A Modest and Humble Hero

Jerome Janowski started this day like most others, with a breakfast of six eggs and six strips of bacon procured from Schmidt’s Butcher Shop. It was a big breakfast, to be sure, but it might be his only meal of the day.

Better known as “Harry” since he was a boy, he turned 42 in June of 1940. His son recently enlisted in the U.S. Navy, but he still had 13- and 15-year-old girls at home. He kissed his two teenage daughters goodbye as they left the house for their classes at a Rochester, N.Y. Catholic girls’ high school. He kissed his wife Sofia goodbye and picked up his toolbox on his way out the door of their two-story home. Harry was an electrical foreman for the new construction at Strong Memorial Hospital. The days were long, but the summer weather was far more preferable than the brutally frigid winter months.
Later that day, two black sedans rolled down Roycroft Drive and came to a stop, one a few houses behind the other. Two men in black suits emerged from the lead car. The driver lit a cigarette and leaned against the hood while the other man surveyed the neighborhood. Two men in the second car sat waiting. They all waited.
Residents on the street, including Sofia Janowski, peered out their windows at the cars and the men wearing fedoras, curious and concerned. The cars remained parked, and the men in suits fidgeted, stretched their legs and finally sat in their cars.
Harry returned from work well into the dinner hour. He parked his car, and his hunting dogs Ted and Spike ran to greet him. The dogs stopped, and turned to bark at the four approaching men.
“Are you Mr. Jerome Janowski?” one of the men asked.
Harry confirmed that he was.
“We’re from the FBI,” the man said. “We’d like to have a few words with you.”
The four men were invited inside. Invariably, they were offered an iced tea with lemonade. They refused. In the confines of his modest home, they interrogated Harry. They left. The neighbors noticed but never said a thing to Harry. If they had, he would not have commented on the visit.
A few weeks later, they came back. And again, several times for two years after that. Then, they stopped coming. Harry Janowski had been cleared. He was fully vetted and free to work on the Manhattan Project as an electrical consultant to review the design of the wiring that would detonate America’s first atomic bomb. When all was said and done, Harry never spoke of it.
His son came back from the war. After the armistice, his beloved Sofia succumbed to breast cancer. His daughters married.  One moved to North Carolina. The other remained in Rochester. Harry remarried, then moved to a new house on Seabrook Street, in the Polish neighborhood.  He retired from the electrical trade. But when you are tied to long-term projects and the men seeing them through, you can’t just walk away. He was often called to consult on projects at the University and elsewhere. Life as an electrician did not make Harry a wealthy man. In persisting through long years of tough labor, however, Harry earned one luxury. Time.
His union pension gave him time to plant and cultivate a wonderful rose garden. It gave him time to grease the pole on the bird feeder, so that the squirrels didn’t make off with all the seed. It gave him time to renew his faith. It gave him time to read, time to travel, time to help friends, neighbors and strangers in a pinch. It gave him time to be a grandfather of seven.

My earliest recollections of my grandfather, Harry Janowski, were the visits to our house. He had a favorite chair where he sat, reveling in some lively chatter. Before he left, the dining room table was removed, and he and my mother taught my brother, sister and I to polka. Roll out the barrel, baby! I cannot remember the polka now, although I’m sure it might come back with a refresher.
On one of his trips to Elmira, where he was born, he returned with a “moonflower.” It was most likely an evening primrose. I remember being captivated by it. Each evening, as sunlight gave way to dusk, the yellow flowers would visibly unfold, opening like tiny parasols. The next day, the blooms would be gone, but new flowers would develop quickly to resume the twilight’s necromancy. My fascination with this flower, and grandpa’s roses, led to the inevitable tiny garden that we planted together that I watered and nurtured. My grandfather made weekly excursions to Holy Sepulchre Cemetery to plant and water flowers on the graves of family and friends, and I became a partner in his jardin aux morts. While these visits were prayerful and somber, these days were treasured.
When my parents split up, my grandfather stepped up. He visited frequently, and my most beloved childhood memories were attending Red Wings’ games at old Red Wing Stadium, later named Silver Stadium. He filled my head with stories of barnstormers and old-time players, some whom he saw play and others he followed in the daily papers of the time. He was partial to stories about the Polish-American players like Moose Skowron, Ted Kluszewski and Stanley Covelesky, but Stan Musial was his favorite big leaguer. Stan played in Rochester on his way to a Hall of Fame career in St. Louis. Still, there was perhaps one player that Harry Janowski enjoyed watching more than Stan “The Man” Musial.
It was me.
From the time I started playing Little League ball at the age of 9, until I entered high school, my grandfather attended almost every game I played. He would arrive before the game, setting out his folding aluminum lawn chair with the nylon webbing behind the home plate backstop. Over the years, he developed his own fan base with the parents of my teammates and opponents. Eddie Arazoza’s father would always ask me, “Where’s grandpa?” I’d tell him, he’ll be here. And then he was.
In high school, I failed to make the freshman baseball team. The following spring, I played lacrosse instead. Grandpa still came to the games, sitting in his folding aluminum lawn chair, although the games never held the allure for him that baseball did.
When I was in college, he told me to work hard and I could have anything I wanted in life. But soon, dementia crept into his world and took my place. After I graduated from college, he took residence in a nursing home. I would visit, wanting to share all of my new experiences, realizing though, that he would never see me as a public relations executive. To him, I was still 10 years old, wearing the all-too-big catcher’s gear on the Little League diamond. 
On one visit, he no longer recognized me. He called me Casimir, who was one of his brothers. Casimir passed away many years ago, long before I was born. I stewed in resentment, not at him, but at the Universe which had cruelly erased my name from his lineup card. I wanted to tell him that I accepted a job in Cleveland, working for the largest PR firm in the world. In that sense, I had made it to the big leagues. In his current state, he would never know.
I moved to Cleveland in January 1984. Occasionally, I would call the nursing home to ask for updates on his mental state, and implore the nurses to let him know that his grandson called to send his love. One night, as November passed the baton to December, I woke from sleep thinking of my grandfather. The clock said 12:01 a.m.  In the morning, I called the nursing home. They told me what I already knew. Harry Janowski died at age 86. Time of death: 12:01 a.m.
Many years have passed since. For some of those years, I lived back in Rochester. In those springs, I visited Holy Sepulchre, where I planted flowers in front of the gravestone for him and Sofia. His love and supreme devotion have shaped the person I am more than any individual. I no longer resent that he mistook me for his brother Casimir, but am honored that he viewed me as his brother. On this day, June 10, 121 years after the day he was born, I pay tribute to my grandfather, my hero and my friend, Harry Janowski. I wish him peace with all the angels. If there is baseball in heaven, I know there will be an aluminum folding chair behind home plate reserved for him.