Izbicki, Raymond Anthony
broadcaster, antiques dealer, priest
(Dec. 8, 1921 - Feb. 20, 2007)
Serving his employers with aplomb in different fields of activity was for the most part the gist of Raymond Izbicki's life. Had his father, Anthony Izbicki, who came from Poland in 1907, got stuck with a pick and shovel in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, the son's life certainly would not have been the same. He was born December 8, 1921, in Norwich, Connecticut, where his father delivered bread with a horse and wagon to homes and stores on cobblestone streets and terraced hillsides. At the time, the city of 29,687 had a 1,790 persons, 595 of them married women, from Poland and others from Galicia. Outside the home the children of these immigrants were influenced a great deal by their own church, St. Joseph's, formed in 1904, and Norwich Free Academy, which began as an independent high school in 1854.After graduation from the high school in 1939, Raymond Izbicki was hired by the Columbia Broadcasting Company in New York to work on shortwave radio programs. Shortly before he found the job, Elmer Davis, a 49-year-old journalist from Indiana, took the place of H. V. Kaltenborn on the broadcasting network and endeared himself to millions of listeners. In 1942, when President Roosevelt picked Davis to organize the Office of War Information, Izbicki was used to produce foreign-language programs for the Voice of America under OWI. These included news programs in 44 languages and were broadcast in areas of Europe under the occupation of Nazi Germany. When the war was over in 1945, President Truman complimented the radio people for their "outstanding contribution to victory."
Then Izbicki worked with C.A.R.E., Inc,, a non-profit Christian organization created to fight poverty in many countries. He distributed food packages in Germany, Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Italy, and Libya. Giovanni Gronchi, President of The Italian Republic, was so impressed with his service to the Italian people that he bestowed on him the rank of Commander, Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Pope Pius XII also thanked him.
What did Izbicki want to do when he returned to New York in 1956? For some reason, he gave up radio and charity work. Whether he was a friend of Betty Parsons, an artist and owner of an art gallery, or just a jobseeker, he helped her to open the Section Eleven Gallery in New York to promote the works of new artists. Previously, Parsons brought before the public giants of abstract expressionism like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Later Izbicki was appointed director of the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. The school was opened in 1965 in a national historic landmark, which stood in Greenwich Village since 1838, and in the same building in which the Whitney Museum of Art was started in the past.
In 1975 he opened an art and antiques shop in Stonington, Connecticut, off the Boston Post Road, where wealthy New Yorkers spent their summers and were his best customers. One imagines that he sold old pewter, spinning wheels, nautical instruments, old furniture, paintings, and log books of sea captains whose trim white houses still stand in the town of Stonington. He retired in 1989.
To him retiring meant finding something else to do. In February 1994 he was ordained to the priesthood by the Anglican (Old Catholic) Church and was assigned to St. James Church in a farming settlement between Preston and Norwich, Connecticut, where he spent most of his ministry in counseling, visiting the sick, and conducting funeral and marriage services. He retired again in time to watch the parade on the 200th anniversity of Stonington in 2001. He died on February 20, 2007, and his body was cremated.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2008)