Angels in the Silicon: How Silicon Valley Changed Forever America’S Sociopolitical and Global Technology Paradigms

© 2012 Richard Theodor Kusiolek. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/14/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9580-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9579-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-9578-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012922806

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

This story is fictional in nature. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or, dead is purely coincidental.

Image in chapter 3 on page 103 used by permission of the San Francisco Examiner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Dedication

Forward

Chapter One The Journey

Chapter Two Innovation Engine

Chapter Three Judiciary

Chapter Four Angels Amongst Us

Chapter Five Tyrants

Chapter Six Parallel Angels

Chapter Seven Silicon And Tears

Chapter Eight Ramblings

Chapter Nine Imprimatur Outcomes

Chapter Ten Vows And Dreams

Acknowledgement

Endnotes

Biography

DEDICATION

For my angels Melissa Rose, Marianna, and Christopher Robert. Also for my sister’s and brother’s angels; namely, Tracy, Denise, Michael, Charles, Jim, Linda, Ken, and Mark. In hope that they stand firm for a renewal of American family values and constitutional rights.

FORWARD

This is an adult non-fictional story of the true realities living and working in the Northern California’s Silicon Valley for the last 30 years. I also wanted to write a book to serve as a beacon for an urgent renewal of American Constitutionalism and the preservation of family life for Technology knowledge workers in California’s Silicon Valley. Phillip Freneau, who served in the Revolutionary Army, wrote, This is the land of every joyous sound, of liberty and life, sweet liberty; without whose aid the noblest genius fails, and science irretrievable must die.

Since 1995, American women have started small businesses twice as fast as men have. One out of every 20 working women in the United States worked for themselves. That figure will continue to grow. By the 21st Century, the female gender will own half of all United States’ small businesses. According to an 18-month study sponsored by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, 11 million workers in the United States found employment in women-owned businesses in 1990. Women currently own 5.4 million businesses, or about 28 % of American firms. In California alone, in 1990, women owned more than 400,000 small businesses that generated more than $7 billion in sales. In 2007, California had 1.0 million women-owned businesses, or 13.3 % of all women-owned businesses in the United States. [1] The driver of this phenomenon has been the Affirmative Action laws of the 1960s that categorized women as a minority and thus eligible for preferential treatment by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and banking institutions as well as government purchasing organizations. Purchasing and loan preference to women-owned companies have been factors for their business success, not necessarily innovation, or insight into new business models. However, women appear to have an easier time to moving from a divorce settlement into income producing alternatives. This eventually materialized into the political gender power constituency that resulted in the election of President Clinton in 1992. The Clintons sponsored legislation giving hiring preferences to women. Seventeen years later, Barak Obama politicized key department and agency leadership positions by filling them with radical feminist such as: Janet Napolitano, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Melody C. Barnes, Regina Benjamin, Lisa P. Jackson, Valerie Jarrett, Elena Kalgan, Sara Mansion-Diaz , Karen Gordon Mills , Kathleen Sibelius, Hilda L. Solis, Sonia Sotomayor, Nancy Sutlej, Carol Browner, Ellen Moran, and Christina D. Roomer. According to the 2010 Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics, 40 women have held a total of 45 cabinet or cabinet-level appointments in the history of our nation. Of the 40, 24 had cabinet posts, including two who headed two different departments, and two who held both a cabinet post and a position defined as a cabinet-level. In 2010, seven women served in cabinet or cabinet-level posts.

Rush Limbaugh wrote, Feminism seeks to regulate against basic human nature. Feminism and the Democratic Party’s Affirmative Action legislation were the beginning of the push by the financial power elite to redefine American and eventually global societies. Valerie Young in the book, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, wrote, The places where women are most apt to feel incompetent and illegitimate are in the public spheres of power and authority. However, in the last 40 years (1972 to 2011), thanks to the federal affirmative action and civil rights legislation that dictated a quota system in hiring and firing, women have made measurable movements to greater than 50% in hiring. Melanie Kirkpatrick of The Wall Street Journal wrote, At Universities, women account for more than half of undergraduates and earn more doctorates than men. In the workforce, women account for more than half of managers and professionals. Women lag as CEOs and directors, but those numbers are growing too.

In 2009 with the emergence of the New Change America Democrats, the belief that America’s future belonged to California’s Silicon Valley Internet Technology Industry became a political narrative. The San Jose Mercury News noted that as technology exploded during the 1990s, Silicon Valley became the latest gold rush region of the country, as the best and the brightest raced to the region seeking fame and fortune. The South Bay Area in Northern California became the home of the largest and most advanced core technology organizations in the world. The nickname, Silicon Valley, stems from the large number of 1960s silicon semiconductor designers and manufacturers in the region; however, the term Silicon Valley today refers to all technology corporations that call the region home. Since, and even prior to the advent of Silicon Valley, technology hubs mushroomed in the United States and other countries. Massachusetts’ Route 128 as an early American example, but Silicon Valley remains the Mecca for computer geeks and global technology companies, and leading hub for technology innovation and development. Roughly, one third of all of the venture capital investments in the United States has been accounted for in Silicon Valley. Never the less, from 2001 to 2011, the annual tally of small companies going public in America was 80% lower than in the previous two decades. [2]

In fact, there was a robust government and defense electronics presence in this region well before the tech boom. The United States Government had a long history of paying for Silicon Valley’s research and development (R&D) of military weapons projects. During the start of World War II, Silicon Valley was a de-facto Research and Development center for the Department of Defense (DOD). The Silicon Valley cycle of United States Government’s transfer payments subsided briefly in the latter half of the 1940s. However from the March 1954 Fall of Điện Biên Phủ in Indo China and leading up to the 1975 retreat from Vietnam by the United States Military, Silicon Valley continued to be flush with DOD subcontractors and transfer payments which fueled the local economy of the Bay Area. Mountain View, California’s Moffett Naval Air Station was the home of the P-3 submarine hunter aircraft that monitored the numerous operational Russian submarines off the coast of the San Francisco Bay Area. Russian and Chinese agents were interjected into the technology development stream as engineers and managers to gain industrial-military intelligence. This was a well-known fact and it fueled greater interest in Silicon Valley by the United States FBI. Thus, Oracle Software began as a start-up with a contract from the CIA. The Varian Corporation shrouded in national security development projects for highly advanced radar and fighter jet capabilities.

Later, the San Francisco progressives would insist in re-making California’s Silicon Valley into a hub of non-military manufacturing and so-called renewable energy. You cannot be a California liberal progressive and support the National Defense Industry or embrace the American military. Military bases closed and the local economy had to reflect an environmentally pure communal society in which the U.S. government provided for all regardless of abilities, race, gender, sexual orientation, and self-desires. The prevailing view of the California political progressives was that the public sector and not the private sector had a constitutional mandate to provide public funds for investment in new technologies favored by Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

President Clinton’s pro-globalization, pro-technology, and fiscal responsibility led to a strong United States economic surge. The 1992 New Change Democratic policy led to better jobs, the purchase of new homes, and crime free neighborhoods. However, the dot com boom went bust. California families became part of the double-digit divorce rate statistics, which led to an increase in the number of family law attorneys. During his eight-year term, Bill Clinton convinced Americans to recognize and accept a world of continual economic and social change.[3] To have men become stay-at-home child caretakers and women to become the new workforce of business and government leaders, was one of many goals of the early National Organization for Women (NOW). As Mary Frances Berry wrote, in the 1600s and 1700s, First in the colonies and then in the young nation, fathers had the primary responsibility for child care beyond the early nursing period. Men oversaw what children learned, ate, wore and, when they went to work. Childhood development was the father’s, not the mother’s, responsibility because women are sinful and moral inferiors. Children could not choose the right path, and certainly women were too corrupt by nature to have been trusted to show it to them."[4] Early United States Jeffersonian views lay on the foundation of an agrarian lifestyles and urban woman would have little experience in understanding that this was incorrect. The rural woman was always the center of the family and men worked the fields from dawn to dusk. The Industrial Revolution, plus the numerous World Wars forced women out of those nurturing mother roles into the factories and gave them a taste of sexuality, and role freedoms, which women had perhaps never experienced before. The Industrial Revolution ignited an exclusionary political movement within the United States at the later turn of the 20th Century.

As Berry wrote, I am hopeful that people realize that there is a correlation between women’s rights and these family issues…between gender roles and women’s rights…Women feel guilty and ambivalent in the roles they have and they need to know why. People need to know this stuff, whether they agree or not.[4]

From the very experiences outlined and narrative in Berry’s book, the illusion and, reality are co-partners in the destruction of United States children as the court system has had a clear political agenda to redefine the roles of women. The appointment of women judges was a political extension of the mass propaganda of the women’s movement that had been founded on the lesbian, gay, bisexual and, transgender (LGBT) liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1970s, the Democratic Party added the leftist in the environmental movement, the feminist movement, the black liberalization movement, government unions, trial lawyers, and others to its rainbow coalition.[5] During the 1970s, as a Democratic Party organizer for the San Francisco women’s rights movement, clear insights grew. From numerous San Francisco street protest efforts with Flo Kennedy and the National Organization of Women (NOW) it became clear that the foundation for (NOW) rested on the LGBT mainstream inclusion agenda. On December 6,2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the United Nations in Geneva Now, raising this issue, I know, is sensitive for many people and that the obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights of LGBT people rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural, and religious beliefs. Hillary Clinton suggested that religious beliefs’ were standing in the way of protecting Human Rights of LGBT People. [6]

The feminist movement’s early purity of establishing a co-parenting connection within the traditional and divorced families never became a reality for at its very mainstream flow was a legal and judicial system objective not to interfere with the natural laws and boundaries of the traditional American Family. The goal of the new change Democrats, which began as a direct result of the Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was to remake American and Global societies into one centralized top down social economic model that would free women from the roles of mother and nurturer. Next national sovereignty became the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund control objective. Global media narratives and controllable commercial markets were employed to neutralize cultural differences.

The consequences of this lawyer dominated political strategy to develop a powerful progressive voting block have been profound in realigning and marginalizing America’s economic strength. Starting in 1975, under Governor Jerry Brown, California’s Superior Courts were exclusively awarding sole custody of the children to women. In the majority of Family Law Court cases, men had to pay the bills associated with a divorce case. Because of the attorney’s tactics to advise women to declare domestic violence or false accusations of sexual harassment, the Silicon Valley Superior Court routinely ordered fathers to have limited visitation access and to stay out of their children’s life. United States Hollywood films that portrayed the false narratives that children controlled by progressive and compassionate judges could overshadow the truth that the Court had gone political. The hidden agenda for the legalist was to make as much money from a case as possible. The economic and educational resources of an entire American generation have been discarded as a necessary part of the burn and plunder lawyering process.

The moral and economic death of America began in California’s Silicon Valley, as technology innovation and social reengineering were necessary to achieve fast growth rates and unconscionable salaries and bonuses. America’s generation that followed the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s anti-war Democratic Party found themselves dumped by the political and corporate elites into the dumpster of history and replaced by the avalanche of third world technologist. The new outsourced knowledge workers from India, Pakistan, and China had the advantage of family centric cultures without the need for expensive legalist problem solutions. Silicon Valley Technology Cartels encouraged the transition away from American engineers and managers by establishing the Cartel’s own product training campuses in India, Pakistan, and China. The CEOs of these Information Technology firms had only two principal goals; namely, to lower the cost of United States’ high tech labor and to increase their own wealth. The future for all Americans changed forever by these strategies.

The United States military vastly underestimated the Internet and the strong desire of people to be online. Commercially the Internet started to catch on in 1995 with an estimated 18 million users. The rise in use meant an untapped international market. Soon speculators were barely able to control their excitement over the new digital economy. Buzzwords such as networking, a new paradigm, information technologies, Internet, consumer-driven navigation, a tailored web experience, and many more examples of empty double-speak- filled media and investors alike with a rabid hunger for more Internet Company Initial Public Offerings (IPO) emerged with ferocious frequency sweeping the nation into economic euphoria. Investors blindly grabbed every new stock issue, often without even looking at a business plan to discover, how long it would take before the company became profitable, if ever. The first punctures in this financial bubble came from the companies themselves. Many reported huge losses, some folded outright within months of going public. Silicon Aires were moving out of their $4 million estates and back to the room above their parents’ garage. In 1999, for example saw 457 (IPO)’s, most of them were Internet and technology related. Of those 457 (IPO)s, 117 doubled in price on the first day of trading. In 2001, the number of (IPO)s dwindled to 76. Not one of them doubled on the first day of trading. Many argue that the dotcom boom and bust was a case of too much too fast. Companies that could not decide on their corporate creed received millions of dollars and told to grow to Microsoft size by tomorrow.[7] Silicon thrives on boom and bust unemployment cycles. Silicon Valley has been doing what it is supposed to do regardless of the state of the economy; namely, innovate. Even as bubbles popped and jobs vanished, the valley developed new technologies and services, from the founding of Yahoo and Google to the rise of cloud computing and the introduction of the iPhone and iPod. Thousands of tech jobs expanded while other occupations shrank. It’s a typical pattern for the valley, although its impact has been exacerbated by powerful economic forces particularly the globalization of the tech industry and the increase in technological efficiency, both of which have cost the area jobs. One thing Silicon Valley seemed able to do in each business cycle since the 50s is to reinvent itself, said Steve Cochrane, a longtime expert on California at economy.com, a research division of Moody’s Analytics. For better or worse, it means the economy is really volatile. You have this creative destruction. Silicon Valley is like a laboratory for that. If you are the one whose job is eliminated, of course it is bad. Individuals have to reinvent themselves as well-you go back to school, or move to a different industry, a different occupation, or you move away. [8] The boom and bust Silicon Valley Business Investment model led to economic technology implosions, area divorces accelerated, and lawyers descended on Silicon Valley to make their fortunes. Silicon Valley, once the Valley of Heart’s Delight, turned into a Gold Rushville for lawyers, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, government expansionist politicians, high paid construction trade unionist, and emerging countries’ offshore trained technology knowledge workers.

CHAPTER ONE

The Journey

Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward

–Exodus 14:15

Chronicle - Past Events Future Realities

Thaddeus Sikorski was a third generation Russian and Polish American. Thad had long given up the thought of experiencing fatherhood. It was the prevailing premise that a child created forever by the way his mother experienced the child’s expression of needs and sensations during the first days and weeks of life, and then the presupposition this was the moment that a child’s life tragedy might be set for life.[1] When he became a father during the birthing process at the Stanford University Medical Hospital, and viewed his first and perhaps only child, Melissa Rose, Thad catapulted immediately into a murky tunnel of experiences. Those ordeals changed his entire life. Thad left with a clear concern over the American values of justice, rule of law, and moral decency. Up to that point, Thad believed that the courts and lawyers were always just and pure. As the years rolled by, America was to experience endless hours of psychological and economic pain that the heartless judicial executioners would continue to inflict upon the innocence of children and their parents.

Thad was a United States Air Force Veteran of the 1960s. Thaddeus was not a traditional recognized war hero in Vietnam for he did take many risks that could have brought him back in a black plastic body bag. Thad had sucked it up being afraid during his entire tour with the First Air Commando Squadron in Nha Trang South Vietnam. As a little boy growing up in the cold weather in Chicago, Thad only knew that if options failed for him and everyone else in his life, the United States government would always be there to rescue him. However, in his latter stages of life, Thad would begin to think that the California legal system was out to destroy him and his angel children. Thad lived in these times when fathers lost their children due to the women’s empowerment agenda of the U.S. Federal Government. Legal bandits stole a family’s future earnings and the full power of the State of California and the Federal Government would threaten them with jail if they did not pay what they had not. One can see that the policy actions of the Clintons brought dire consequences for average American families who did not have the monetary resources to fight for the sanity and safety of his or her children and families.

On March 18, 1988, Phyllis Wilde, was discovered murdered in her Santa Clara home. Wilde savagely attacked with a hammer. She beaten so severely that the entire left side of your skull had collapsed. Before leaving, the murderer had covered her with a blanket and neatly balanced two pillows over her head. The entire room splashed with huge amounts of blood. The first person that entered the crime scene with Santa Clara Police Sergeant George Teal was the high profile 37-year-old Silicon Valley attorney N. Russell Sjonborg who had been the client executor of Phyllis Wilde’s estate. Sjonborg three months after he walked through the blood spattered gruesome crime scene accepted an appointment by Judge Jeremy Bird to be the Guardian Ad Litem for Melissa Rose Sikorski, a young Palo Alto, California five-year-old girl. Russell would soon find himself the author of a murder plot to kill children.

The Journey Happens

Thad’s mind was clear. This was to be his time of joy and self-actualization. He was finally coming to the point where his destiny was to be an entrepreneur power within the business community. Looking back, from the very moments of clarity of thought, Thad’s thinking and creation had much to do with his own parents and their domestic struggles during their lives. To be clear, Thad never experienced knowing them. Yes, their divorce when he was just nine years shattered this young boy’s very foundation. Thad’s family was but past shadows moving across the snowdrifts of Chicago’s winter storms. Therefore, Thad never wanted to be a father who would subject his own children to the years of endless confusion and lack of direction that fate had bestowed upon him. Prior to going to Vietnam, Thad’s college first love, when he was 17 and attending Bradley University in Peoria Illinois, was June Hartmann. June was from Naperville Illinois but later married an engineer from Western Electric two years after Thad’s arrived in Japan. Of course, the romantic breakup led Thaddeus to being a regular Tachikawa Airbase bar brawler.

Time fast-forwarded to 2009 when June Hartmann contacted Thaddeus on the Internet. She had divorced her husband and had two grown children. She lived in San Diego and they visited together. She was this sexy fox at 20-years-of age when Thaddeus met her at Bradley. In 2009, she was an old woman with 10,000 wrinkles and breast implants. There is nothing wrong with breast implants; however, they were hard as baseballs. Well, their regenerated love lasted for about six months. Unfortunately, June was a bit nutty as if she was at Bradley. They stopped seeing each other when Thad realized that she was flirting with any man who would walk within five feet of her. Thaddeus knew that she was battling cancer. In 2010, Thad found her obituary in the San Diego newspaper. The truth for Thad was that no one could resurrect a completed romantic past. Thad married several times because of his Post Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD) anger episodes affected his ability to maintain stable relationships. Thad’s five legal wives were Janice Troulman, Alice Paroda, Scarlett Swerling, Michelle Chiles, and Lucinda Varzea. Lucinda was a student from Portugal and they lived together in Seattle, Washington. Thad’s second daughter Marianna was born in 1998. Anyone would conclude that Thad had a full life. However, Thad as a man was emotionally unable to stay long in a marriage relationship. Thaddeus had this traditional 21st century role to play and then to pay for selecting toxic women. When Thad married Scarlett Swerling, the dreams of being a real father rekindled as a reality. With the Palo Alto, California Swerling family, Thad was soon to discover that he did not have the right to love his children or to participate in his angels’ early childhood years. The middleclass never would get justice. Perhaps, that is why families settle marital differences outside of a United States’ Court System that many believe exist for the rich and their powerful politician allies.

The Beginnings

Thaddeus’s story begins with the angel Melissa Rose. However, the story really begins in 1983 when he first met her mother, Scarlett Swerling at a (STAR) retreat. Thad first learned about (STAR) during the early 80s when he met Sarah Green, a young Palo Alto women who lived on Cowper Street, and had gone through the (STAR) process at the Geyserville retreat. Sarah raved about how Thad could discard finally his childhood nightmares. Sarah explained how therapy helps to discover past feelings, which are the real causes for a person’s hatred. (STAR) graduates will no longer behave like the mistreated children they were. They were no longer children who must protect their parents and who therefore need a scapegoat for the buried emotions that torment them. However, the hatred remains even when the scapegoats are switched. Never appeased it remains present and ready to spring out. Hatred poisons and blinds the soul, carves away the memory and the brain, and murders the capacity for compassion and insight.[2]

The (STAR) Therapy process founded in Palo Alto California and developed by Barbara Findsen; a Stanford educated therapist and an internationally recognized pioneer in Transpersonal Psychology. The (STAR) Process designed to create a zone of safety so that the workshop participants could do their deepest personal work. Sarah was a sensitive and soft-spoken woman who Thad became attracted to almost immediately. They both spent time making love in the evenings, but it never was terribly exciting to Thad. He went through his programmed process of trying to dominate and control Sarah. Eventually, she avoided Thad or he just stopped his pursuit of her. It did not make any difference for Thad knew that he entered into a group, which consisted of lonely women and easy prey. Thad’s technique was attracting women and discarding them. He always had some sick desire to hurt the women in his life. None of the many therapists ever figured out the key to Thad’s destructive behavior towards women when it was obvious to him.

Soon after that meeting with Sarah, Honeywell Information Systems transferred Thad to Phoenix, Arizona to the Public Relations Large Information Division. Thad spent the two years in Phoenix trying to pull his dreams together and falling into one bad relationship after the next, like so many of his generation, that experimented with drugs and alcohol. Even when Thad was developing black out after black out, he believed that he was just a normal social user. Thad was just medicating the stressful lifestyle that the Sales and Marketing positions always demanded of him. Thad always hid his Vietnam nightmares with the same self-prescribed medications. He was going broke, working, spending, and then laid off in the fast-paced Computer and Software Industry. Thad was a single man with no responsibilities except himself and a true failure. He never knew what a husband was or if that role would ever be his to play.

Thad always went to his favorite Phoenix Arizona restaurant and bar, Durant’s, to unwind from a day that began at 6am and usually ended at 7pm. It was Tuesday evening and he was toasting everyone with several bottles of his favorite French white wine, Pouilly Fuissé. Down the bar was a very piquant woman who Thad immediately moved to sit next to her. She had those warm sensual lips of love. Sikorski had a strong attraction to ravish her body. After two hours, she agreed to stay with him for the evening. It never occurred to Thad that he had a very important task of picking up the Prime Minister of Scotland at the Phoenix Airport the next morning at 8:30 AM. Thad was a trusted employee. He had the Honeywell corporate company car with the license plate, GCOS 1, and the Marriot Hotel was only across the street. Thad figured that this would be an easy plan to spend the night with this sensuous woman to love and drive to the airport in the morning. They left at 11PM and when Thad turned into the street traffic, a Phoenix police car nearly collided with the Honeywell car. Thad simply continued to drive across the street into the hotel parking lot. However, the officer followed Thad anyway directly to the hotel registration parking space. Instead of being calm and helpful, Thad was combatant and hence the officer arrested him. Thad’s date for the night drove the Honeywell Company car to the police station and took a taxi home. Thad spent the night in jail. His hangover was major and the guards intentionally kept slamming the holding cell door repeatedly. At 7:00AM Thad was still in jail and the prospect of not meeting the Minister from Scotland at 8:30AM became quite apparent to him. Because Thad did not have any money, he had no choice but to make a direct collect call to his Senior Vice President. The first thing that the jailhouse operator said when the phone was answered, I have a collect call from the Phoenix City Jail from Mr. Thaddeus Sikorski, and will you accept the charges? Thad’s jailhouse release occurred at 8:00am. When he walked out into the rear of the jailhouse, Thad only saw a police department parking lot that contained over 200 cars. He had no idea where the Honeywell car was in a parking lot. After a considerable amount of time, Thad saw GCOS I, he raced to the driver’s door, opened the door, turned the ignition key, drove over the speed limit to the Phoenix Airport, and arrived within five minutes, as the passengers of the plane began disembarking. Thad enjoyed high risk and experienced a sense of power over difficult odds.

For so very long, Thad was hiding out in his own plastic shell of pain that began in his own childhood. Thad was a child of a divorced family who lived with years of anger and abuse, struggling for basic love, loneliness, and lack of inner direction that he had tried to un-mask for so long. Thad did not develop an abusive personality. He was just medicating himself with liquor against the pain, which Thad had to bear each day. It was his key to a room of escape. Within that protected bubble of black outs and strangers, which he gathered around himself, Thad found a form of peace. That peace was the acceptance of the non-recognition of Thad by his working class Chicago family and his own daily psychotic contract with depression and run-down dreams of grandiose accomplishments that never materialized.

Seeking Freedom

As a man, it appears in the years that Thaddeus lived; it was their generation’s responsibility to wage war, to earn income, and to father a family. Thad could see all the images. Kazmeirz Sikorski’s father could see the coming of Russian revolutionary armed struggle and sent Kazmeirz and his brother Leon to seek personal safety and a new life in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Prior to the 1830s, Allentown was a small town with only local markets. The arrival of the Lehigh Canal, however, expanded the city’s commerce and industrial capacity greatly. With this, the town underwent significant industrialization, ultimately becoming a major center for heavy industry and manufacturing. Coal and oil natural resource were in close abundance and fueled the American Industrial Revolution for Pennsylvania.

Before 1872, Germany was a loose federation of states, including much of modern-day Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Belgium, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Eastern France, Northern Italy, and Western Poland. In January 1902 at the age of 25, Thad’s grandfather, Kazmeirz Sikorski, and 26-year-old Leon Sikorski arrived in the United States on the ship Frankfurt. The Frankfurt built by Caird & Co. in Greenock, Scotland. (Tonnage 2,582 Dimensions: 310’ x 39’, Single screw, 12 knots. Inverted type engines, two masts, one funnel). The hull made of iron. Traveling at that time was not for the timid of heart. Immigrants traveled on cargo ships meant to carry lumber. With the cargo loaded, the shipmasters converted the storage compartments into makeshift steerage for travelers. Loose boards, laced together over the bilges, served as temporary flooring and rows of cramped berths fitted with straw for bedding. Immigrants who had money for the journey boarded the vessel and then packed in the Frankfurt like animals.

In spring 1866, a terrible tragedy occurred as the iron hulled steam ship England was sailing to New York. Many died from a cholera outbreak and quarantines imposed. Thereafter, immigrants saw America from New York’s Ellis Island. Ellis Island operated from 1892 to 1954. Newly arrived immigrants herded into holding pens and forced to wait for hours, days, or weeks before learning their fate. As in Kazmeirz Sikorski’s case and so many others who left the port of Bremen, Germany, he had to start from scratch and to make a new life in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Kazmeirz’s mother, Sophia, had sewed twenty dollars in his jacket for his new life in America. Kazmeirz and Leon shared a common dream of Cossack immigrants. Simply, it was a hope that America had no king. America offered vast opportunities. Poor people could become rich. In America, employment was plentiful. Free homesteading rights freely given to immigrants. Immigrants had a belief that gold flowed from the ground for easy picking. As they suffered sleeping within the hay and smelling the foul smells of the passenger steerage, Leon and Kazmeirz convinced themselves that overcoming these discomforts and everything else was well worth the present discomfort and risk for a new future life in America.

In 1895, the Polish grandparents of Thaddeus Sikorski’s arrived in America from Germany following the similar route travel by his Cossack grandfather from Bremen Germany. Janek Potocki moved to Chicago, Illinois and found his Polish wife during a snowball fight on the Southside of Chicago near Hyde Park. This was to be the beginning of Thaddeus Sikorski American legacy beginning with Russian Cossack and Polish immigrant families consisting of eight Uncles and eight Aunts. Later, the Potocki’s homesteaded one-thousand acres devoted to corn, barley, and wheat. The Potocki’s grew their own vegetables, planted orchards of apples and peaches, and raised horses, cows, pigs, and chickens in Hamlet, Indiana. They had a family of four boys and four girls. All four boys joined the Army and Marines during World War II and the girls worked in war plants before starting their own families.

Charles Potocki joined the U.S. Marines, then fighting on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi, where he received a purple heart for valor. After discharge, as so many military men did, he brought to his parent’s Indiana farmhouse his war trophies from the battle-a Japanese rifle and a samurai sword. Thad found the weapons hidden under his Uncle Chuck’s bed and secretly admired them. Thad at ten years of age had a vivid imagination. He could see his uncle rushing the Japanese pillboxes, throwing grenades, and using his M1 bayonet to finish off any Japanese soldier moving in the foxholes. Thad then would return these war treasures and place them back under his uncle’s bed, which consisted of a large hand-made forged iron bed frame, goose-feathered mattress, and heavenly soft-feathered pillows.

After a year of arriving in America, Kazmeirz Sikorski soon met a beautiful 18-year-old Russian Victoria Witowski. They both worked hard in Allentown saving $35,000 dollars for their first home in New Stanton, a borough in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, United States. In New Stanton, Pennsylvania the Sikorski family raised four boys and four girls on a large dairy farm. In addition, they had two coal mining operations on their properties. During World War II, four of the Sikorski boys joined the U.S. Army and two of the boys returned home severely wounded but all went on to raise families and start successful construction material businesses in Youngwood, Uniontown, Greensburg, and New Stanton, Pennsylvania. The four Sikorski girls married and had careers in education, nursing, and city administration. Two of the girls, Stella and Wanda moved to Chicago to be close to their brother Walter. Stella married Stanley Szczygielski and had four children. Stella opened up a general store and Stanley was an employee of Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison. Their eldest son, Gene attended St. Turibius grammar school, Gage Park High School, and the National College of Naprapathy. Soon Gene became active in Democratic Party politics and served many years as a mayor of a Chicago Suburban Community.

Thad grew up in an American Slavic speaking family who also worked hard to realize the dream of home ownership, wealth, and a great retirement life-style. As was the Cossack custom, the marriage partnerships arranged within the families. Frances Potocki was only 14-years-old when selected to be Walter Sikorski’s bride. Walter worked for Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison as an underground electrician. Thaddeus was the youngest of three children born to Walter Sikorski and Frances Potocki. Thad’s parents divorced when he was nine, which left a core psychological pain that he could never eliminate except by doing part-time work, engaging in academic pursuits, and staying engaged in weekend camping with St. Clare’s Boy Scout troop.

During the 1952 summer, eleven year old, Thaddeus and his brother Robert enrolled in the East Troy Wisconsin’s Camp Richards Boys summer camp owned by the society of the Divine Word. During the remainder of the year, Camp Richards served as a Divine Word Catholic Seminary. Saint Arnold Janssen founded the Society of the Divine Word in 1875 in Holland as a foreign missionary society whose members work first and foremost where the Gospel has not yet been preached at all or only insufficiently, and where the local Church is not yet viable on its own. More than 6000 Divine Word Missionaries seek to live Saint Arnold’s original inspiration in 70 countries. Camp Richards Summer camp helped a child develop character, learn valuable life skills, make new friends, and discover new interests. Thad was a shy boy who felt an early calling to become a Catholic priest. Thad and his brother loved archery, sailing, horseback riding, Indian Scouts, and sleep-outs under the stars. Instead, Thad experienced a trauma that was to affect Thad’s relationships with woman. It was at Camp Richards that a camp counselor molested 11-year old Thad repeatedly in the chapel. Thad was frightened and told that if he ever spoke to anybody about these homosexual acts made upon him, he would die as he slept in the main dormitory. Therefore, Thaddeus kept this secret from everyone and simply told the priest in the confessional that he had a bad man molest him. Later, Bob Sikorski admitted that the same camp counselor also molested him. The priest told Thad to pray two rosaries and to forgive the 45-year-old counselor. The camp closed in 1987. Buildings removed a few years later. The memories of molestation never go away for child victims.

Thaddeus’s first job was at 12-years-of-age as a newspaper boy with an early morning route that required he arise each morning at 5 am to pedal his Schwinn bicycle 15 blocks to Russell Malinsky’s garage. The summers and fall weather were mild except for an occasional rainfall, but the winters quite brutal. During those winters, Thad drove his Schwinn through shifting snowdrifts and temperatures below 10 degrees Fahrenheit. One morning, his hands froze to the chrome handlebars. When Thad arrived at the garage that served as the distribution point for the boys to roll their papers and to leave on their routes, the potbelly stove stood filled with paper and wood to keep the boys warm. Once he entered the garage, Thad would rush in and stand by the stove to thaw his 70-pound body. However, Thad had to hurry and prepare his newspapers for early morning delivery. On a Saturday afternoon each month, Thad had to visit each house and collect the fees for home delivery. With the exception of a dog that ripped into Thad’s leg, meeting each customer developed Thad’s ability to relate with a diverse universe of people. After one year, Thad had grown his route to over 120 customers and Russell offered him the job of Branch Supervisor. Thad was 13-years-old. Thad also worked in the afternoons at the Jewel Tea Grocery Chain on Kedzie Avenue and in the late evening as a bus boy at the Franklin Steak House on Western Avenue. Thad was a serious-minded and recognized as a gifted child who studied the piano at St. Clare Catholic School, winning silver and bronze music medals from the City of Chicago. As a student at Gage Park High School, he transferred into an advanced honors class, but after a year working three part-time jobs, he made a choice. In his junior year in high school, Thad decided to earn and save his money to attend college instead of continuing the advanced high school course program.

At 15 years-of-age, Thad was active in the high school Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and dreamed of a career