Who Is Johnny? An Adventure in Family History

Do you ever get a person stuck in your head? Someone who's never too far from your thoughts, even when you're not quite sure what their role is in your life? Maybe you'll never have a chance to reconnect with them, or may be you've never met them and have no chance to? It's terrible, isn't it?

I've been meaning for a long time to write a little about a person stuck in my head who I'm not going to meet in this life. Not many people know him, and even fewer people are alive who remember him from knowing him. Being technical doesn't feel right. My great-grand-uncle was never how you'd picture a great-uncle. Not at all. John Barkowski never saw his 22nd birthday. Today would have been his 92nd. Uncle Johnny was in the Army. He was killed in action in France on March 20, 1945--less than two months before VE Day. His mother Sophie was convinced they'd send a German's body instead of her son's, so he's buried in France. I don't know if anyone in our family has ever been able to visit his grave.

There's a lot I don't know about Johnny and his family. It's less frustrating sometimes to think about what his life might have been than to scramble to struggle to find out what his life really was, and what the lives of his family really were. It'd be easy to take the information we have, do the temple work, and leave his family there and try to move on to the next line in our tree. I haven't been able to do that. I've always been especially drawn to the Barkowskis and had an eagerness to learn as much about them as possible. It's been tough because Johnny and his siblings were the first generation born in the US. The part of Poland his parents are from is now part of Belarus.

 I meant for years to sit down with my Grandpa Russ, Johnny's nephew, and get down the stories he heard from his mother and aunts and uncles about their family, but I never got around to it before he died suddenly last March. He left us a lot of family things, but we really too busy to go through those, either. Up to this point, I hadn't seen many pictures of the Barkowskis, especially when they were young. My picture of Johnny was basically Bucky Barnes, because that's the profile he fits: a nice kid from New York City who joined the army and never made it back to the States. I can admit that I have kind of a secret wish that some of the circumstances of Captain America. Not so that I could marry Steve Rogers...well, mostly.  Wouldn't it be great to meet Uncle Johnny and learn about the family from his point of view? 

Sebastian Stan is from Eastern Europe and everything

While pondering this a while back, I finally started looking through the boxes in the garage of family stuff. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures, and lots of documents and letters and cards and yearbooks--and some of Johnny's things. We have his uniform hat, his flag, and what was likely the last letter he ever wrote. I finally have a bit of a fact-based idea of who he was.

The letter's dated February/March 1945 and addressed to his sister Lottie, who had left the rest of the family in Queens and moved to Wyoming. He was on a new deployment that no one had really seen coming. "There's never a dull moment in the Army," he told her. I'll include a few other quotes.

"France, before you ask, isn't what they build it up to be, but the country itself has some beautiful scenery, something we boys pay little attention too [sic]."

 "The last time I was home, every thing was the same, except that Mom and Pop are really aging fast. I noticed that as soon as I walked in, and Mom has a bad foot. Once this war ends, Pop has mentioned that everything is goin' to rest on my back, and recently I've been thinkin' about it seriously."

"I still have hopes of comin' down to your home sometime in the near future. Keep expectin' me, or don't you believe I will? Oh yeah, don't go worryin' to [sic] much, whether or not I'll like it in Wyoming or not, 'cause I always manage to enjoy myself, one way or the other. Just let me get there, that's all I ask. Let this war come to an end first, then we'll talk about it, right?'

I wonder what Johnny would have done after the war. He mentions a "Marie" a few times in the letter. I wonder who she was, and what their relationship was like. He might have had to provide for his parents and little sister and at least one older brother who lived at home because of their poor mental health. He might have really loved Wyoming and settled out there like Lottie and Mary (another sister, my great-grandma) did. He might have spent the rest of his life in Queens like the rest of the family did. Maybe that impossible blank page of what-ifs he never got to disappoint anyone with is part his legacy as the family hero.

I see Dallin in this picture, but I see my brothers in all the old family pictures.
(Nobody else does, so I'm probably making it up)

I'm not completely alone in my quest to add more to the picture of the person stuck in my head. Some of my grandpa's cousins are still alive, and they probably don't remember Johnny personally, but they'll remember the stories. At the very least, I can feel like I already know Johnny a little when I meet him in the next life. I can almost hear him laugh at me for writing this. And for insisting on taking these pictures.