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THE GREATEST GENERATION-PLUS ONE
Introduction:
Sigmund Freud said all childhood's are unhappy times. Bernard Stanley Sadowski’s boyhood challenged that thesis. His family was just poor - not unlike his entire neighborhood . Flint, MI in the 1940s and 1950s consisted of low-wage factory workers with basic needs and desires. Everyone worked for General Motors in some fashion or another. GM hired every high school graduate in the 1940s and 1950s who wished employment. But the shop was not to be for Bernard whose delivery date was May 28, 1939. Nope, Sadowski was headed for a life jammed packed with books, slide rules, math, science and education.
Autobiographical literary works possibly could appear ostentatious for a lower-middle class white kid from a factory town. It could even strike friends and relatives as odd or perhaps uppity. Why would northend Flint, Michigan kid want to write about his life? Two major reasons: First, was to satisfy and complete the writing project he started at age nineteen. Bernard completed the first chapter of a novel about his youth by writing during slow hours when he was the desk/elevator helper for Marian Hall - a senior living place. The second reason is related and fully developed fifty years later. Senior citizen Sadowski grabbed a tar baby called genealogy. He was unable to let it go. His desire to locate family ancestors was extraordinarily powerful following the historic trip to Poland in the year 2001. Bernard’s four grandparents were born in Poland. They are deceased as are ninety percent of their children. The few who are alive as of this writing are either in nursing homes or just plain tired and elderly with little or no desire to work on the genealogy of family. That is where Bernie comes in - to write the stories as he recollects his years of history.
This autobiography will be about Bernard S. Sadowski recollections as he matured and interacted with friends and relatives through six decades of life. Many people will be mentioned, not to embarrass but rather to add dimension , to give emotion to the pages. Factual events, names, places, dates, etc. shall be recorded with actual names. Most of the key characters are deceased - the living persons may have to be shadowed to protect whatever should be protected. Bernard felt the need to write the book so generations of family could have something solid to grab and hold onto 50-100 years from now. He felt too many memories of events may have changed drastically or worst yet, disappeared forever.
Bernard was born on Dewy Street, Flint, MI only four months prior to the start of WWII in Europe when Germany invaded Poland - Sadowski’s ancestral homeland.*
*Bernard’s birth footprints including thumb prints of Emily Sadowski, his mother. St. Joseph Hospital, Flint, MI
Myrtle Street
Soon thereafter the young family of three moved into a simple one-bedroom home on Myrtle Street. Louis, Emily and son lived the entire World War II years at that location. The home had what was called a “Michigan basement - a dirt hole with three walls. Access into the basement was down a trap door located in the in the kitchen. At age two toddler Bernard slammed the heavy trap door on his mother’s head while she was carrying up a basket load of washing. It nearly killed her - so said Bernie’s mother many years latter when she told her son the story. Emily’s possessions from her youth were lost to mold from being stored five years in that dirt basement. Her yearbooks, pictures and violin - lost. Emily played the instrument in school but never after she married Louis Sadowski. Several photographs taken at the Myrtle Street home are shown on the following pages.
Bernard Blazkowski lived two doors west of the Sadowski’s -he was called “Benny” by his friends and family. Even though Benny was four years older than Bernie they were chums all during the WWII years. In fact they had great fun playing war g
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