Lisa Williams is a recovering high school English teacher and inheritor of this project. Through three years of research, organizing, and writing, she shaped this story from four totes of notes, ancestry charts, documents, pictures, letters, and clippings into a more readable, cohesive form. It is her sincerest hope that she has preserved more than simple lists of ancestors and descendants with dates of birth-marriage-death. She has worked instead to create a collection of human snapshots that reveal the triumphs, tragedies, and trade-offs that characterize her family. She currently holds the family archives in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband, John, her son, Zayne, and their cat, Baxter. The family archives include many of the sources from the end notes, as well as the items in the appendices. Many, many more letters, postcards, documents, and pictures are held in her archival files. If you have an interest in any of them, or if you want to learn more about specific family members, please contact her via email at rzeszotarskifamily2022 [at] gmail.com.

Susan Blair was a nurse, homemaker, and dedicated wife before she inherited this project. After coming to terms with her father’s death in 1999, Susan became curious about where his family originated. She never knew her father’s father, and in an effort to learn more, she began her research on the Rzeszotarski family. When her mother died in 2016, Susan inherited her mother’s genealogy work, and she began researching the Fedors and Petriks in earnest. Her impetus to record as much information as possible before her generation was gone compelled her to explore every rabbit hole and create ancestry charts for every branch of her family. Nearly 20 years of her work and perseverance are invested in this project. Her determination and her willingness to retain her mother’s archives are the biggest reasons this book exists. She passed away before she could finish writing it; in many ways her work was just beginning when she became too ill to continue, but her foundation made this volume possible. She was laid to rest in Overlook Cemetery in Parkman, Ohio in 2022.

Marianne Rzeszotarski was a homemaker, gardener, and collector of things. Her collections included cruets, old bottles, rocks, stamps, rosaries, photographs, and paper bags. She was the kind of person who, when you visited her, made you feel like you were the only person in the room. When her mother passed away in 1978, Marianne began collecting information about her mother’s family. She wrote many letters to all of her aunts and uncles, asking for information about their parents and grandparents, and she created “pedigree charts” naming every family member she knew. When she couldn’t go further back with her search, she focused on collecting information about her own lived experiences and those of the generations that came after hers. When she passed, her archives were extensive, and much of what is in this book exists because she saved every letter, post card, and newspaper clipping she had. She passed away on Christmas Day in 2016, and she was laid to rest in Mumford Rd. Cemetery in Troy, Ohio.

Irene Petrik was a wife, mother, and travel enthusiast. Her journals, letters, photographs, and early family trees were the initiating forces behind this book. She and her daughter, Marianne Rzeszotarski, spoke regularly of their family history, igniting Marianne’s interest. A prolific letter writer, Irene also had a penchant for capturing daily life through her photographs (and those she asked others to take for her because she was in them). It is she who started the family archives that were then passed down to Marianne, Susan, and Lisa. Irene passed away unexpectedly after a cancer surgery that went septic. She was relatively young, which means she left much work to be done on this project. She was laid to rest in Overlook Cemetery in Parkman, Ohio, in 1978.