Obituary of Cheslava Mann

Czesia (aka Jessie) Mann died peacefully at her home in Chatham County on January 17, a few weeks short of her 96^th birthday. She leaves an extended family behind to mourn her passing, as well as many neighbors and friends who over time became her family as well.

Born Czeslawa Idzikowska in Makowarsko, a village in the Pomerania region of northern Poland, she was one of 12 children of a railway worker and a housewife. Just 15 years old when the Nazis invaded her country in 1939, she spent the years of German occupation doing forced labor in the forests near her home, toiling alongside her younger sisters to collect sap. After the war, she completed her education and became a teacher, but soon fell in love with a dashing older man, Max Wierzbicki, a Polish Army officer and survivor of Stalin’s Gulag, with whom she immigrated to America in the 1950s. The couple settled initially in Waterloo, Iowa, and then in Chicago, where Czesia worked first in factories, learned English, and later in food service, including at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. It was there that she, later a widow, met the man who would become her second husband: the charming Bill Mann.

Upon retirement in the mid-1980s, she began a new adventure, moving with Bill to the Chapel Hill area and into the house where they would spend the rest of their lives. They knew no one, but this was not a situation that persisted long, for they were gregarious and outgoing, making friends in their neighborhood and the local Polish community. They loved to read and to garden; to socialize and to travel; to frequent local restaurants and to befriend children and animals in the neighborhood. Bill and Czesia’s mailbox was well known as a Milk Bone distribution point for all local dogs, though their only pet was a rambunctious parakeet named Kubus.

Bill’s death in 2012 was a blow from which Czesia never entirely recovered, yet she maintained her interest in the life of her community and family, even going so far as adopting a cat (Topaz) and remaining at home with the assistance of the caregivers who would also become her friends.

Czesia enjoyed vigorous health for most of her long life and remained active, cleaning leaves out of the gutters long after prudence would have dictated hiring someone to do the job, and delighting in brisk walks around the neighborhood. She maintained close ties with her extensive family back in Poland, providing practical assistance, especially during the lean years of the Cold War, and rejoicing in the achievements of the younger generation after the collapse of Communism. Czesia was a woman of tremendous generosity and spirit, outspoken and decided in her opinions, yet always warm in her affections.  We will miss her very much.

A visitation will be held at Walker’s Funeral Home in Chapel Hill on Friday January 24, 2020 from 5:00 p.m. until 6:00 p.m.

Walker’ Funeral Home in Chapel Hill is assisting the family.