“Thinking Always of You:” The Lives of Amelia and Ted

By: Alexander Colchiski

May 17, 2022

Some of the largest number of Slavic immigrants can be found Pennsylvania. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries millions of Eastern Europeans immigrated to the United States, primarily settling in the Northeast and Midwest.[1] These Eastern Europeans, primarily the Slavic people such as the Polish and Austrians, assisted in building the booming mining and steel towns in rural Pennsylvania. The Slavs had much of the same customs and spoke similar languages, therefore it was only natural for these groups to act as one homogeneous group. This greatly impacted marriage patterns where “the first immigrant generation (foreign-born) tended to marry other first-generation immigrants.” [2] This was certainly the case for the parents of Amelia Slavic and Ted Colchiski. Amelia and Ted, both Slavs, did not grow up in the same town. Amelia grew up in Bessemer, Pennsylvania, a town of about 2,000 people. Ted was raised in the larger town of New Castle. The two locales are only about 15 miles apart, but in the early 1930s this would have been quite a distance to travel without an automobile. They were born in 1918 and 1916, respectively, meaning they would not have gone to the same school because of their locale and would not have been in the same grade because of their age. The Colchiski family does not know how or when Ted and Amelia met. What we do know is that Ted and Amelia were emotionally inseparable after they met. They were married for over fifty years, and their marriage survived World War II and Ted’s many adventurous endeavors. Ted’s story could not be told without Amelia being a central figure, his twin for the majority of his life. This is their story.

In the last five years of the 1930s, Ted’s life was packed with major, life-altering events such as the death of his father, joining the U.S. military, striving to attend the United States Military Academy, and meeting Amelia. No one is certain exactly how or when the two met, yet I speculate that they met through family ties. As mentioned earlier, Slavic people tended to marry within their group, and since rural Western Pennsylvania was so sparsely populated the possibly of Ted’s family knowing Amelia’s family was probably quite high. Additionally, within New Castle, and by extension Bessemer, Ted was well known. Ted was featured in the local newspaper after he received a prestigious army medal for excellence at a military artillery school.[3] In other words, Amelia probably at the very least knew of Ted before they started dating. In any event, at some point between 1935 and 1940, Ted and Amelia began dating, and that was when their twinned life began. The Colchiski family has no surviving correspondence between the two prior to 1941, and no photos of them exist (at least that I could find through my research) in the family archive.

At some point in the late 1930s, Amelia moved to New Castle probably in search of work, and Ted was in the Army earning his stripes. Before World War II, poor Slavic women, for whom English was not their first language, tended to take the same occupational path as Black women in the northern cities and southern United States: domestic work.[4] Amelia worked as a live-in domestic worker for Clarence and Josephine Patterson of New Castle according to the 1940 U.S. Census. The census describes Amelia as having never attended high school.[5] This verifies that Ted, who did attend and graduate from high school in 1934, could not have met Amelia in high school. The most likely year the two would have begun dating was 1939 or 1940, because Ted was away at army schools between 1935 and 1938. After he graduated from those schools, he returned home to Pennsylvania and was a part of the National Guard. The assignment of unit name, the movement of units, and activation and deactivation of military units can get complicated and is too much for this scope of this paper. For simplicity sake, the unit Ted was a part of was activated to federal service in 1940 in preparation for World War II. Ted’s life was majorly affected again in 1940 when he received a promotion to commissioned officer with the help of a major he met while he was enlisted. In any event, throughout all of this, Amelia was presumably there by his side, in the background of Ted’s early accolades, but in the foreground of his love life.

The first three years of the 1940s were defining years for Amelia and Ted, much happened that must have tested their relationship. Ted’s unit got activated to federal service which sent him to Camp (now Fortress) Stewart, Georgia. While he was there training and preparing for World War II, in 1941, he wrote to Amelia, where she makes her first appearance in the current Colchiski family archive. In 1939 and 1940, however, he was likely still living in New Castle, and they likely then began dating and building their relationship. In February 1941, Ted wrote to Amelia saying, “The only thing I didn’t want to say in the letter is that I changed my mind about getting married. I mean right away.”[6] This means we can assume marriage was already on their minds before he left for Camp Stewart. Although it would be difficult to prove the average length of time between when a couple met and when they got married in pre-World War II America, we can assume that because there was a drop in the average marriage age for women and men in the 1940s that couples were getting married more quickly after meeting. This might have been the case for Amelia and Ted. He continues on, “…something in the Army has happened and I must remain single for a little while longer…Things can never change between you and me.”[7] Ted was replying to a letter that must have been saturated in emotion from Amelia who was hurt by Ted’s news that he must remain single due to his career. He must have read her letter and promptly responded. The letter reads as a stream of consciousness in which he does everything he can to assure her that he is not going anywhere. “I’ve had plenty chances to go out since I’ve been back [, presumably from his military schools] but I don’t even bother to think about them, I could never go out with anyone else, you mean too much to me,” he writes.[8] Amelia must have been worried that Ted postponing their wedding meant that he had no feelings for her and that there was another woman. One reading of this indicates a sort of jealousy from Amelia in that someone was trying to steal her man. Interestingly, Ted never worried about Amelia, knowing that there was not any one but him and that she would remain true to him.[9]

Ted’s adventures in Camp Stewart continued throughout the rest of 1941, and the two sustained correspondence. On March 3, 1941, apparently after the marriage debate had simmered down, Ted wrote a letter to Amelia, this time it was handwritten instead of typed as the previous surviving letter. In this letter, Ted thanked Amelia for sending two photos of herself and told her that he was proud of her. The Colchiski family believes that one of the photos he is referring to is a photo he kept with him throughout the war and maintained on his desk at home after the war. The photo is a portrait of her, a seemingly professional photo which indicates that she had the money to do so. At any rate, Ted’s response to Amelia demonstrates the incredible love and the bond between the two. Ted continues, “You are writing plenty of letters and please keep it up, dear, because many, many times I get so tired and sick of everything, and I need something to cheer me up and your letters usually come on time.” In the midst of preparing for war, Ted needed his woman’s connection. The feeling of separation is a difficult thing for young couples to cope with. Ted made this clear: “Can’t wait till you get here to see me. I’m going to count the days. 153 days from March 4 to Aug. 4. Seems like a lifetime doesn’t it.”[10] The rest of this letter is Ted asking Amelia to buy some Bing Crosby records for them to listen to when he returns home. He makes his point several times for her not to listen to them until he gets home. I assume this is because he wanted to experience the moment with her, and perhaps grab her hand and dance a little.

Ted and Amelia’s life together took a perhaps unexpected turn when on December 7, 1941, just five days after Amelia’s twenty-third birthday, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Roosevelt promptly asked Congress for a declaration of war on the empire of Japan. Ted had left Camp Stewart by this point and was stationed in New York City to protect the coast. Less than a month later, Amelia joined him at Fort Totten, NY. Their emotions must have been high knowing that he was likely to be deployed overseas to fight with the Allies against either the Japanese or the Germans. On January 9, 1942, they had a small wedding at the fort chapel.[11] Perhaps Amelia had plans for a grand wedding where their parents would be there, and her father would walk her down the aisle. Perhaps there was supposed to be a flower girl, and groomsmen Ted knew from New Castle. Perhaps Ted’s sisters and mother were going to join him, and his mother would weep because Ted’s father would not see his only son get married. In reality, the wedding was likely a hasty one that neither of them had planned for. It is unclear what happened immediately after the wedding. She may have continued to live with him at Fort Totten, or she may have returned to New Castle.

We do, however, know two important facts about their lives regarding the later part of 1942. In 1943, Ted filed his tax income return for 1942 in which it was only his income, and he lists a New Castle address. This indicates two important facts about their life together. First, she may have been unemployed throughout 1942. The tax form allowed for married couples to jointly file, and they did not. Second, in 1940, Amelia was living with the Patterson family, but in 1942, she lived in a new address.[12] Two documents reveal the move to the New Castle address: Ted’s 1942 Last Will and Testament and the 1942 tax form.[13] It is unclear if Amelia lived in the new house by herself, or with a group. In any event, this must have been an incredibly trying time for both of them. Between Amelia moving and Ted preparing for war, the two newlyweds must have felt a constant state of trepidation because of world affairs. Then it happened, Ted was deployed overseas. I can imagine Amelia crying, and Ted staying strong as he held her before getting on the bus that would take him to the docks to embark for Europe. In private, to not allow his masculinity to be questioned by other men, perhaps he too cried, missing his new wife. Ted deployed to North Africa as part of Operation Torch. The operation was an amphibious assault on the German controlled French colonies of North Africa in an effort to break the German stronghold in the region. Due to the ambiguity of Ted’s stint in Africa and Europe during World War II, and the Colchiski family knowing nothing about Amelia’s time in Pennsylvania during the war, I want to skip to when Ted exited the service and began his time as a math professor.

In 1947, Ted left the service as a Lieutenant Colonel and returned to Pennsylvania to be with his wife and two children, it was here that their life together really began to take hold. He began working at some corporation, although it is unknown which corporation that was. In the late 1950s, he was asked to interview for Latex International in Florida at which point he travelled there to interview. After returning to Pennsylvania, he “mulled it over for a week or so at home and finally decided to call it a day.”[14] He and Amelia talked it over during this time. She must have been concerned about leaving Pennsylvania where she had lived her entire life and where her family was located. The pair moved to Winter Haven, Florida sometime in the early 1950s. Ted was working for Latex when he “had a hankering to go back to school and pick up something [he] wanted.” He was accepted to the University of Florida graduate school where he worked on a master’s in economics. During this time, Amelia was a homemaker taking care of their, at this point, three young children. By the 1960s, Ted had graduated from the University of Florida and began working as a mathematics professor at a local college in Ocala, Florida. During his time as a mathematics professor, Ted was a part of an organization called the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges. The association would host conferences in which Ted would attend, accompanied by Amelia. Ted insisted that Amelia travel with him around the country. It seems that Ted was unable to separate himself from her for even a few days. Amelia happily tagged along, experiencing her husband’s love for mathematics, and was by his side during the conference dinners.  

Amelia was a homemaker for most of her life, but she wanted to do work outside of the home. Ted worked as a professor while Amelia was trying to get some things figured out for herself. By the mid-1960s, their children had grown old enough that Amelia could begin to look for work that she wanted to do. In 1966, Amelia attended the local college to earn a technical certificate in advanced sewing.[15] Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she worked for a company called Hill’s Men’s Shop in Ocala, which specialized in alterations and clothes making. Amelia had a real talent for fashion designing. Her talents were validated when in the mid-1990s she designed and made a bridal dress and the bridesmaid dresses for her daughter’s wedding. Ted must have been proud of his wife’s work and everything she had accomplished for their daughter’s wedding. By this point, the two of them had retired in a large home on the outskirts of Ocala. At that time Ted was beginning to show signs of Alzheimer’s disease. I can remember watching my grandfather walk down a long hallway of his house and my grandmother needing to help him to remember what it was that he was supposed to be doing (what it was I too do not recall). His health was beginning to steadily decline in front of Amelia.

Amelia Colchiski sat next to her husband’s hospital bed after he suffered a debilitating stroke in the late 1990s. Her husband had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for a few years before the stroke had incapacitated him. Amelia sat staring at her husband of over fifty years and she cried. For two years after his stroke, Amelia helped the in-home nurse take care of Ted. Her heart had completely broken because she knew Ted’s life was coming to an end. When Ted died in July 2001, aged 85, I can remember my grandmother saying, “I have no more tears left to cry.” Her heart had been broken for so many years by watching the intelligent and passionate man she loved wither away that she had come to terms with his death before he passed away. For the next 17 years, Amelia lived in the same house she had with her husband. She sat at the same kitchen table they had. She sat in her reclining chair next to his. She slept in the same bed they had shared. For 17 years, her youngest son served her meals because she was too old to cook her own meals. Much of Amelia’s life after Ted was a repetition of the day before. On December 2, 2018, her children stood behind her as she sat in front of a birthday cake with candles that spelled out “100.”[16] She died a couple of months after that party, in February 2019. The twinned story of Amelia and Ted Colchiski did not end with his death or with hers. Today, they remain together, each in their separate urns, but side-by-side in her youngest son’s home. Their story continues through the lives they created and the lives they touched. Ted was a mathematics teacher that students loved, and the dress Amelia made for her daughter remains in her daughter’s closet. Ted and Amelia’s story continues through their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Their story continues through the words that I have written, and will continue to write in the future.

My curiosity of their lives began when I attempted to trace my Polish heritage. Once I began to trace my linage, I realized I really did not know much about my grandparents, their lives were a complete mystery to me. There were many questions left unanswered and I felt that I could answer them. With the help of my father and my brothers, I set out on this journey, and what I found has brought me closer to my grandfather and my grandmother than ever before. He died before I could fully form good memories, but now some memories have come back to me. When my grandmother died, I was unable to attend the funeral. The intention behind my research and writing and the exploration of their lives, I believe, lies in the notion that humans die twice: the first, when the person ceases to be alive, and second, when humans never mention that person’s name again. Perhaps, through me writing about Thaddeus “Ted” Michael Colchiski and Amelia Hope Slavic-Colchiski, I am keeping them alive so that I can spend a little more time with them.

Bibliography

Ancestry.com, Ancestry.com Operations Inc., Provo, UT, “1940 United States Federal Census,” 2012.

Batalova, Jeanne Batalova Elijah Alperin and Jeanne. “European Immigrants in the United States in 2016.” migrationpolicy.org, July 31, 2018. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2016.

Bloom, Ester. “Maids in America: The Decline of Domestic Help.” The Atlantic. The Atlantic, September 23, 2015. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/decline-domestic-help-maid/406798/.

Dribe, Martin, J. David Hacker, and Francesco Scalone. “Becoming American: Intermarriage during the Great Migration to the United States.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 49, no. 2 (August 2018): 189–218. https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01266.

Google Maps, “454 Laurel Blvd,” 2019, Accessed March 16, 2022.

Madison, Jennifer. “Pictured: Inside the Abandoned Military Fortress That Guarded New York Harbour during the Civil War.” Mail Online, February 24, 2012. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105677/Fort-Totten-Inside-abandoned-military-fortress-guarded-New-York-harbour-Civil-War.html.

[1] Jeanne Batalova Elijah Alperin and Jeanne Batalova, “European Immigrants in the United States in 2016,” migrationpolicy.org, July 31, 2018, https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-united-states-2016.

[2] Martin Dribe, J. David Hacker, and Francesco Scalone, “Becoming American: Intermarriage during the Great Migration to the United States,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 49, no. 2 (August 2018): 189–218, https://doi.org/10.1162/jinh_a_01266, 194.

[3] “Knox Medal Newspaper Clipping,” Colchiski Family Archive, Thaddeus Personal Records, https://alexcolchiski.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/knox-medal-newspaper-clipping.pdf, 1939.

[4] Ester Bloom, “Maids in America: The Decline of Domestic Help,” The Atlantic (The Atlantic, September 23, 2015), https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/decline-domestic-help-maid/406798/.

[5] “1940 United States Federal Census,” Ancestry.com, Ancestry.com Operations Inc., Provo, UT, 2012.

[6] “Letter to Amelia from Ted February 6 1941,” Colchiski Family Archive, Thaddeus Personal Records, https://alexcolchiski.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/letter-to-amelia-from-ted-february-6-1941.pdf.

[7] “Letter to Amelia from Ted February 6 1941,” Colchiski Family Archive.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] The featured photo of the Chapel is probably what it looked like when they got married in 1942. Jennifer Madison, “Pictured: Inside the Abandoned Military Fortress That Guarded New York Harbour during the Civil War,” Mail Online, February 24, 2012, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2105677/Fort-Totten-Inside-abandoned-military-fortress-guarded-New-York-harbour-Civil-War.html; “Thaddeus and Amelia Marriage License and Certificate,” Colchiski Family Archive, Thaddeus Personal Records, https://alexcolchiski.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/thaddeus-and-amelia-marriage-license-and-certificate.pdf.

[12] The featured photo was extracted from Google Maps Street View. “454 Laurel Blvd,” Google Maps, 2019, Accessed March 16, 2022.

[13] “Last Will and Testament August 5 1942,” Colchiski Family Archive, Thaddeus Personal Record, https://alexcolchiski.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/last-will-and-testament-august-5-1942.pdf.

[14] The quotes in this paragraph were extracted from an interview Ted gave with an unknown interviewer for the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges. The interview was conducted sometime in the late-1970s or early-1980s. Alex Colchiski, “Thaddeus Colchiski,” Alex Colchiski, June 27, 2021, https://alexcolchiski.com/thaddeus-michael-colchiski/.

[15] “Sewing Diploma for Amelia,” Colchiski Family Archives, Thaddeus Personal Records, https://alexcolchiski.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/sewing-diploma-for-amelia.pdf.

[16] The featured photo of Amelia is her and her children at her 100th birthday party. “Amelia at 100 Years Old,” Colchiski Family Archive, Colchiski Family Photos, https://alexcolchiski.com/colchiski-family-archive/colchiski-family-photos/.