Joan F Zydek

March 28, 1917 - June 29, 2016

Joan Fiala-Zydek age 99 of St.Clair died, Thursday June 29. She was born in 1917 in Philadelphia, PA. She attended art school in Washington, DC upon completion of high school and thereafter worked at The Pentagon as a secretary. The neighborhood in which Joan grew up was mainly inhabited by Polish immigrants. Before leaving Philadelphia, Joan was engaged in a project that included some of the local young women. They would receive names of soldiers fighting for Poland during World War II. Joan wrote to several of these young men, but there was only one whom she truly liked. She and Matthew Zydek continued their correspondence until the end of World War II when Matthew managed to get to Canada. They were married — without ever having seen one another in person — in Montreal, Canada in 1949, a marriage which produced two sons, Stanley Joseph and the late Thomas Joseph Fiala and continued for 65 years until Matthew’s passing in 2015. Joan received her bachelor’s degree as a married woman with children, and then her master’s degree in Library Science from Wayne State University. She worked for many years as a librarian and was instrumental in setting up the library at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in St. Clair. Both Joan and Matthew were dedicated to the Catholic Church and were deeply religious, friendly and upstanding neighbors and friends to many. Joan is survived by her son Stan and daughter-in-law June.