Marcia Lewandowski passed away on May 19, 2024, at the age of 80.
“I want you to continue to remember that you are Polish and Polish is the most beautiful thing in the world” she said at her last public appearance, during the Friends of Polish Art Święconka on March 24 this year. Marcia, who was honored at the event for her lifelong work of promoting of Polish culture and heritage also said: “every minute a new activist is born”.
It is our hope that after reading this article, you will know not only when and how “Marcia, the activist”, was born, but have some grasp of the exceptional breadth and depth of the amazing work for the Polish American community she did during her lifetime.
Marcia, a nationally recognized expert on Polish folk culture, a person who for many decades diligently promoted Polish heritage and culture, lived her life in service to Polonia.



Be it folk dancing, pisanki decorating or cut-outs making – the three activities Marcia was usually recognized for – she set the highest standards for herself, was a perfectionist and also expected from others to at least try the best they could.
The passing of Marcia is an immense loss to the Polish American community.
As “verba volant, scripta manent”, the following is an attempt to write an – very limited and incomplete – account of her fascinating, rich and inspiring life. It was possible thanks to Prof. Anna Muller of U of M Dearborn, who recorded Marcia in October of 2015 for her project about Polish emigrants, and made the recordings, as well some of the photos Marcia shared with her then, available to “The Polish Weekly”.
Most of the information in the text come from these recordings; Barbara Gronet also participated in the recordings.
Family influence, education and work
Marcia Lewandowski, born on November 26, 1943, lived her entire life in the same house on Casmere Street in Detroit, one block outside of the Hamtramck city limits, what used to be a Polish-speaking, working-class neighborhood. She usually told people that she lived “in Hamtramck”, as Hamtramck for Marcia was less a geographically but more a culturally defined place. In 2015, when the interviews were recorded, many people who moved out of Hamtramck to the suburbs still were coming to Hamtramck for different cultural activities, mostly to practice their customs and religion, and to shop in Polish stores.
Marcia’s father came to the US from Ciechanów, Poland, when he was 9 years old, and her mother was born in Pennsylvania, to a Polish-Lithuanian family.
Both her mother and father had considerable artistic talents. Marcia’s love of fabrics and sewing came from her mother. Her mother was an excellent seamstress with an eye for fashion, capable of replicating dresses worn by Shirley Temple in the movies for her two daughters.
Both parents were also great dancers; in addition, father made wood carvings and played violin. Young Marcia loved to dance with her father, especially ballroom dances such as the foxtrot. She danced the polka from a very early age, and learned it, as many children did at the time, bit by bit, at weddings, dancing with her parents, and with her only sibling, an eighteen year older sister. Like her father, Marcia’s sister played violin; she was even the first violinist in the Hamtramck High School Orchestra.
Marcia’s mother was fluent in Polish, Lithuanian and English; Marcia often heard her mother and maternal grandmother, who lived with them for 17 years, speaking Lithuanian with each other.
Although her mother, Mania, wanted to work, she was a stay-at-home mom, who as a young girl had to quit school as she wanted to help her mother who worked very hard washing clothes by hand. Her goal was to buy her a clothes wringer to make the work easier.
Marcia first went to Our Lady Queen of Apostles school, where Polish was taught, but was not mandatory. She loved to study and graduated from high school when she was 17, at the top of her class, but – possibly due to her father’s traditional, village-based values and influence of her paternal aunts – she was not encouraged to go further, so she did not, at first. She started working full time when she was 19. Soon after she enrolled at WSU, where she completed three years of study, with majors in English and art, but stopped going when she was close to graduation.
One can see how history repeats itself: Marcia’s mother quit school to help her mother, now Marcia quit the university, also to help her mother, after her father died at the age of 60, and the pension her mother was receiving was only $18 a month. However, this was not the only reason. At this point in her life, Marcia was on her own, working full time, and then going to school four nights a week, with a three-hour lab on Friday, taking two to three classes per quarter.
In addition – and here we start learning about Marcia’s big involvement with the Polish community – she taught Polish dancing on Wednesday and Thursday, and six hours on Saturday, and organized exhibits for the Polish Festival.
In the interviews recorded in 2015 Marcia mentioned a couple of times that Polish Americans, especially those who arrived after Solidarity, often look down on people who don’t have a college degree. During her life, Marcia on occasion was asked about her education, and felt that condescension.
Marcia worked at different offices for 44 years and retired from Chase. She started as a stenographer and later was an illustrator. As she mentions in one of the interviews, she “flexed” before the concept was even invented. She never missed a deadline, but did not want to put in extra time, and even refused promotions: Polish culture was too important to her, and she needed all of her free time for her involvement with it.
Dance
Marcia gives a lot of credit for her well-rounded cultural upbringing to her mother who took her to a variety of performances, including ballet and festivals. It was her mother who, when looking for additional activities for her 11-year-old daughter, decided to sign her up for Hamtramck’s “Młody Teatr” (Youth Theater) in 1954. The activities for children divided into four age group included singing lessons, Polish dancing, and Polish language instruction. Mr. Jean Jay Jalmuzynski, known as “JJ”, a famous dancer, formerly with the Ballet Russe, and trained by Nizinski and Pavlova, was their dance teacher. “JJ” was skilled in ballet, Polish folk dances and “character dancing” which, as Marcia explained, was a stage presentation of various national dances. “Młody Teatr” recitals included not only different dances, but also special dramatic presentations in the Polish language, which were especially written for them by Polish artists living in Detroit.






Every Tuesday for over 12 years, for three hours they practiced at the Copernicus Junior High School in Hamtramck (now Hamtramck High School). Another notable teacher at “Młody Teatr” was Julian Habrowski, a famous band musician, who taught them singing, while his mother, Zofia Habrowski taught the Polish language and drama. At the house of Kazimiera Gałecka they would meet to prepare monthly radio programs, such as “Dziatwa Młodzieży Polonii z Młodego Teatru”.
The performances of “Młody Teatr” were based on scripts that were sometimes 60-70 pages long, and were full-blown theatrical productions, complete with scenery. They were performed on St. Florian Auditorium’s stage. One of them was “Bajka o Podziomku, który szukał wiosny” (“A fairy tale about Podziomek, who was looking for spring”), in which the dwarf Podziomek was sent out to different countries such as Poland, Japan, Persia and Holland. This set-up allowed for the showcasing of costumes and dances from the respective countries. Another one was “Niezwykły dar, legenda o kwiecie paproci” (“A special gift; a fern flower legend”) with Marcia in the leading part. Most of the librettos and scripts from these productions unfortunately did not survive.
There was also a very active “Koło Opiekuńcze Pań”, or “Ladies auxiliary” that made costumes and organized fund raisings for the theater; they met once a month to figure out how they could finance the activities, as the “Młody Teatr” was completely autonomous and not connected to any Polish American organizations, as most of the folk dancing groups are nowadays. One of the ladies from this group was Mrs. Burak.
All of this rich and vibrant cultural life which Marcia experienced in her youth had to have had a big influence on her and the way she approached her work in the Polish community. No doubt, she followed these examples with selflessness, idealism and dedication. However, it her later years, she might have felt somewhat disappointed that the cultural life of the Polish American community was not what it once was.
One of the performances of the older group of the “Młody Teatr” was a Polish take on a popular American genre, the Hootenanny (a folk singalong). This was the brilliant idea of a very talented friend of Marcia, Richard Kubinski (a poet, and visual artist; he died before the age of 35) who translated some Polish folk songs for the performance, which was first staged at the WSU Community Auditorium with over 750 people in attendance. During the performance the audience sang along to songs such as “Miała baba koguta” with their English translations displayed on a screen. (What happened later to the Polish Hootenanny merits separate research and an article.)
Teaching dance
Marcia started teaching Polish dancing when she was 22, in the cold in the winter, and hot during the summer attic of the Dom Polski located in Detroit at Chene and Forest. Interestingly, the piano accompaniment at the practices was provided by Chris Felcyn (1951-2018), who later became a classical music radio host at WRCJ FM .
The year was 1965 and it was the moment when the first adult dance group in the Metropolitan area – the Wawel Folk Ensemble – was formed by people who had graduated high school but wanted to continue dancing. Up to that time Polish folk dancing was done only by children and once they graduated high school, they were done with dancing in a group.
Marcia very much liked the fact that now people in their 40s, 50s and 60s had a chance to dance in dance groups and appreciated how their different life experiences showed in the way they dance.
Marcia was a choreographer and director of the Wawel Folk Ensemble for many years. But to say that, is to say very little about her actual involvement with the group, which – just to give one “modest” example – included making 16 sets of Nowy Sącz costumes for the ensemble. Just to embroider the costumes, she worked every Thursday for two years, but she loved doing it.
One also has to mention the usual fund-raising activities: organizing bake sales, car washes, rummage sales, paper drives – anything they could do to raise money for the group’s expenses. As Marcia recalls, if they performed for Polish events, they were seldom offered payment; most often they were expected to perform for free. Conversely, other nationalities almost always offered them payment when they performed for them.
Marcia went to Poland nine times, to study choreography in Lublin, where she got her diploma after three years of studies, or on trips with the Wawel group. The current Wawel director, Tom Skurski who is Marcia’s nephew, has been dancing since he was 11 years old.
From her involvement in the “Młody Teatr” we already know that Marcia liked, appreciated and was open to other cultures as well. As she remembers, in her youth, every Friday evening there was international folk dancing at the Detroit International Institute, after which young people would go for a couple of drinks to – for example – an Arabic bar and did some belly dancing as well: dance and music, not sports, were always Marcia’s thing.
Opportunities taken and missed
In her late twenties, together with Richard Kubinski and Halina Olzark, Marcia formed a professional group, the trio “Trojka Dancers”, which sang Polish songs in English, and danced Polish dances, wearing – as Marcia described them – modified Polish costumes.
First the trio gave four daily shows during the 11 days of the Michigan State Fair. Then, while holding their day jobs, they performed at the Top Hat Supper Club in Windsor, opening for Joan Rivers, later a well-known comedian. They did two shows a day and three on Saturday, however, this soon became too much, and even if the club wanted them to stay on, they had to quit.

Marcia’s other work for the Polish community
In addition to running Polish dance groups (especially the Wawel Folk Ensemble made her well-known), Marcia was the president of the American Polish Cultural Center – of which she is a founding member – for two years, and was very involved with the Center, also publishing their newsletter. Her exhibit of Polish artifacts and costumes was there for over 20 years; she also organized many “Biesiadas”, which were historically themed feasts, with musical performances and food.
Marcia also held memberships and served as an officer (in different capacities) of many local and national Polish American organizations, such as FPA and ACPC.
Giving was a natural part of Marcia who over the years created countless exhibits on Polish folk and fine art, and music.
The most spectacular of these were possibly the expositions she curated for the Detroit Polish Festival, of which she was a member of the organizing committee. The first ethnic festival in Detroit was a Greek festival organized in1965, when Detroit had a Polish American Mayor, Roman Gribbs. It was a success and other Detroit ethnic groups joined one by one to have their weekend long festivals on the Riverfront.
Soon also the Detroit Polish Festival became a very popular event that during its heydays could draw up to half-a-million people. Altogether Marcia designed 13 different large gallery expositions for the Polish Festival, with such themes as flowers in Polish folk and fine arts, Polish American organizations or authentic Polish folk costumes, for which Marcia borrowed costumes from Chicago and Cleveland, among other places. There was also one about the Orchard Lake Seminary. These exhibitions took place in an L-shaped gallery, 80 by 60 foot, airconditioned, with exhibit cases. One year Marcia’s students counted approximately ten thousand visitors to the Polish Gallery! The Polish Festival took place in August, but the Polish Gallery required so much preparation, that Marcia usually started working on the next exhibit in the previous November. Basia Gronet often helped her with this work.
The following archival video from 1989 (this is raw footage) shows several clips from the Festival, including a clip of the exposition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j59Cd4OtONw&t=2s
At her last public appearance Marcia recalled that as a young girl, 12 or 13 years old, she saw other ethnic groups displaying their cultures in Detroit, and that made her think why her Polish culture, with so much beauty and interesting customs and traditions to show, was not there on equal footing. She observed for instance the Ukrainians proudly and lavishly presenting their gorgeous costumes, tapestries, embroideries, and amber, while at the same events Polish culture had a very small and inadequate representation.
A few years later she made it her life work to correct this status quo.
Marcia’s legacy
With each passing person their experiences and knowledge often disappear. If not for Marcia – and this article – who of us would have for instance known about Hamtramck-based “Teatr Młody”, or exciting “Trojka Dancers”.
And in Marcia’s interviews of 2015, there is so much more. Such as Marcia’s friend, the violinist Noreen Smiałek-Sinclair, or the Hamtramck Symphonic Orchestra (yes! Hamtramck had its own orchestra, which was established in 1922 by Frank Grabowski), or traditions which have disappeared (women wearing corsages to church, especially for Mother’s Day, with red, or red and white carnations). There is a wealth of information about our Polish American history that could so easily disappear if we do not preserve and make it available to the public. And this is a part of Marcia’s legacy.
Another part is – which Marcia stated over and over – to be proud of Polish culture and heritage, promote and cherish it, but also be aware of changing times and the fact that not all Polish Americans care about their ethnicity the way she and other enthusiastic Poles do. And that is OK too.
The American Council for Polish Culture’s (ACPC) participation in the National Conference for Social Studies was very important to Marcia. For her, it was a very effective way of correcting misconceptions about the Poles as well as informing the American public, especially schoolteachers, about the many Polish contributions to the development of the US (such as the first ever strike in Jamestown in 1619, staged by Polish workers, the achievements of Casimir Pulaski, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, Helena Modjeska, Ralph Modjeski, and many others.)
For most of us, Marcia’s shoes are too big to fill, but – as Marcia strongly believed – we just need to try and do our best, and continue with perseverance, idealism and optimism; just like Marcia did.
Text by Alina Klin
The “Polish Weekly” is very grateful to Prof. Anna Muller and the Museum of Emigration in Gdynia, Poland, for the use of the materials about Marcia Lewandowski. The recordings were made and photos were collected in 2015 for the project”The “Faces of the Polish Diaspora – the Citizens of Hamtramck”.
Faces of Polonia: People of Hamtramck
Marcia Lewandowski’s FOLK MITTENS book was the first book on knitting I ever purchased
and also how I learned to the read patterns and knit mittens with the help of others in the knit shop .
I wish she could have lived to celebrate the many contributions of knitters (like herself)
in American history at America’s upcoming semiquincenntenial birthday with us , because
she certainly spread knitting fever to a lot of us when it was her turn .
Thanks for posting !