Article published Sunday, May 17, 2009 ANNA WILCZYNSKI, 1910-2009 Club's co-owner, with spouse, had passion for polka
Anna Wilczynski, 98, who with her husband, Ollie, owned a Lagrange Street club where dancers who shared their passion for polka could dance about the ample hardwood floor, died Thursday in Orchard Villa, Oregon.
She was at the nursing home two years, had a slight case of dementia, and was in declining health the last six months, her daughter Doris Langel said.
Until two years ago, Mrs. Wilczynski lived independently in her East Toledo home and "drove herself to bingo a couple, three, four times a week," her daughter said.
Mrs. Wilczynski and her husband owned LaPark Nite Club, a onetime bowling alley they bought not long after they married in 1972.
"They remodeled it and made it the most beautiful nightclub," her daughter said.
"They had all of these polka bands that came in. They had a passion for polka dancing, and they wanted to do that for people."
Mrs. Wilczynski greeted guests and tended bar during the day. Her sisters were waitresses.
"She liked meeting the people who came in to dance and meeting the bands," her daughter said. "She was very warm and outgoing and welcoming. She was a very happy person."
The couple sold the club in the 1980s.
They were polka followers, traveling throughout Ohio and Michigan, and collected awards for their dancing.
"Wherever there was a polka band, that's where you'd find them," her daughter said. "She was very light on her feet, very talented.
"They'd get on the dance floor and people would stand aside, they were so good."
The daughter of Matt and Anna Sirilo, she grew up in the Hungarian-American East Toledo neighborhood called Birmingham.
She went to St. Stephen School. As the eldest of seven children, she took care of her siblings after eighth-grade graduation.
That meant, her daughter said, "she taught herself to drive and to sew and to cook."
She and first husband Steve Virag married about 1930. She had jobs at a printing firm and at the Electric Auto-Lite Co., but mostly she was a homemaker and stay-at-home mother, her daughter said.
The couple later divorced.
Her daughters were childhood entertainers - Doris from age 3 - appearing on such radio shows as Kiddies Carnival, and she sewed their costumes. She sewed her daughters' Easter and Christmas outfits as well.
In the kitchen, Hungarian dishes were her specialties.
Every Christmas season until two years ago, her yard and house sparkled with elaborate decorations.
"It was the most outstanding thing you could ever see," her daughter said.
"She had umpteen lights."
And though some of the lights hung from the garage roof and overhangs, "you didn't help her. She did it all herself," her daughter said. "Every spot in her yard was decorated."
She liked bingo and played often, especially at St. Stephen Church, where she could be seen with 20 bingo cards spread in front of her.
She and Mr. Wilczynski married in 1972. He died in 2001.
Surviving are her daughters, Doris Langel and Janice Altenbach; stepdaughter, Jackie Wilczynski; sisters, Lola Anello and Betty Brzuchaski; brother, Ernest Sirilo; five grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
The body will be in the Eggleston Meinert Pavley Funeral Home, Oregon Chapel, after 2 p.m. today. Services will be at 10 a.m. tomorrow in St. Stephen Church.
The family suggests tributes to Hospice of Northwest Ohio. Permanent Link
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