by Dennis Dalman
Music was the bright shining thread that wove itself through the tapestry of Joann DeZurik Cierniak’s long, creative, remarkable life.
Her early years especially are replete with connections to the Sartell and St. Joseph areas.
As a young girl growing up in Sartell, she would wake up just about every morning to the sound of classical music on the radio during a program called “The Morning Concert.” And on so many mornings her father, David DeZurik, would approach the breakfast table while humming themes from Beethoven’s symphonies or singing a song from one or another classic opera.
Those are precious memories for Cierniak, who now lives in Woodcrest of Country Manor, a retirement center in St. Joseph.
The pervasive influence of music in her youth infused her not just with a love of music but a lifelong passion and commitment for all of the arts, especially theater and literature. To this day, her favorite novel? Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”
Born in 1930, Joann DeZurik graduated from Sauk Rapids High School and then earned an English degree from the University of Minnesota. After marriage to Joseph Cierniak, whom she met near St. Joseph, she raised two sons (John and Jeff) while managing to remain actively involved in the busy hubbub of life and in cultural pursuits.
She served on the board of directors of the Schubert (music) Club and edited its newsletter.
She later researched social history, costuming and set design for plays staged by the world-famous Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. She also wrote articles and programs for its newsletters.
She and her family spent a year serving in the U.S. Peace Corps on the Caribbean island of Antigua.
For several years she served as a volunteer for “Minnesota Opera” productions.
One summer she tracked down American performing artists living in Europe and then wrote and published articles about them along with photos of the artists.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, she welcomed and arranged concerts for musicians who emigrated to Minnesota from Eastern Europe.
Later in life, she wrote three riveting, vividly detailed and superbly descriptive (and often amusing) books: a memoir of her family’s year in the Peace Corps in Antigua (“Where You Go Now, Mon” – Mon being the West Indies’ pronunciation of Man); another wonderfully readable memoir-biography of her grandparents (“It Takes All Kinds”); and a novel called “Fiddler Chic” about the life and times of a female violinist from Duluth.
Cierniak grew up in Sartell and has lived in California, Europe, the West Indies, St. Paul and now St. Joseph.
Grandparents
Cierniak’s maternal grandparents, Ed and Rosaland “Rozzie” Marsh were very hard-working farmers (Rozzie had been a teacher too). They hailed from the Dakotas, settled for a time in Osakis, then moved to a “dream farm” near Menagha in Wadena County.
When Ed suffered a medical crisis one day, he was unable to farm anymore. He eventually found a job as a night watchman at a paper mill in a small Minnesota village named Sartell. The name of the mill was Watab Pulp and Paper, which produced newsprint from log-wood pulp. It was founded in 1905 along the river by lumbermen from Wisconsin and Michigan.
With a sinking, nagging sadness, the Marshes and their children moved to Sartell in 1917 and lived in a small house on paper-mill property near the railroad tracks. The son, Blaine Marsh, also landed a job at the paper mill, as did – later – his sister, Escha, who was secretary to the manager.
Sadly, one of the Marsh daughters, Wilma, 16 at the time, died after suffering one night from a sudden, virulent flu.
Later, one of the Marsh daughters, Alice, met and married David DeZurik who also worked at the mill as a chemist and who studied engineering at the University of Minnesota, which is where he fell in love with music. His father, Matt, also worked at the mill as did Alice, as a secretary, after she married David.
One day in 1930, Alice gave birth to a daughter they named Joann. And thus Joann DeZurik came to be.
David and Alice moved into a house not far from where she grew up. Joann has vivid memories of when Matt and his son David would tinker and ponder into the wee hours of every night, ceaselessly inventing valve products that would lead to the founding of the DeZurik Nozzle Shower Co., later known as the DeZurik Corp.
After Joann’s grandmother Rozzie died, her widower Ed, moved in with Alice and David’s family in the nearby house. Ed lived until 1947 when he died of pneumonia at age 86.
Big Watab Lake
For many years, David and Alice DeZurik would spend parts of their summers in a cottage on Big Watab Lake in Collegeville Township west of St. Joseph, and that is where daughter Joann met her future husband, Joseph Cierniak.
One afternoon in 1950, Joann was piloting a motor boat with passengers on the lake when the motor stopped. Four gentlemen in a boat, all of them students at nearby St. John’s University, witnessed the stuck-boat dilemma and came to the rescue. One of the men was a very tall, handsome fellow named Joseph. After the men’s gallant rescue, they were invited to lunch at the cabin.
Joseph, perusing the record collection in the cabin, noticed its prevalence of opera recordings. He immediately went into the kitchen, where Joann was helping prepare lunch, and he asked her and quizzed her about the opera records.
In her memoir book, Cierniak writes the following wonderful passage:
“I found it difficult to discuss a subject I cared about so deeply with a stranger while slicing onions and digging in the refrigerator for a furtive jar of mustard, but within minutes I knew I was face-to-face with a person who would have great significance in my life, not just because of our mutual interest in opera, but because of his magnetic presence . . . He was a philosophy student from South Bend, Indiana. . . He had transferred to St. John’s and was considering entering the monastery after graduation the next spring. . . By the time we sat down to eat, Joe and I were continuing our private dialogue, ignoring everyone else and speaking across the table only to one another.”
After their subsequent marriage, Joseph and Joann Cierniak continued their love affair with each other, with the whirlwind that is life and with their mutual love of music. Joseph was an avid cello player, served in the military and taught high-school English for two years in Gaylord, Minn.
Sadly, Joseph died in 1969 suddenly, unexpectedly. But memories of him still linger in Joann’s mind and heart like lovely melodies on a breeze.
