Zlocki, Stanley J.
(May 28, 1919 - Feb. 1, 2009)
AttorneyNo doubt about it the Zlocki family was almost the same to Kulpmont, Pennsylvania, as it was to Czaczow, Galicia. It loved the mountains in both places and rarely strayed very far from them. After the first division of Poland in 1772, Empress Maria Theresa put Galicia on the map of Europe and wasn't as tough on the people lying on the north side of the Carpathians as the Russian czars were on the people in the Russian partition of Poland. Michael Zlocki, who was born September 26, 1884, in the village of Czaczow, broke the mold when he sailed across the Atlantic Ocean on the Kaiserin Augustus Victoria and arrived in New York on August 22, 1907. He found a job in the coal mines up in the mountains of Kulpmont and remained there until he died. His wife, Helen, with whom he had seven children, would not leave the mountains, either. She died in Kulpmont, December 6, 1988.
Stanley Zlocki, the middle child in the family, thought he would be different. After graduation from Kulpmont High School in 1937, he saw that boxing was one way to stay out of the coal mines. He went to New York to fight in vain for the Golden Gloves middle weight championship at Madison Square Garden and stayed in the Big Apple until he joined the U.S. Air Force on May 16, 1941. He was assigned to the largest pilot training base in the USAF, known later as Loughlin Air Base, five miles east of Del Rio, Texas, where he won several boxing titles. In between fights, he had much to do with the take-offs and landings of planes.
After the war, he received his education under the Gl Bill at Alliance College in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania - where he met Norma Petrucelli, who became his wife on September 13, 1948 - Penn State University in 1950 and Catholic University Law School in 1953.
The mountain town that coal built was waiting for him to come home and practice law. In addition to estate planning and general law, he provided legal services to St. Casimir's parish, now the Church of the Holy Angels, the American Legion, the Knights of Columbus, the First National Bank of Kulpmont, the Sobieski Building and Loan Association in Mount Carmel, and the school district.
After a funeral Mass in the Church of the Holy Angels, he was buried in St. Casimir's Cemetery, Marion Heights.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)