TIDBITS OF MY LIFE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Ray Jablonski

As one grows older and ponders the past one cannot help but wonder what legacy will dwell. Thus, I shall write about the things in my life, big and small that my descendants may wish to know about and perhaps keep in their memory as well. So I shall begin with the earliest history of my life with the ends and odds of the important things I can recall. These tidbits should reveal what my whole life was all about. Perhaps the luckiest and most important day of my life was 6 p.m. on 7 November 1921 (7/11/21), the day I was born. It happened to be that I was the seventh child of thirteen siblings, right smack in the middle. My mother's name was Florence Amelia. It so happened that she was the thirteenth child of her parents, the Zbrowski's. My Zbrowski grandparents were born and married in the western German occupied area of Poland. They had several children there and migrated the family to Reading, Pennsylvania in 1879. Florence, my mother, was born there on 19 March 1890. She had six brothers and six sisters. She was very fortunate to have received a good Catholic education and graduated from Common School (eighth grade), which was quite an achievement for a female during the turn of the last century. She was bilingual and could read and write both Polish and English. Her father was a successful tailor and a proprietor of a local saloon at 7th & Laurel Streets in Reading. He was a generous man and made several major contributions to St. Mary’s Catholic Church at 12th & Spruce Streets in Reading. On 19 February 1887, in the rural village of Dubja ( translated "good" in English), Poland my father Gustav was born the third child of five sibling. His parents were peasant sharecroppers who tilled the soil for a landowner in