Mary Brzezinski

November 21, 1914 – August 30, 2013

Mary Koziol Brzezinski’s favorite number was 13. She was born the 13th of 17 children and always considered herself the lucky one. Perhaps it is fitting that Mrs. Brzezinski died in 2013.

She died as she had always wanted to die – peacefully in the loving home she shared with her daughter, Elizabeth “Bette” Krause and son-in-law Kurt Krause.

As a young girl, Mrs. Brzezinski had the short-lived idea of finishing school in a convent to become a Catholic nun. Instead, she would travel extensively and become the matriarch of her own large family.

Life in early 20th century Omaha was far from boring for the young girl. She and her large family lived in a five-bedroom house at the corner of 34th and L in Omaha, Nebr. Once, The New York Times declared in a news article that they were the largest family in the United States. Though this was later discovered to be untrue, a photograph of the entire family, dressed in borrowed formal attire, remains an heirloom. Mrs. Brzezinski was 10 years old and cried when she had to give back the dress.

As a teenager, during the Catholic ceremony May Crowning, she was to place a crown on a statue of the Virgin Mary. Mrs. Brzezinski wore one of her older sisters’ wedding gowns. A woman in church told her an old wives’ tale: If you wear a white wedding dress before your wedding day, you will never be married in white. In her usual good natured spirit, she laughed off the thought. Later in life, the old woman’s words proved prophetic.

As Mrs. Brzezinski grew older, she was a member of the Glee Club and Drama Club at South High School. She wanted to stay in school and become a nurse. Unfortunately, like all of her brothers and sisters, she was asked to quit school to work for the nearby meat processing plant, Cudahy Packing Company. The impoverished family needed the money. Mrs. Brzezinski begged her mother to allow her to graduate. Her mother relented and Mrs. Brzezinski took accelerated classes to become the first in her family to receive a high school diploma. Nursing school, however, was out of the question.

After graduation, she helped with housework until she was offered a job as a public stenographer at the World Herald Building. She later worked at a company that set prices for millwork and finally in an office at the Cudahy plant. There, she got news that would change her life forever.

A year before working at Cudahy, Mrs. Brzezinski had borrowed a typewriter to test for a job with the United States Civil Service. Now, so many months later, she was told she was accepted and would be assigned to the U.S. Navy Department in Washington, D.C. At first, Mrs. Brzezinski was hesitant. She had not expected to be sent so far from home and she was sure she would miss her family and her boyfriend of the time. Her mother, who referred to Mrs. Brzezinski as “a very unsettled girl,” convinced her this was what she needed. She took her mother’s advice. Her sister Virginia Koziol Sefic loaned her $50 for train fare and meals. Mrs. Brzezinski left that five-bedroom house, known throughout the neighborhood for the smells of family meals including pork dishes, chicken soup, cabbage and, of course, pies from fresh cherries grown in the yard.

Not long after arriving in Washington, friends at Mrs. Brzezinski’s new job introduced her to the man whom she would marry. At a party in May 1941, she met Navy sailor Walter “Ski” Brzezinski. By the end of the night, both were quite smitten. Although he was infrequently in Washington, the two had a fast and strong romance. After running through all his leave time, he invited her to Detroit, where his ship was patrolling the Great Lakes. He told her he wanted to talk seriously about marriage.

As they sat in his aunt’s Michigan home, discussing wedding plans, Mr. Brzezinski jumped from his seat. He had been listening to the radio and yelled that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. It was Dec. 7, 1941. No one else in the room had ever heard of Pearl Harbor. Mr. Brzezinski reported to his base immediately. His captain allowed him leave to get married but warned him not to wear his uniform. If he did, the first officer to spot him would drag him back to the base. Mr. Brzezinski wore a borrowed suit. Mrs. Brzezinski wore a black business suit with a red blouse. As the woman in church had predicted years earlier, she did not wear a white dress to her wedding.

The two were allowed a quick “honeymoon” – their train ride back to Washington. The day after they arrived, however, Mr. Brzezinski was called back to Michigan and shipped out. Mrs. Brzezinski continued to help the war effort from Washington. They saw each other only on his brief leaves but wrote many letters back and forth.

After the war, Mr. and Mrs. Brzezinski returned to her native Omaha where they raised three children, sending them all to Catholic schools. Mrs. Brzezinski volunteered at her children’s schools and, at home, advanced her lifelong hobby of baking and decorating cakes. Mr. Brzezinski worked for Mutual of Omaha. He was later diagnosed with diabetes and died in 1969 of a heart attack.

Mrs. Brzezinski went back to work, this time as a bookkeeper for a tile company in Omaha, until she retired.

In retirement, as in work, Mrs. Brzezinski never sat idle. She and her siblings explored their home state on several “Know Nebraska” bus tours, where her granddaughter Lori Marie Simpson Gillespie often was her companion and roommate. Those trips were followed by more exotic trips to Hawaii, Jamaica and Cancun, Mexico. After each trip, Mrs. Brzezinski would sit at her manual typewriter and write an account of their adventures, to be shared with the entire family and extended family.

In 1979, she moved to Florida and lived with her daughter Bette and son-in-law, Kurt, helping raise their four children. All of her grandchildren, her grandchildren’s friends and all the neighborhood children called her Grandma, Grandma B., or simply Gram. Her days included drives to the neighborhood pool (often in a car filled with as many as 10 children), board games and card games. She taught her many grandchildren to crochet, to knit, to sew, to craft, to cook and to work with wood. For the grandchildren she lived with, she taught them to clean house the old-fashioned way. About once every few months, she would empty every drawer and every closet into a pile in the middle of a bedroom floor. The next few hours were spent organizing what would be saved, giving away what was unwanted and throwing away what was unneeded.

Mrs. Brzezinski made use of every minute of her time. While driving, she would pray the Rosary, counting fingers instead of beads. While watching television, she would sew or crochet or knit. She was known to wake before sunrise and loudly rattle pots and pans in the kitchen as she prepared some new baked surprise for breakfast. She volunteered for her church and her grandchildren’s school, often chaperoning on field trips. She sewed prom dresses for the girls and boxer shorts for the boys. She baked and decorated cakes for her grandchildren’s weddings and hand-crafted baby blankets for her great grandchildren.

Throughout her long “retirement”, she always enjoyed long visits from her out-of-town children, siblings, nieces and nephews, her many grandchildren and, eventually, her many great grandchildren. Other than a few years in Omaha, caring for a sister with Alzheimer’s, Mrs. Brzezinski lived with her daughter and son in law until her death.

Remaining as a keepsake for Mary Koziol Brzezinski’s large family, and everyone who knew her, is a memoir she wrote in December 2000 titled “Our Family.” Her youngest sister, Lucille Koziol Novotny, visited during the writing and wrote a quick note about each of her brothers and sisters. “Joe was the collector,” Lucille wrote. “Virginia was the glamorous one.” In that memoir, next to Mrs. Brzezinski’s name, Lucille wrote: “Mary is the smart one.”

Much of Mrs. Brzezinski’s life also remains chronicled in the letters she wrote tirelessly to family and friends. She always wrote in the third person, as if she were an objective observer of her own life. The letters she sent home from Washington, D.C., were filled with long stories of parties and friends and laughter – despite the war that sent her husband and her friends’ husbands overseas.

Mrs. Brzezinski’s eldest daughter once noted: “Is it so odd, I wonder, to think of our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and more distant ancestors as having partied and laughed and loved each other? So often, we have only known them as elderly and quiet, sometimes ill or feeble, and we so easily miss the perspective that they were once young and lively.”

Mrs. Brzezinski is preceded in death by her husband, Walter Adam Brzezinski Sr.; her parents, William and Anna Koziol; her seven brothers and eight of her nine sisters. She is survived by her sister, Dorothy Ann Koziol Brukner, of Omaha; her daughter and son in law, Elizabeth “Bette” Brzezinski Krause and Kurt Krause, of Belleair, Fla.; her son and daughter in law, Dr. Walter Adam “Jay” Brzezinski and Jessie, of Charleston, S.C.; her daughter and son in law, Mary Ann Brzezinski Langer and Mark of Omaha; nine grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, donations in Mrs. Brzezinski’s name can be made to:

Suncoast Hospice Foundation

https://www.thehospicefoundation.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=1333

5771 Roosevelt Blvd

Clearwater FL 33760

A service in Omaha will be announced at a later date.