Krysakowski, Joseph E., Brigadier General
(June 20, 1915 - May 22, 1997)
Military officerStamford, Connecticut, now the headquarters of many corporations that moved from New York in the 1980s, was the birthplace of Brigadier General Joseph E. Krysakowski on June 20, 1915. His father, Mieczyslaw (Matthew), who came from Majdan, Galicia, in 1907, and married Josephine Rudzynski in New York, had a butcher shop in a working class section of Connecticut's fourth largest city. After graduation from Stamford High School, he received degrees from New York University, Connecticut, and Yale Law School.
His military career began as an aviation cadet at Maxwell Field, Alabama, in 1941. He received his wings and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force at Mather Field in California in May of 1942. He took part in combat operations with the Troop Carrier Command from 1942 until 1945. During the invasion of Europe on June 6, 1944, he led a squadron of aircraft which dropped paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division on the Cherbourg peninsula in France. He took part in five missions against the German Army across the Rhine in Holland. In November 1944 he returned to the United States and took over the information and education office at Bradley Field in Connecticut.
His awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit with two Oak Leaf Clusters, Bronze Star with seven battle stars, Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster and the Air Force Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster.
When he took off his military uniform in December, 1945, he practiced law in Stamford, where approximately six percent of the population was of Polish descent, and returned to military duty four years later. He served as a legal officer in the Air Force, first at the Mitchel Air Force Base in New York and then another one in Colorado.
He was on the staff of the judge advocate in Tachikawa, Japan, from January 1952 to July 1955; Edwards Air Force Base in California from 1955 to 1959; and Hill Air Force Base in Utah from July 1959 to July 1961.
Then he was appointed in turn chief of the Appellate Division and Claims Division of the Air Force in Washington, DC, and in July 1965 was transferred to the European headquarters of the Air Force in Germany. Three years later he returned to Washington as director of civil law and assistant judge advocate general.
In March 1970, one month after he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general, he moved to Nebraska with his wife, Helen, and son, John, and accomplished two things. He ended his military career as adviser to the commander in chief and staff of the Strategic Air Career and started another one as assistant dean of Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska.
Never a man to sit still, when he retired, the general and his wife made St. Peter's Catholic Church, built in the mist of Spanish mods-festooned trees in 1846, in Beaufort, South Carolina, their regular church. Hanging around it, however, was too quiet. French explorers visited the area long before the first Poles saw Jamestown in 1608 and left it more beautiful than it was before. Everybody the Krysakowskis met wanted to preserve Beaufort's beauty. So did they. They joined Keep America Beautiful and other groups and the interest lasted their deaths, he on May 27, 1997, and she on June 21, 2003. Both lie in Beaufort National Cemetery.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)