Thursday, December 1, 2016

Irene Pleszczynski



Life can be challenging and I valued having Helena’s mother, “Mama,” as a model of focus and determination – qualities dear to my heart.


















Irene Pleszczynski (neé Waleria Eisinger), a native of Lwow, Poland and a resident of Santa Barbara since 1948, died on November 21, three days after her 94th birthday. Surviving the horrors of World War II, she met her husband Andrew in a DP camp in Bremen, Germany, where they married on Aug. 1, 1945. The following year they came to America, settling in St. Louis, Mo., before moving to California and discovering the town that was to be their paradise. Andrew died in 1998, and she is survived by their two children, Helena Bowman (Obie) of Cloverdale, Ca., and Wladyslaw (Joanna) of Annandale, Va., six grandchildren (Antonia, Risa (Shawn), Emmet and Tyrone; Feliks (Ljubica) and Benedykt, two great-grandchildren, Scarlet and Sterling Gregorio, and nieces Marta Glodkowska of Canoga Park and Anna Bentkowska-Kafel of London. She was wonderful—full of goodness, directness, wisdom, and spunk. She loved music, bridge, and her friends from thirty plus years of noon swimming at Los Baños. She loved her adopted country.

In her honor please remember the Santa Barbara Symphony. On November 25 she was buried next to her husband at Calvary Cemetery.