Polish Cookies

Nana and Walter // Walter surrounded by Isaac Stern, Judith Jamison, Susannah, Melinda and Dame Leontyne Price

​While in Boston last month, I was asked to honor one of Boston’s greatest impresarios with Polish cookies. This incredible man had longstanding friendships with Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern, Dame Leontyne Price, Judith Jamison, Twyla Tharp and Mikhail Baryshnikov. He changed the cultural landscape of Boston.
 
The backstory here goes way back, back before world wars, or even the Titanic.
The point of this story also goes way, way back, before white people came to America. The Iroquois Nation lives by a law that we should all acquaint ourselves with: In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.
 
Around 1904, a baker named Ladislas Piasecki and his bride Clementine immigrated to Boston from a small town in Poland in search of the American dream. Although Ladislas and Clementine didn’t speak English, they dreamed their hypothetical American children would. As they settled into their new American life, Ladislas found work at a Polish bakery, and Clementine became pregnant. They had a boy, followed by a girl two years later. All was going according to plan, so two years later, in 1909, Clementine gave birth to a second girl, my grandmother, whom they named Anna Stephanie.
 
The world at that time thrived on the rags to riches story of immigrants to America.  But for every Andrew Carnegie, Levi Strauss or Joe Kennedy, there are thousands upon thousands of souls who became lost to history, simply because their lives didn’t turn out so well. For while striving for a better life, it is possible to lose the life you have. In this case, quite literally: in 1911, while giving birth to their fourth child Henry, Clementine died.
 
Ladislas was bereft, widowed in his 20s with four babies under the age of 7, one a newborn. The decisions he made at this time of mourning would ripple down for generations, and cause a fair degree of trauma.
 
Here are his obvious options, all of which would affect generations to come:
 
Bleak Door #1: Go back to Poland. Shelve the American dream; it went awry. Seek help from his family in Poland to raise his babies.
 
Bleaker Door #2: Marry again – even if only for the sake of the kids. Seek out a kind woman who wants a family, and hope it all works out.
 
Bleakest Door #3: White knuckle it out. Work six days a week in Boston, 12 hours a day making Polish delicacies like kolaczki and karpatkas and perogis. Rationalize this by saying: I didn’t sign up to raise kids by myself.
 
Over 100 years later, we can't know exactly what he felt or what his rationale was. So for reasons unknown to history, Ladislas chose Door #3. This meant he farmed newborn Henry and 6-year old Ziggy out to Polish neighbors who wanted boys. But no one wanted to take in his daughters Mary (4) and my nana Stephanie (2). So, he left them in a Catholic orphanage across town. Every week, Ladislas took the two buses to visit his girls on Sundays after Mass for a few hours. He would bring them a treat from the bakery and speak Polish to them. But really, Nana and her sister were raised by nuns.
 
Nuns in 1911 were not the compassionate spiritual beings we think of today. Back then, their mission was less “Jesus loves the Little Children” and more “Instill the Fear of the Lord.” Nana grew up obeying orders and breathing in Fear. Fear of everything going wrong. She never spoke of her childhood, but her education never went past sixth grade. She never spoke of her father. Trauma and silence are familiar bedfellows, silence thinking it can ignore or at least bury the trauma. Silence does bury the trauma deeply: geneticists now believe that trauma is passed down in the genes for several generations. The Iroquois’ law holds scientific merit.
 
I wish I had asked her about her childhood, but it didn’t occur to me. The only time Nana ever referred to the nuns was one night when I was about 5 years old. She had given me a bath, and preceded to take a rough towel and almost scrape my skin off as she was drying me. My grandmother was, overall, a gentle soul, and I remember being very upset. I begged her to stop, and she told me, “This is how the nuns used to dry us. It gets you clean.” My skin was raw after that, and for the rest of my young childhood, I did my best to avoid the weekly bath when I was at her house.
 
The only story my mother had about the nuns and Nana was that they told her that since God had taken away her real mother, He had given her The Blessed Mother Mary. For her entire life, Nana had a devotion (verging on obsession) to the Virgin Mother Mary, which she passed down to my mother. For real. At one point, when just out of high school, Mom looked into joining a convent. (Thankfully for me, my siblings and Dad, someone told her they thought she would be better suited living another life.)
 
In fairness, life validated and confirmed Nana’s Fear. Two weeks after her 20th birthday, Black Friday plunged the country into the Greatest Depression it has ever known.  
 
But Hope springs eternal.
 
A few months before the Great Depression, when Nana was 19, she was shopping in Filene’s Basement and a friend of her father’s asked her how she liked her new stepmother. Stunned, Nana learned that Ladislas had returned to Poland in search of a bride (only a few years older than Nana herself).
 
Apparently, Ladislas was looking to reinvent himself in middle age. For starters, he changed his name to Walter (we only discovered his name originally was Ladislas when Nana died and we saw her birth certificate). The bride he brought back, Regina (called “Reggie”) spoke only Polish, and they intended to start a family.
 
This is the age before therapy, or talk shows or Oprah, so none of this was ever discussed or questioned. But here’s a man who basically abandoned his family, and now is attempting a “redo” years later, which his daughter is learning about in Filene’s Basement. Mic drop.
How would you respond?
 
All stories are ultimately about love or fear. The best have both – overcoming fear and finding the strength to love, especially when it’s not easy. That’s why this story is worth telling: Although Nana had not known much love in her childhood, she made the remarkable decision to choose love. It meant forgiving her father for practically abandoning her. (She was, afterall, already old enough at this point to leave him and his new family behind.)
 
Yet Nana chose to embrace this new Polish stepmother and subsequent half siblings Walter Jr. and Teresa. She cared for this new family to the point that it looked natural and effortless to those of us who didn’t know her history. If Nana is never known for anything else in her life, this choice is enough. It is everything. 
 
For Nana’s choice, to love, also affected generations after her. Years later, my mom and Nana’s young half-brother (mom’s “Uncle” Walter, only 7 years her senior) both lived for several years in the town of Hingham, Massachusetts with their families. We spent holidays together, and they built a lifelong friendship. In many ways, Walter Jr. (known just as Walter) became the older brother Mom never had. In fact, in her last days at the Memory Care Ward in Tucson, she still asked about Walter. They adored each other.
 
Walter’s life had intense ups and downs. Like his father, he Americanized his name (last name this time, from Piasecki to Pierce), and also had a happy marriage with two beautiful daughters. Like his namesake, he also buried his first wife after she died. (Betty passed away from cancer.) Mom developed a special relationship at that point with Walter’s younger daughter Susannah. Years later, Walter also went on to have another happy marriage with a wonderful concert pianist named Margaret.
 
Where Walter Jr. is exceptional is how he found solace in the arts, escaping his childhood of poverty and blue-collar immigrant parents to become one of Boston’s top impresarios. His love for dance and music made Walter come alive, and he wanted others to experience the same vitality they gave him. Due to his passion for performing art, he created the Celebrity Series of Boston, promoting over 1500 music, dance and theater events in the city. Walter was excellent at what he did, bringing many world-renowned artists and shows to Boston for the first time. He was also incredibly humble and kind. He knew how to make artists feel valued and appreciated. In the process, he became lifelong friends with many of them. It’s no exaggeration to claim that Boston is now a more vibrant and culturally alive place thanks to Walter Pierce. His love for the arts will continue to enrich future generations. His love for the arts lives on even in his next generation. Today, his daughter Susannah runs a very successful dance school in Arlington, Virginia, which offers over 40 different dance classes. Like her dad, she is influencing the next generation of dancers, and so it goes…
 
As for Nana’s decision to love, it also lives on through the generations. Susannah and I have a lifelong bond. We call each other cousins, because we can’t really figure out what we are (although younger, she may be some kind of aunt to me?). She texted me the morning of Walter’s death to let me know of his passing. It was two days before Mom and Dad’s memorial. So, we attended the memorials for our parents in Boston together, grieving together. We listened to each other’s eulogies about our parents, laughed, cried, remembered. We celebrated their lives together, and for that matter, celebrated our lives. There will be a classy memorial concert in Boston for Walter in the Fall, but this was a private moment to give thanks for how Walter touched our lives.
 
So it came to be that Susannah and her sister Melinda (a brilliant environmentalist) asked that I bring Polish cookies to honor of Walter at his memorial.
 
There is a famous saying by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a Polish writer who lived around the same time as our patriarch Ladislas/Walter: It has been said that Poland is dead, exhausted, enslaved, but here is the proof of her life and triumph.
 
This speaks to the family history of immigration, premature death, sorrow, despair, abandonment, the Great Depression, and WWII (Nana’s husband was in Northern Africa and Europe for three years). It seems that what keeps all of us afloat through the exhaustion and disappointment is the proof of our lives and our chief triumph: love and art.