Ilczuk, Michael
(Sept. 21, 1899 - May 1979)In the 49 years that he lived in Philadelphia, scarcely a year passed that Michael Ilczuk didn't march in the annual parade in honor of General Casimir Pulaski from Logan Circle to Independence Hall. Occasionally, when he was chauffeured to the scene, he would lay a wreath in front of the Pulaski statue behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Certainly Stefan Sokolowski, who wrote in Polish for Gwiazda in Philadelphia and Nowy Dziennik in New York, mentioned Ilczuk's name whenever he wrote about the Polish hero of the American Revolution.
It was not in my power to accept him as a Pulaski relative without proof of the kinship. He always told me that he had the documents at home to prove it. Without seeing them, I understood that his mother, Eleanor, was the granddaughter of Michael and Antonina (nee Malinowski) Pulaski and was born February 27, 1862. Michael was born in 1821 who in turn was the son of Peter and Apolonia Pulaski. Peter was born Feb, 14, 1771, the son of Wojciech Pulaski and Katarzyna Rogaska. None of this fits with the immediate family of General Pulaski.
Turning back to Eleanor Wardzik, she married Szymon Ilczuk, with whom she had three sons - Michael, Jan, and Pawel - and saw very little of Michael, who served eleven years in the Polish Army. His fiancee. Mary Niedzwiecka, left Poland in 1927 with her mother, and three years later her parents made arrangements with the Scandinavian American Line for his passage to New York. On January 30, 1930, he boarded the SS Frederik VIII and sailed from Copenhagen, Denmark, with a shipload of Polish people who under the quota system were allowed to enter the United States. It was the same steamship that the German Ambassador boarded on Feb. 14, 1917, to go back to Germany before the United States entered the First World War. For twelve days Ilczuk and the other passengers ate nothing but Danish food.
Within a few weeks of landing, on March 1, 1930, Michael Ilczuk and Mary Niedzwiecka were married at St. Adalbert's Catholic Church in Philadelphia, Over the years, he found a job at various factories, and lost two jobs at Yale Towne and General Electric because of strikes. During the Second World War he took two courses at Mastbaum Vocational School in English and machine shop practices and thereafter worked in machine shops.
His wife, with whom he had one son, Robert E., passed away on August 1, 1978, and interment was at Our Lady of Grace Cemetery. He was laid to rest beside her in May of 1979.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)