LAPKA, THEODORE ALOYSIUS (April 20, 1920 -- Dec. 1, 2011)Football player and lawyer. Football fans are usually able to look back and remember the names of professional players they have seen and admired. When it comes to the games of the Washington Redskins, which I attended every Sunday when I was stationed at the Naval Bureau of Personnel during the Second World War, it's hard to recall Ted Lapka, who played for the Redskins, because Sammy Baugh, who was the quarterback of the team, threw the football so much to different players that their names escape me.
The people who bury our dead can take a lesson from the Friedrich Jones Funeral Home in Naperville, Illinois, that issued the obituary of Ted Lapka. It saved the Naperville Sun and the Chicago Sun-Times a lot of time. Bravo!
From the Polish prospective, the life of Ted Lapka is part of the beautiful mosaic of the country. William Hoffman, our expert on Polish family names, traced the origin of Lapka to the Polish word for hound. The largest number of Lapka names in Poland is in Brzeziny. Several years ago Poland had 1,364 persons of the same name. The number in the United States is less.
Ted Lapka was born April 20, 1920, at Cicero, Illinois, where his father, John Lapka, who came from Poland in 1910, had a butcher shop, and was the fourth of seven children. The maiden name of his mother was Mary Zak. She also came from Poland in 1912.
Ted was involved in sports with his brother at an early age. He was one of the stars on the football and track teams at St. Ignatius High School in Chicago and was awarded a football scholarship to DePaul University in 1938. After one semester in Chicago, he was lured to St. Ambrose College at Davenport, Iowa, which had a better program in football and track. He was inducted into the St. Ambrose Hall of Fame in 1979.
The team in Chicago was the first one to offer him an opportunity to play football for money. Unfortunately he was not good enough. The Washington Redskins then signed him to a contract and he played offensive and defensive end three years -- 1943 (the year it lost the title), 1944 and 1946 -- in the National Football League. He played for the U.S. 8 the Army Air Force football team and entertained American troops in the last year of the Second World War.
Under the GI Bill, which did more to provide college education to soldiers who came home from war than any war in the country's history, he switched from football to law school and graduated from DePaul University Law School in 1948. At the same time he started a family with Annice, whom he married November 28, 1947, and raised three children. He was a lawyer with the Bituminous Casualty Corporation in Chicago from 1948 to 1961 and the Federal Trade Commission from 1962 to 1990.
For fifty years Ted Lapka took an active interest in the affairs of Olympia Fields outside of Chicago. He was a leader in the Lions Club, the Boy Scouts, and other organizations too numerous to mention. At 91, he died at a nursing home in Naperville.
The viewing of his body took place at the Friedrich-Jones Funeral Home and Mass of Christian burial at St. Thomas the Apostle church in Naperville. It was followed with interment at Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois. He left two sons to perpetuate the family name, Michael Lapka in Houston, Texas, and Thomas Lapka in Naperville.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2012) [email protected]