Frances Milanowski

1883 Winona - 1964 Winona

I was always my mother's daughter. I had a father,
The respected grocer Joseph Milanowski,
But he died just after my second birthday.
Anna Milanowska, born Gawinowna,
Was mother and father to me alike,
The leader of our family. Our materfamilias.
Mother nurtured us children and taught us to work,
Running the grocery, successfully, on her own
The first female member of the Winona Grocers' Council!
In third or fourth grade I decided that, like Mother, I
Would be the leader of my own family.
I would be my own materfamilias.
I did not want to have a husband and children.
I was a dutiful, joyously believing Catholic woman all my lfe.
But I did not want to obey Mother Superior and every priest everywhere.
Instead I attended Winona Normal School.
Becoming, in 1910, Winona's first Polish public-school teacher.
Investing my paltry earnings from the school system
In bargain-priced Peerless Chain stock:
My Bambenek cousins made me a rich woman
But you'd never have believed it
To see the way I lived with my bachelor brothers
Over the grocery store.
When I retired from the school system, I swore
Monsignor Grulkowski to secrecy, and bought St. Stan's Band
A complete new set of instruments and uniforms.
In my will, I left my entire estate,
Nearly one hundred thousand dollars. to Saint Stan's:
The gift of a believing Catholic woman
Who got to become her own materfamilias.

110 Carimona Street