When the Park Ridge Memorial Day parade steps off this year, its grand marshal, active 100-year-old Marie Sartor Pawelek, will fit right in with its rousing music and honoring of veterans.
Pawelek, who has lived in Park Ridge for 70 years of her century, is a singer, musician and U.S. Army veteran who helped pioneer music therapy during World War II for servicemen suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). After the war, she turned her musical talents to tickling the ivories as a piano bar chanteuse in one of Chicago’s most famous restaurants.
Pawelek, who became a centenarian in January, lives independently in her own condo, tending to household duties herself. The only thing she has given up is driving. She remains active in veteran’s affairs as a volunteer for the Honor Flight program.
But as impressive as her present status might rank among all who’ve reached and passed her age, conversation always time-trips back eight decades to her service in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
A Minnesota native, Pawelek was vocally talented, working as a blues singer. After a year in college in Duluth, she joined the WACs in 1943. Sent to Beaumont General Hospital in El Paso,Texas for training as a medic, Pawelek was stationed at Walter Reed, in the Washington, D.C. area, the Army’s top medical facility to work with amputees. The more primitive prosthetics of the time were assembled in the hospital’s basement.
Learning of her melodic experience, Pawelek’s superiors assigned her to work with something new they wanted to try — using music as therapy for PTSD (then called “shell shock”) patients.
“They were the first people to use that kind of therapy,” Pawelek said. “It was the first hospital to do that. Finally they realized how important it was.
“The servicemen were in terrible shape. I had pictures of me training them, and I sent the photos home to my parents. You just did (steel one’s self). It is just like a surgeon that does something awful, but he saves the patients. You have to put everything else in back of you. You just know you’re going to do the best you can. You just hope they can be better.”
Pawelek was one of many thousands of women on active duty during World War II. Their accomplishments often did not get the credit they deserved since they largely were away from combat zones, and often in support roles. Pawelek said she could have never conceived of a world where a woman could command a Walter Reed facility or serve as a fighter pilot.
Discharged as a corporal at war’s end, Pawelek eventually married and moved to Chicago. Seeking the then-newly-popular suburban life, she and then-husband Edward Pawelek, a Navy veteran, bought a home at 1920 S. Crescent. Son Michael eventually joined the Marines, serving a hitch in Vietnam and being discharged as a staff sergeant.
Pawelek’s musical talents started in childhood, with her Italian-American father encouraging her to sing Italian songs for his friends and acquaintances. After the war, she used her GI benefits to attend the Sherwood Music Conservatory, now part of Columbia College, in Chicago’s Fine Arts Building.
That prepared her for 26 years as an entertainer, many of them spent charming crowds with her piano playing and singing at Eli’s the Place for Steak, an iconic restaurant at 215 E. Chicago Avenue, Chicago, near the Magnificent Mile.
“I loved it. I could write a book about some of my customers,” said Pawelek, noting celebrities including notable baseball and football players and even Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. came to dine there. She retired at age 70 in 1995.
Fast forward nearly 30 years, and Pawelek came to the attention of the Park Ridge parade organizers as one of 26 veterans honored on banners along Northwest Highway in the Hometown Heroes program linked to American Legion Post 247.
“Researching the banners, Marie’s background lent itself to something special,” said parade organizer Joe Steinfels, a Post 247 member and Park Ridge alderman, who also was involved in the choice of a new grand marshal. The post wanted to honor women who served in World War II, and Pawelek’s long residency made her a prime candidate for the parade honor.
“That’s just awesome,” Steinfels said of Pawelek’s service. “It was a great nomination, a unanimous decision. To think she was doing this stuff was incredible.”
Pawelek was in “shock” when she learned of her selection. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I was surprised and so happy to be picked.” Michael Pawelek will join his mother in the parade.
In addition to Pawelek’s connection to women in service, Steinfels said new wrinkles to the parade will be added.
“At 9:30 a.m. on Monday, we will have a commemoration at the Veterans Monument near South Park Fieldhouse,” he said. “My intent will be a talk about the purpose of Memorial Day, talk about what it means.”
Steinfels also arranged with Great Lakes Naval Base to provide a platoon of active-duty sailors to march in the parade. He is still attempting to obtain a color guard from the Marine reserves.
The entire process of honoring veterans still needs plenty of tweaks, as Pawelek herself discovered on her only Honor Flight of veterans to Washington, D.C.
“I was the only woman veteran with 98 men on the plane,” she said. “Not one man talked to me. They came from a different culture. Men in a different generation felt women should not be in service. That upset me more than anything.”
But after working with traumatized veterans at Walter Reed, Pawelek was not easily deterred. She is now a volunteer for Honor Flights, receiving a monthly list of birthdays for veterans and in turn sending greetings to all.
Park Ridge will recognize her work, be it in 1944 or 2024, on a holiday both festive and somber.
IF YOU GO: The Park Ridge Memorial Day parade will take place Monday, May 27 starting at 10 a.m. Cumberland and Talcott Road. Parade units will travel 1.2 miles north and end at the steps of the Park Ridge City Hall, 505 Butler Place.
