A winning hand

Jean Kolodka always played the hand she was dealt.

Whether it was a straight in a game of crib or a wild card handed down in life, she took it in stride.

“She would always say ‘play your hand,’ with cards, but it was also an allegory on life,” said daughter Jenny Kolodka, the third of Jean’s 12 children. “Always play your hand. Don’t look at anybody else’s hand. She was always encouraging us to do our best.”

Jean (née Gmitzyk), who was born in Poland in 1927, died on May 3 at the age of 97.

As a girl, she and her family emigrated to Canada, settling first in Saskatchewan and eventually moving to Faulkner, near the northeastern shore of Lake Manitoba, where they homesteaded and farmed.

The Gmitzyks grew close to another farming couple, the Kolodkas, who had a son, Joseph. In 1945, Jean and Joseph wed and began raising a family on a farm in the community.

She spent much of her time homesteading and raising 12 children. The couple tried growing flax, but their low-lying land in Manitoba’s swampy Interlake region proved infertile.

A particularly wet year drove the family away from the country and into a home on Edison Avenue in North Kildonan. While her husband worked at the post office, Jean ran the household.

She kept a garden that could rival any country property and mastered any hobby that interested her. She took up curling, bowling and swimming, and her morning walks made her a neighbourhood fixture.

City life couldn’t shake her country roots: Jean canned and baked so often even her family couldn’t keep up.

“She could just whip up a dozen loaves of bread while everyone slept and they were ready for us when we got up in the morning,” said Jenny. “She told me once she only needed to sleep four hours a night.”

In 1960, family circumstances led Jean to enter the workforce at 60 years of age. She took it in stride and worked a few years at Zellers on Henderson Highway before “retiring” at 65.

To fill her time, she sang with the choir at the Holy Redeemer Parish in her neighbourhood and used her seamstress skills to help create costumes for the Polish Sokol Choir and Dancers.

If she wasn’t sewing costumes for the group, she was cooking for Folklorama’s Polish pavilion.

Jean eagerly served the club in any capacity, but sewing is where she thrived, according to Anna-Marie Kulas, a former dance teacher and director of the group.

“She was an integral part of the parents committee in the ’70s and ’80s… many students wore the costumes Jean sewed and still do to this day,” Kulas said. “Everyone loved Jean. She was always smiling and was friendly with everyone.”

Her work with the dance club was not unprecedented; Jean earned the nickname “Jean, Jean the Polka queen” for her infectious dancing, a talent she shared with her older brother, Bernard Kolodka.

Cooking for her family and instilling those skills in them was an important pursuit. She pinched thousands of perogies stuffed with plums and other fruit from her garden. On occasion she would lug out her deep-fryer and whip up a batch of fried chicken.

Felicia Kolodka, the youngest of the dozen, is convinced she has perfected her mother’s scalloped potatoes recipe.

Alongside all of her activities, and perhaps most importantly, Jean kept a home filled with laughter and friendship.

“She was always making friends, driving people home from church, you name it,” Felicia said. “She always said, ‘You can never have too many friends.’

“Laughter was always the best medicine… she said, ‘If you’re not laughing, you’re doing it wrong.’”

People who knew Jean remembered her as a “remarkable” and welcoming woman.

“I appreciated being able to stop in at any time,” family friend Rob Allen wrote on Jean’s obituary.

Her family always came first, though, be it card games with her daughter-in-law every week, teaching her children how to bake and sew, or keeping up with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren as they grew older.

The family spent summers at backyard barbecues, in the park, or by the water. Jean was heralded as the glue that kept everyone connected.

“Her children were her greatest joy,” Jenny said. “Even to her last day, she made sure we knew that.”

Jean’s legacy is that of a loving and devoted mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. Her absence is acutely felt, the family wrote in her obituary.

While the 12 children spanned a significant age range, the siblings remained close even after many moved to other provinces. Jean’s surviving children — Ruth, Jenny, Judith, Kenneth, Peter, Anthony, Stephen, Martin and Felicia — are scattered across Western Canada.

Each has a memory of their mother that they cherish.

“Whenever I get a deck of cards, I always think about how every hand is different, but it can always be played,” Jenny said.

nicole.buffie@freepress.mb.ca