One year after I arrive New York I am married. I arrive January 1959, and we marry in January 1960. Nancy loved New York, and came from a large Italian family. The neighborhood she came from always smell like good provolone cheese and fresh bread.
Nancy and I lived close to her mother, which was close to the hospital. Now I live the good life. I marry a very nice girl, I have a good job, her family likes me and we are happy.
Did Nancy ever learn Polish?
No. I teach her a few words like dupek (asshole) and few other words but I don’t think she remembered any. It’s so difficult for her. I know for Americans Polish is very hard, and how it looks in letters and sounds. But English is very hard for a Pole to learn too. You want a hard name to spell, I give you one. Wladyslaw (Walter) Zachariasiewicz. He was president of the International Polish Committee. (Henry spells every letter – Z-a-h-a-r . . . We are both laughing at how I struggle with so many letters and consonants. My American brain thought of word games, and I blurted out some comment about how difficult it would be to play Scrabble in Polish.) – Henry Zguda
Photos from Henry’s personal collection. According to both Nancy and Henry, Jerzy Kosinski took their wedding photos as a favor. Henry had no money; Kosinski had no money, so they traded favors. The photos aren’t signed of course; but a biography of Kosinski in Wikipedia states he practiced the ‘photographic arts’ as an interest, and had a one-man exhibition in 1957 in Warsaw and in the US in 1988.