Notes for Stanislawa Helen PRZYWITOWSKI

Notes for Stanislawa Helen PRZYWITOWSKI

Jane and Stella about 1940
Jane Przywitowski, Stella Dunlap, and ? 1940
Description: Heart Attack
PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, Tuesday, October 31, 2000, Page:56
Section: LOCAL
Memo: Deaths

STELLA H. DUNLAP, 84, LIVED LIFE TO ITS FULLEST

by Jim Nicholson, Daily News Staff Writer

Stella H. "Jerry" Dunlap, who could work at being a wife, mother andhomemaker with enough child's play mixed in so that everyone wanted tobe in the game, too, died Wednesday of a heart attack. She was 84 andlived in Chester.

Jerry Dunlap had found and opened the tiny, secret door to a happylife while still very young and though eight decades would pass, shenever let it close behind her.

She didn't have to seek out a holy man in the Himalayas to unlock themystery of life. She discovered all anyone needs to know about thisworld and the people in it there in the West End of Chester, where shewas born and where she died.

Her husband of 43 years, Ferris "Bob" Dunlap, who died in 1982, wasalso from Chester. He had been a Chester police officer and later aclaims adjuster. He might have had to be tough, working the street,but at home he was just a giant marshmallow shaped to look like dad.It was Jerry who kept law and order in the early West End Dunlap home.

Mom could strike with such impulsive speed that a kid didn't knowwhich hand had delivered the blow. Run or duck or you get it worse.

But that happened less as time went on and the girls understood wherethe fence lines were. Most of the time, Mom was just another playmate.A Mom who loved board games, playing cards, eating sweets, talking,laughing and dressing up for Halloween and other holidays as much asher children.

It was the world's good fortune that when her four daughters grew up,Jerry didn't.

"Mom always wanted to be a fun-loving person and enjoyed people," saidRoberta "Bobby" Schmidt, one of her daughters. "You could just visitand it would turn into a party. 'Come on in. Have something to eat.Let's play cards. Let's get hoagies.' I'd want to clean and she'd say,'Let's go shopping.'"

Schmidt said, "If you told my mother you liked something, you'd end upwith six pounds of it." Not that anyone would complain, especially ifit was her pierogies.

The former Jerry Przywitowski knew how to entertain and beentertained.

Her dad worked at the old Baldwin Locomotive Works and the family waspoor, but she recalled a childhood that was happy. The sixPrzywitowski kids didn't know how poor because they dressed and atelike the other kids on the block.

The first clue came when Jerry had to leave school before junior highto help at home and later to work. During World War II, she worked atAmerican Visco, in Trainer, and later as a seamstress at aStrawbridges in Delaware. For about 10 years, later in life, sheworked at the gift shop at Sacred Heart Hospital, in Chester.

Her raising stayed with her and when a child or grandchild startedmoaning about "stress," Jerry went to her roots for the remedy: "Go upand take a hot bath and sit there with a cigarette and a drink."

Jerry didn't smoke, but she drank with the subtle social grace typicalof her generation. She liked highballs, but when her card-playing palsall drank beer, Jerry joined the other 80-something ladies and drankbeer. They played Thirty One a lot. Playing Thirty One is how shetaught her kids and grandkids to count.

If there was a grandmother factory, Jerry was the best model they everturned out. She could outplay all the grandchildren with board games,eating cookies, play-acting and rooting for TV movie action heroes.

Jerry loved watching Jean-Claude Van Damme and Chuck Norriskarate-kick the beejeebers out of the bad guys, recalled BobbySchmidt, who added, "She was tireless."

She loved her church, St. Hedwig's. She was in the Sodality, PTA andchoir. She loved the senior citizen meetings and trips. She was theone on the tour bus wearing the pop-out eyeball glasses.

Then, there was the quiet Samaritan who took public transportation tovisit the hospitals and take food to shut-ins. She also cooked Polishdishes for women whose ability to get home-cooked Polish food diedwith their mothers.

Jerry made sure all of her kids finished high school and got at leastsome higher education. She knew how tough it could be out therewithout the creds.

She loved to garden and take slips of flowers and root them and givethem away. She gave away things she embroidered and crocheted. Sheclaimed to hate cats but snuck food to at least 10 strays.

Her front porch was her window on the world much of the time and sheknew everyone and cared about her neighbors as they did her. As theneighborhood changed from Polish to African-American, Jerry didn't.They weren't Polish and very quickly they were no longer strangers.They were neighbors she cared about as they did her.

She had a heart attack about 20 years ago and tried to follow doctor'sadvice. She told her family she took the medicine and followed thediet but she couldn't lose weight. There was no discussion of thefive-pound bags of sugar that disappeared into the batches of cookies,which also disappeared.

"She lived life her way, it didn't matter what we said," said herdaughter. Bobby Schmidt said her mom didn't want any prolonging withthe tubes and guys in long white coats and clipboards.

That wasn't fun and that wasn't living. And Jerry was all about funand life.

So, Jerry Dunlap lived until she died.

Two hours after talking with her daughter Bobby, she had a final heartattack. As they were taking her out of her home on the stretcher, shedied while still on her own porch.

Survivors also include two other daughters, Cynthia Dunlap Nichols andPatrice Dunlap; eight grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; and asister, Kaz Solum. Another daughter, Mary Jane Blythe, died in 1994.

A Funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Thursday at St. Hedwig'sChurch, 4th and Hayes streets, Chester. Burial will be in LawncroftCemetery in Linwood.

Friends may call after 7 p.m. tomorrow and after 8 a.m. Thursday atthe Kaniefski-Kendus-D'Anjolell Memorial Home, 3900 W. 9th St.,Trainer.

Contributions may be made to the Fox Chase Cancer Center or to theAmerican Heart Association.
Nickname:"Jerry", Hobby:"Swinging-Senior",Saying:"Oh-S__t!"
One time when she recently changed the sheets on the bed,she felt a pain in her side and her mother would not allow her to layon the bed, her Mom has been dead a long time.
Really likes sweets.
She has to constantly keep her hands busy with crocheting,knitting, and needle point (as well as other crafts.)
Every morning goes to 7:30 AM mass, and later on in yearwould laugh that she meets herself coming and going because that wasthe time she would come home from an evening out on the town.
After she graduated from St. Hedwigs, she worked at"Visco", for 25 cents an hour, and sometime after that at Sacred HeartHospital.
She likes to sing, dance as is often refered to as thelife of the party.