ED PINKOWSKI HONORED BY FLORIDA INSTITUTE
St. Petersburg, Fla. (PMN) - The discoverer of General Thaddeus Kosciuszko's last
residence in America and General Casimir
Pulaski's tomb in Savannah, Georgia, has won
another prestigious award.
Edward Pinkowski of Cooper City, Florida,
received the Distinguished Service Award of
the American Institute of Polish Culture in St.
Petersburg, the heart of Pinellas County, which
has more people of Polish descent than any
other county in Florida. Wallace West, President of the organization, who presented the
award, called Pinkowski "another star" in a
"galaxy of eminent Americans who have
significantly contributed to enhancing the
image of Poles in America."
Others who received the award in previous years included the late Dr. Jan Karski,
who warned the British and American governments of the holocaust, in which millions
of Polish Jews and Catholics were exterminated; W. S. Kuniczak, famous author of
"Thousand Hour Day" and other books; and
Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, who also received
the highest medal that the President of the
United States could give to a civilian. Dr.
Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, who received the
award several years ago, was in the audience with his wife, President of the Polish
Club in Sarasota, Florida.
Dr. Przemyslaw Grudzinski, the ambassador of Poland, congratulated
Pinkowski for his work "in the promotion of
Polish heritage in the United States." He wrote,
"Your diligent work and outstanding achievements in nurturing Polish culture and tradition
have made it possible for numerous Polish-Americans to find a peaceful harbor to cherish
and rekindle their ethnic background."
KOSCIUSZKO AND PULASKI
Because of his research, Pinkowski purchased the house in Philadelphia in which
Kosciuszko was a boarder in 1797-98 and in
which, with the help of Thomas Jefferson, who
was then vice president of the United States,
he thought of leaving his fortune for the education of black slaves, and put up a historical
marker on the sidewalk to recall General
Washington's engineer during the American
Revolution.
The marker, erected in 1967, five years
before the federal government restored the
house as a national memorial to General Kosciuszko, at a cost of $400,000, provided many
photo opportunities for wreath laying ceremonies and other appearances. They included
the visit to Philadelphia of Erma Bombeck,
syndicated humorist, and John Cardinal Krol,
head of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
But, Pinkowski's greatest impact was in
de-mystifying General Pulaski's grave. After
years of research, he proved that the commanding officer of General Washington's cavalry forces was not buried at sea, although he
died on the Wasp, which was tied up at a finger
pier of the Bonaventure plantation in Georgia.
At the time, the privately owned Wasp, whose
crew consisted of slaves and a few officers
from South Carolina, was being used to take
French artillery guns out of Savannah.
When Pulaski died on the Wasp on the
afternoon of October 15,1779, Eleazar Phillips,
the ship's bookkeeper, made a coffin out of
yellow pine lumber, which he found stockpiled
on the Bonaventure Plantation, whose owner
fled to a British island off the Atlantic coast
during the fighting in Savannah. After that
some of the slaves carried Pulaski's corpse off
the Wasp and its captain, Samuel Bulfinch,
directed it to the next plantation down the river,
known as Greenwich, which Jane Bowen inherited after her husband died on a business
trip to London. She buried Pulaski secretly at
night so that the British forces, who were only
three miles away, would not know where the
grave was.
IRON BOX IN SAVANNAH
Most importantly, her grandson, who was
often taken to Pulaski's grave, brought in a few
gravediggers in December, 1852, and removed
the remains of the Polish hero to whom Savannah wanted to pay tribute. The bones, which
the doctors of Savannah studied for almost a
year, were lined up neatly in an iron box,
sealed, and marked with Pulaski's name and
rank on the cover. The box was then moved to
a shelf in the brick vault under the Pulaski
monument in Savannah.
Unfortunately, in 1971, when Pinkowski
fitted all of the pieces of the mystery together,
no person had access to the brick vault. The
soil and water of Monterey Square surrounded
it. No one saw the iron box again until the tall
Pulaski Monument was taken down in the
summer of 1996 for restoration.
Since then Dr. James Metis, coroner of
Savannah, and his forensic team have kept
the bones in a police morgue and study
them as necessary, comparing them with
physical and historical evidence. They do
not want to release their findings until DNA
evidence is available.
Among the mounting evidence, for example, is that the bones indicate Pulaski
had a crook in his neck, which meantthat he
spent most of his life on horseback and
used his saddle for a pillow. The teeth were
in pretty good shape and provided plenty of
DNA to work with, and x-rays of the bones
proved that the British cannon ball that
knocked General Pulaski off his horse on
October 9,1779, did not splinter his bones,
but only caused heavy bleeding.
The x-rays also showed that Pulaski
suffered a broken right arm in prior years.
Pinkowski found that Pulaski broke it in
1770 in a guerrilla war and could not write
for several weeks. His aide de camp, who
wrote for him, was unable to find a doctor in
the Polish mountains, where they had a
camp, to take care of the broken arm.
DISTINGUISHED SERVICE
When West presented the Distinguished
Service Award, he said "it was this kind of
determination to validate history that led him to
rescue General Pulaski from a watery grave
and prove beyond a shadow of doubt that his
remains were buried beneath the monument in
Monterey Square in Savannah, Georgia."
Myths have never stopped Pinkowski from
doing a thorough, complete job of investigation. Trying to sort out the myths from the facts
was not always easy. No matter what earlier
historians wrote, Pinkowski traveled as far as
necessary to verify a point or two. His adventures in cemeteries, both in the United States
and Poland, remote places, and writings about
little-known Polish pioneers in various parts of
the country are legendary in the family. The
family room of his small but comfortable home
in Cooper City, Florida, where he lives with his
wife of 60 years, has a small pillow embroidered with the words, "Home Away from Home."
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This story appeared in POLONIA TODAY, APRIL 2003 issue, page 7
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