Serving Those Who Served

“From the age 17 to 20 the Navy was my career,” said Marvin Newman, sipping a cold juice inside New Canaan’s on a recent rainy morning.

Now semi-retired, the 86-year-old resides in New Canaan, having also lived in Greenwich. He spent 41 years full-time in the annuity business, and still works part-time selling retirement plans. But the economic downturn of 2008 hit hard. So after using his credit cards as loans he decided it was time to get a little financial help.

So Newman turned to the Peter Wojtecki Veterans Assistance Foundation. The nonprofit organization works with veterans living in Darien, New Canaan, Norwalk and Stamford. It provides financial assistance for veterans and their families.

Few have heard of the foundation named for Peter Wojtecki who immigrated to United States when he was 18. Wojtecki worked in the Pennsylvania coalmines and fell hard for his new country. He enlisted without hesitation when WW1 broke out he enlisted without a hesitation. 

“He thought the United States was next to heaven,” said his daughter, Helen Sienkiewicz. “Even though he worked in the coal mines—which we would consider difficult—he thought it was heaven because he was free.”

Wojtecki moved to Stamford after the war, going to work for the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company as a die maker. Today Stamford’s World War I monument bears his name. But Sienkiewicz wanted to create living monument to honor her father. And so two years ago she founded the foundation using money left over from the sale of her home.

“I really think money should work, it should improve people’s lives,” Sienkiewicz said.

Newman said he’s grateful for the foundation and for helping him get back on track. Aside from still selling retirement plans, Newman speaks to New Canaan students about his World War II experiences.

Newman spent the war aboard an LST 1109, a flat-bottomed boat, in the Pacific. He arrived at Okinawa three weeks after the Americans took it. He was also in Tokyo at war’s end.

“It looked like Katrina in New Orleans,” Newman said. “Everything was flat. Everything was flattened to the ground. And that wasn’t from the atomic bomb, that was just from the bombing. 

Newman came home from the war, graduated Amherst College in 1946 and went to work first at Seagram’s as a salesman and then the insurance business.

Like Wojtecki, Newman settled in the area and raised a family. And like Wojtecki, Newman didn’t talk about his wartime experiences until much later in life.

“We just went back to studying or to work,” Newman said. “Nobody really ever talked about their service then.”

Sienkiewicz doesn’t recall her father talking much about the war either. However, she remembers how he thrived on helping others.

Wojtecki worked as a special police officer in Stamford. He was also an active member of the and one of the organizers of the Pulaski Democratic Club, which helped newly arrived Polish immigrants learn English.

“He would go with them to Hartford to get sworn in. He just felt you had to belong to the US,” she said.

Wojtecki died on Christmas Eve, nearly 60 years ago; he was 53.

The foundation has a monthly operating budget of $1,450, Sinkiewicz said. 

Of those veterans the foundation has helped, one is a 64-year-old veteran in Stamford who started his own employment business. They’ve helped a 29-year-old single mother with two children living in Norwalk. She get’s no support from the children’s father. And while she lives with her parents and pool resources, they are short $100 a month, every month.

Another veteran is getting help to attend for a nursing degree. And the foundation gave another veteran $2,900 toward mortgage payments.

The foundation is currently accepting applications for its next round of grants. The deadline is Oct. 30. It has so far received 19 applications: 15 from Norwalk, 3 from Stamford and 1 from New Canaan.

“I read how desperate veterans are for everything,” Sienkiewicz said. “So I want to help them, even if it’s just one at a time.”