Chronicles

What is history?

It’s telling a story of what happened in the past. It can be complex or simple, but it’s the same concept – what happened.

As a young student at Marquette University in 1973 I  was fascinated with history, so I studied it voraciously, and I continue to do so today.

My parents were from Poland, they met in Chicago in the late 1940’s, and their story is fascinating. My father was a captain in the Polish Army based on the German border just prior to the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. My mother was a young girl living in eastern Poland when the Soviets and Germans split Poland. 

I grew up in the era of a 19″ black and white television, and the newspaper. We watched the Vietnam War on that TV  during dinner. My parents would lapse between Polish and English n conversation. My father would talk about the war, my mother not so much so. As she said once some things were better forgotten…

Having a family background as such I have always been fascinated with their story, and the stories of everyone.  My goal is to capture those stories, from everyday people,  

Are they cataclysmic in the greater sense of things? I’m just an interested human with a passion for not letting this be forgotten, or summarized in one paragraph in an obituary that no one will really read or remember.

And yes, I disagree with mom. So here we are. My goal  is to tell the stories, to capture what happened through the lenses of the people who lived them, and to not let them be forgotten.

That is history.