Among the stars Mrs. Pinkowski met was Madeleine Carroll, who, after her sister was killed in an air raid in England, came to the tailor shop in Washington for a Red Cross uniform. The bookkeeper and the actress admired each other's hair. One was blonde and the other brunette. When Carroll was sent to a field hospital in Bari, Italy, in 1944, Mrs. Pinkowski never saw her again.
Mrs. Pinkowski never got over the segregation she found in the nation's capitol. After work, when she boarded a bus to go home to a government project in Arlington, Virginia, the black passengers who got on the bus at the same time had to go to the seats in the back. She couldn't wait until the war was over.
After her sons, James and Jack, were born in Washington, the family moved to Philadelphia, where the sons learned to play with black children and go together to public school and college. As a wife and mother, she kept the home fires burning while her husband dabbled in real estate, ran a weekly newspaper, and wrote books on various topics.
In addition to her spouse of 64 years, she is survived by two sons: James Pinkowski, a lawyer, Fairfax Station, Virginia, with four children, James Edward and Nathaniel Llewellyn by his first wife, Nancy Sheppard, and two, Tiffany Marie and Ashley Rose, by the second wife, Sophia Esposito; and Jack Pinkowski, professor of public administration at Nova University, chairman of National Polish Center in Washington, and president of Poles in America Foundation, Cooper City, Florida. He resides with his wife, Kathleen (nee Kruszewski), and son, Marcel, in Plantation, Florida.
Friends in Florida may visit the viewing Friday, 7-9 PM, at the funeral home of T. M. Ralph 7001 N. W. 4th St. Plantation, Florida. The second viewing will be in Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church, Ford and Union Avenue, Bridgeport, Pa., 9 AM Thursday, February 21, 2008, just preceding the Funeral Mass. Bernard Gutkowski of Swedesburg, Pa., is the second funeral director.
Connie Pinkowski will be buried in the same plot as her grandmother, Raphaele Mazzerle, and her husband's parents, Felix and Aniela Pinkowski, at St. Augustine Cemetery on Route 202, between King of Prussia and Norristown, Pa. She was preceded in death by her parents and three brothers, Joseph, James, and Carl Rosiello.
From: Edward Pinkowski