Forys Misfortune

On a quiet April evening in 1922, just after 6 o’clock, the sun slowly began its descent over the City of Providence, casting shadows over the Woonasquatucket River. In a working class neighborhood in the northern end of Olneyville, 35-year-old Wladyslaw Forys walked leisurely along the riverbank with his wife, Anna, and a friend, Walter Stamper. The three didn’t have to go far to enjoy the cool breeze from the swiftly flowing currents that tossed small leaves and branches from side to side; the river ran just beyond the farthest border of the Forys’ backyard. 

Each looked forward to their evening walks as a means of refreshment, the small pleasures afforded to two blue-collar laborers and a housekeeping mother of two. The Forys were actively involved in Polish-American local affairs, and the community’s newest members looked up to Wladyslaw as a leader. President of the Polish-American Political Club of the 7th Ward, a member of the Jan Sobieski Society, the Polish National Alliance and Syowi Polski I Litwi, no one could say that Wladyslaw Forys wasn’t doing his part to serve the community that had taken him under its wing almost 15 years earlier, when he had first arrived in the States fresh off the boat from Poland, bringing with him little more than hopes and dreams for a new life. 

Wladyslaw had left his aging parents reluctantly, but could not persuade them to come with him. John and Katarzyna Forys loved their hometown of Januszkowiec, a tiny, overwhelmingly Roman Catholic village of poor farmers. Wladyslaw, however, longed for the opportunities that lay across the ocean, and in 1907 had packed his bags and boarded a steamer heading for America. 

Upon his entry into the States, he continued to use his given name, Wladyslaw Forys, among associates and friends, but sometimes registered officially as “Walter” to avoid undue complications. Three years later, on August 9, 1910, he had taken a fellow Polish immigrant as his bride, the then 19-year-old Anna Grych, known affectionately to friends and family as Annie. 

The couple married and moved into a small house on 26 Putnam Street, where Anna Forys gave birth to their first child, Boleslaw, in 1913. In 1915, Anna gave birth again, this time to a daughter, Amelia Margaret. 

In 1920 the Forys moved a few doors down from their first house to 17 Putnam St., only to move again two years later just around the corner to 25 Bowdoin St. 

In the early 1900s, many new immigrants to Providence were settling down in the mill-owned worker housing on Bowdoin and Putnam Streets, as they labored under the great industrial smokestacks of the textile and paper mills that had sprung up all over Olneyville. 

As Wladyslaw Forys walked hand in hand with his wife on that cool April evening in 1922, he sneaked another loving glance at his wife’s growing midsection. She was pregnant again. They had learned the news in January of that year, and were anticipating this new addition to their family with great delight. Nine-year-old Boleslaw and 7-year-old Amelia were counting the days until their new playmate was due to arrive. 

The Forys talked softly together as their friend kept pace beside them. Drawing close to the riverbank, they cast their eyes towards the National-Providence Worsted Mill. Situated just next to the river, its smokestacks rose formidably above the water, dominating the skyline. But, even as his wife and friend tilted their chins up to see the stacks, Wladyslaw found his gaze drawn down, towards the rushing, frothing river. 

Suddenly, he was shaken from his reverie by a horrifying sight: the small, frail body of a child, tossed along the river, struggling in vain as the current pulled it down. Wladyslaw yelled out, and his companions turned just in time to see him throw off his overcoat and shoes and sprint for the water. He rushed in, trying to make his way towards the child, who surfaced a second time, only to be pulled down beneath the churning waters again. This time, the child did not reappear.

Wladyslaw waded out as deep as he could go, but the swift currents barred his entry into deeper water, and he headed back. Fighting his way back for the bank, he shouted instructions to his wife and Stamper. A young boy happening to walk by stopped to see what the commotion was about. Wladyslaw bade him urgently to run for help. He did, and after many agonizing minutes, the police arrived on the scene. Police Captain William E. McGann, in charge of the rescue operation, surveyed the river for any sight of the child. But McGann feared that the police had arrived too late, and that his job would be not to rescue the child, but to retrieve its body. 

The officers had brought with them a small rowboat, and now Capt. McGann and several of his officers climbed into it to drag the river for the child. Wladyslaw asked to ride along, if only to help identify the boy. A small, disconcerting thought crossed his mind, but he pushed it aside. Ridiculous, he told himself. He tried to focus on the task at hand. He pitied the child’s parents. He knew how much he loved his own children, and contemplated with sympathy the horrible pain and grief that this news would be sure to bring them. 

The officers rowed hard against the frothing current, and the small boat inched forward slowly. Anna Forys and Stamper watched anxiously as the boat pitched and rolled over the precarious waters that had already claimed one life. Wladyslaw clung to the side of the boat with clenched fists, his heart beating wildly. The disturbing thought which he had so urgently tried to dismiss kept repeating itself over and over in his mind. Where was Boleslaw? Surely the boy was out playing with his friends. Yes, he had called to his mother that he was going out to play earlier that afternoon. Where did he say they were going to be playing at? Around the neighborhood, no doubt. But where exactly in the neighborhood? 

The officers in the small boat noticed that Wladyslaw was becoming increasingly agitated. Patrolman Charles M. Ward, who was handling the grappling hooks used to recover bodies from rivers and lakes, furrowed 

his brow as he labored to bring the child’s body in. Sweat rolled off his face as he cast the long black cords into the water. The sharp, four-pronged iron hooks tied to the ends of the cords sliced through the currents and pierced the body, securing it. Even the force of the waves could not dislodge them from the child’s frail corpse as Patrolman Ward reeled them in with strong, steady hands. 

As the grappling hooks pulled the body above the surface, an anguished cry escaped from Wladyslaw Forys’ lips. 

The next thing anyone knew, Forys was trying to jump out of the boat. It took the combined strength of four officers to restrain his frenzied attempts to dive into the river. Forys pleaded with the men to let him take his own life, even as his wife and friend watched in horror from the shore, but the officers responded with preventative measures. Two of the policemen held him tightly down to the bottom of the skiff until they had made their way back to the banks of the river. Though they felt for him, this man who had inadvertently watched the drowning of his own son, their job was to protect the sanctity of life, even a life now overwhelmed by grief.

The Forys later learned from playmates of their son that Boleslaw had been running with them down the steep bank of the river and could not stop. He fell into the water and was carried away by the strong current. Though able to swim, the current soon overpowered him and he could not make his way back to shore. 

Left with only their memories to remember him by, Wladyslaw and his wife buried their firstborn son in the family plot at Grace Church Cemetery. His younger brother Edward Walter, born five months later on Sept. 17, 1922, never knew his older brother; nor did John, the Forys’ youngest, born April 19, 1928. Like Boleslaw, Edward Walter Forys did not live to grow old. He died in the air over Austria at 22 years of age, one of the many US Air Force pilots lost in World War II. John Forys would become a florist, owning and operating the Edgewood Flower Shop in Cranston until he retired in 1982 and moved to Providence.

Boleslaw Forys was the first of Wladyslaw’s kin to be buried in Grace Church Cemetery, but not the last. Roughly 13 years later, his father would join him in the cemetery, as he had wished to do the day he learned of his son’s death. In 1965 his mother would be interred in the family plot, and in 1997, his brother John. The four of them now share the same headstone.