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Pat Sajak’s Letter “D” in Poland
On this Labor Day my thoughts are with a laborer I wish I had taken the time to know better:
For much of my life, I carried an extra letter with me. It was a “d.” My name was Patrick Sajdak, S-a-j-d-a-k. It was pronounced as it is today (SAY-JACK), but that silent letter baffled teachers. They inevitably struggled with my name, and my fellow students enjoyed teasing me with the results of those struggles. The pronunciation difficulties followed me through school, the Army and into my adult years. I hated that “d.”
When I began to work in television, I dropped it—unofficially, at least—and viewers were introduced to Pat S-a-j-a-k. Even though the offending letter remained on my driver’s license and credit cards, my TV audience only saw the newer, sleeker version of my name. And, when I was about to marry in the late ’80s, I felt it was time to take the legal steps to finally rid myself of that “d” forever. My wife and my children would never have to deal with it. It was gone for good, and I almost never thought about it.
Then about a year ago, a viewer whose business is genealogy was doing some research for a Polish client when he ran across my name and its old spelling. For some reason, he remembered reading about that “d” in an interview, and he took it upon himself to put together a family tree that stretched back into the 1600s. He sent the information to me (along with photostatic copies of documents relating to marriages, births, deaths and immigration) explaining that he wanted to thank me for years of viewing pleasure. Of course, I wrote to thank him for the very kind thing he had done, but the documents, while interesting, were soon placed in a drawer and largely forgotten.
Recently, however, an opportunity arose for me to travel to Warsaw to help launch a Polish version of Wheel of Fortune called Kolo Fortuny, and I remembered the papers. This time, I looked at them more carefully. It turned out that my father’s father was born in a small town called Laskowa (La-SKOH-va) in southern Poland, as were previous generations dating back at least 400 years. Not only that, but my grandfather, his father, and his father’s father had all been born in the same house, designated as “House #108.” Wouldn’t it be interesting to find that house, I thought. And so it was off to Poland to spin a wheel and, if time permitted, to search for my paternal grandfather’s birthplace.
I wasn’t particularly close to Jozef Sajdak (or Joseph, as he had become in America). My grandfather was a stern man who had been a laborer all his life, had lost a leg to disease, and whose son (my father) was an alcoholic and abusive husband. There was a divorce (much less common in the ’50s) and, inevitably, its attendant unpleasantness. The result was that visits to my grandparents and my father (who had moved in with them) became experiences I didn’t always look forward to.
When my father died in 1961, I pretty much lost contact with my grandparents. In fact, when Grandpa Joe died less than three years later, I didn’t find out about it for several weeks. Even as I grew older, I never developed an interest in exploring my family’s history. Still, there I was, just three days ago, on a train from Warsaw to Krakow, where I was to be met by an interpreter and driven for about an hour to the small village of Laskowa.
The first thing I discovered upon my arrival was that Sajdak was a very common name in those parts. (The Poles pronounce it SIGH-DOCK.) You couldn’t toss a pierogi without hitting a Sajdak. But the commonness of the name made the search more difficult. Grandpa Joe had left for America in 1920, so there was no one there with any memory of him, and no one seemed to have any idea where to find House #108. For all they knew, it was long since gone. The people of Laskowa could not have been more willing to help, and I was sent from one person to another in search of clues, but nothing from personal memories to church records was providing the answer.
Happy, at least, to have seen the family village, I was ready to give up and head back, when we ran into an elderly man who seemed to remember some old houses in the hills outside of town. So up a small winding gravel road we went. After several wrong turns by the driver and shrugged shoulders by the locals, there it was. House #108. Still not positive, we knocked on the door of another small home just up the path. The owners knew all about the Sajdaks, and their oral history perfectly matched the genealogical records I had brought along. It was, indeed, the house we were looking for.
I didn’t expect to be moved by the discovery, but I was, and deeply so. I thought about Jozef and his brothers and sisters living and working and playing on the land. I thought about how difficult life was in post-WWI Poland. And, for the first time, I realized how indebted I am to this man who left the land of his birth to come to America. His life in his adopted country was hard, too. But three generations later, my children—his great-grandchildren—are enjoying the blessings of America thanks to a man who was born and raised in House #108 in Laskowa, Poland.
I wish I had gotten to know him better. I wish I had made an effort to get past his sternness. I wish I had talked to him about the town that I was gazing down on and the home in front of which I stood. But I realized at that moment that I had reclaimed the “d.” It’s not on my driver’s license or credit cards, but it is in my heart, where it has always belonged.
Thank you, Grandpa Joe.
House #108.
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@patsajak, thanks for this amazing and timely story. Poland keeps popping up on my radar lately. I just finished the book A Secret Life, which I can’t stop talking about or thinking about. My parents were divorced when I was a baby, and being raised by my dad and family (Ukrainian), I never got to know much about my Polish mother or family. Her name was Golabiewski. I have been in touch with newly found cousins, and my sister and I are learning about our family, the country and history in a new way. I want to do the family tree also. My dad’s original Ukrainian name was also changed, due to confusion in school, etc. What I have learned has been very moving as well. It is amazing what our ancestors went through to find freedom.
Lovely story.
I’d have to tour much of Europe to find my family’s roots: Scotland, Germany, Northern Ireland, France, & Poland. I can also start closer to home: New Mexico territory for a Jaramillo.
Edited to fix a grammatcial error.
Jenkuyee Pat.
Awww, I love this story! I shall not forget that you are a SIGH-DOCK.
What a great story. Thank you for sharing.
Tracking down our past is always fascinating, but we often forget to preserve our present. I’ve done short videotapes of four relatives (three of whom are gone now, and the remaining one will be gone soon) to preserve some of their recollections, but it’s been a hit-and-miss project; I’ve failed to do it in any comprehensive manner, so there are great gaps in the narratives that I could have filled in if I was more dedicated to the project. Since most people choose not to write autobiographies, videotaping them offers a means of preserving family stories and history – a luxury we have now that previous generations by and large did not have.
Great idea!!
I guess you had an Irish mother?
Great post, as usual!
I had similar thoughts after discovering an old (from my perspective) lunchbox full of birthday cards, many of them written (or more signed, really) in Hungarian. That part of my family fled the communism of the post WWI era and fought against the Naziism of WWII. We have a lot to be thankful for.
Today, in this country, we don’t think of history like that…
Just a wonderful post, thanks for sharing.
My (birth) family has always cherished its history and learned as much as possible about its roots. Not all that difficult when its entirety is confined to the English Shires, the names are recognizable and pronounceable (by us, anyway), and the records are good.
Not so the family I married into, whose roots, Mr. She is fond of saying, go back a few generations to a doorstep in Warsaw. That grandfather arrived in Galveston (I didn’t even know Galveston was a port of entry for such immigrants, and spent months combing through the New York and Canadian records) on March 9, 1908, having departed from Bremen on the Koln, along with his young wife and first daughter, and he spent the next twenty plus years as a peripatetic coal miner in the Southwest, having six more children along the way, almost all of them in different states, before ending up in Pennsylvania sometime in the 1930s.
Mr She was, among all those children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and cousins, the first to graduate from college. And as you say about your grandfather, “his life in his adopted country was hard, too. But three generations later, [his] . . . great-grandchildren—are enjoying the blessings of America thanks to [him].
Ancestry.com has been a godsend in this research, although it hasn’t always been that straightforward, due in part to poor record keeping at the local level, the political ambiguities and vagaries of the time (was it Poland? Germany? Galicia? at the time?), but most of all to the understandable inconsistencies with spelling of the family names themselves, in the records on both sides of the Atlantic. I’ve often said I could win a Scrabble game in a single play with my married last name (still spelled in its original Polish form) if that were within the rules, but it’s not the only one, my grandmother-in-law having rejoiced in the maiden name of–wait for it–Skczrypek.
It’s rarely spelled correctly in the records, anywhere.
I’d like to buy a vowel please. Is there an “A”? ;)
Really enjoyed the story and glad you were able to ultimately find the place. I can completeley understand why you weren’t expecting much of an emotional connection (I had a very stern grandpa as well) but I’m also not surprised that it hit you more than expected. Life is funny like that.
My mom has put a lot of effort into our family history but I’m not sure if she ever got back to an immigration point on either side. We’ve apparently been Marylanders for an awful long time (an affliction I believe we both share to some extent).
I often think about what a tragedy it is for grandparents to be irritable, stern, or otherwise unapproachable. In recent years, I have seen a grandfather treat one particular grandson very harshly, with virtually never a kind word to say. The only reasonable conclusion to be reached was that the grandson simply got on the grandfather’s nerves, and that was certainly not missed by the grandson. The grandfather just passed away, and now the grandson likely will carry throughout his life more negative memories about their relationship than positive ones.
People ought to think carefully about their behavior in such situations and ask, “Is this how I want to be remembered?” Unfortunately, a hard life often leads to a hardened personality that makes such self-reflection difficult or impossible.
Kay, I wish I had taken the time to talk to my grandparents and parents more and learned more of my grandparents’ stories. Maybe they will come to realize the value of your work.
Pat,
Thank you, and Maggie, for writing your story of discovery. My four grandparents immigrated from Poland late 1800’s early 1900’s. My grandfathers both worked in the steel mills of Cleveland, where I also worked for a few summers during college. I hope your story spurs me to research their histories, something I have been promising myself to do for a while.
My grandfather added a letter or two and change a couple when he arrived in the US. Everyone who sees my name, Boncella, thinks I am Italian, but no 100% Polish through my grandparents. The Polish spelling is Bacala, I have been told.
What an amazing experience you documented. Yep, as someone who’s getting into her own genealogy, its very humbling and moving to discover that some of the folks you knew had untold challenges beyond those tough exteriors. I’m so glad you found that house!
Speaking of houses . . . I was born and raised in California, then went to school and worked in Chicago. I moved to New Jersey for my husband’s job, but I was not happy about it. At the time, I associated the entirety of New Jersey with the opening credits of the Sopranos and wanted nothing to do with it. Besides, I had no connection whatsoever to New Jersey!
Or so I thought. I now know my ancestors founded places like Newark, Morristown and Montclair. Then I discovered that my 10th-great-grandfather lived in a house (certified as a landmark) less than a quarter mile from own.
Too weird.
So that explains the stammer, wince and occasional hiccup when someone asks for a “D”.
‘You couldn’t toss a pierogi without hitting…….’ LOL. And I heard you say it!
Thanks for the story, Pat! I went “all in” on Ancestry.com about four years ago, and I’m now the unofficial family historian. My people hail from the same region, and some of the villages that I’ve managed to pinpoint are about a hundred km from Laskowa. That whole region was known as “Galicia”, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They’re the reason you know about house #108; they were great at keeping records! My Ricochet profile picture is my great-grandfather in the uniform of an Austro-Hungarian infantryman. I’m still researching, and hope to make my own trip with my father in a year or two.
BTW, you just made me crave pierogi (along with kielbasa and halushki)!
I might be officially on pierogi overload!
I am not sure that is possible. Especially if you get them from the little old ladies at the church.
Matko bosko!
It’s one pierog, as in toss a pierog.
It’s multiple pierogi, as in pierogi overload.
And the secret ingredient in pierogi dough is – well you can read the recipe here
or here.
Great story.
My wife, who was adopted, did a similar search two years ago to find her ancestors in Ireland. She was fortunate to find some living cousins who knew her birth mother quite well (their aunt). Now for the first time in her life she has blood relatives. They are fine people in a small village in central Ireland.
Pat,
It is hard to put into words how much I enjoyed this story. I sent the link to a couple friends and they told me to tell you they enjoyed it, too.
I am sure you will remember this great event the remainder of your life. Thank you for sharing it.
Great story and pictures! Beards sure were in back then!
Yeah, apparently the only one who sent regrets to the “Franklin County Volunteers” reunion was the guy who was supposed to bring the razors.
Hello Pat! My mother has been trying to get a hold of you for the last 20 years or so. Your grandfather Joe and my grandfather Ludwik were brothers and there were others. American roots started in Pennsylvania. My mother Anna took care of your grandmother & grandfather in their later years from my understanding. She then acquired the house from your grandfather, got married, and started a family in that house. My brothers and I were raised in that house. Please let me know how we or she can reach you. My mother has many pictures from your grandparents to show legitimacy to you. She is 80 years old and I’m hoping you can meet her to discuss family history. You would make her so happy and we sons would appreciate that. Thank you for your consideration. Regards, Zen