Town Crier Articles

 

 New Town just made it happen!

• Approximately 85 New Town households contributed by leaving food donations on their porches the second Saturday of each month for the past 12 months.

• Donations were then loaded onto trucks/vans from local hunger relief organizations for distribution to at-risk families.

Total donations (in pounds) by neighborhood for the period July 2024 – June 2025:

 

Abbey Commons	1,494
Charlotte Park	4,543
Chelsea Green	441
Savannah Square	586
Shirley Park	1,857
Village Walk	1,087
Center Street Condos	180 (4 months)
Total all neighborhoods	10,188

 

Many thanks to all the households who contributed this past year and a special thanks to the volunteers who helped made it an easy process. New Town’s PORCH volunteers who assist on a regular basis include Judy Byrnes, Tricia Byrne, Kathy Casey, Holly Demster, Gayle Duncan, Liz Fones-Wolf, Bob Glenn, Eden Glenn, Lynn Griswold, Paul Griswold, Daisy Henna, Bob Hyatt, Gale Hyatt, Joanne Kramer, Diane Langhorst, Angela Lesnett, Fred Lesnett, Diane Malinowski, Anouk Mapp, Ellen Morgan, John Morgan, Rick Richards, Ellen Weidman, Tim Weidman, and Sommer Wrona.

 

These monthly food drives are conducted under the umbrella of PORCH Communities, a grassroots, all volunteer organization established in 2010 and headquartered in Chapel Hill, NC.  Presently, there are 550 neighborhood chapters in 10 states. PORCH Communities Williamsburg was the first chapter in Virginia. New Town is one of 10 neighborhoods participating in the Williamsburg chapter. 

 

Here's a recent news artlcle about how the Williamsburg area PORCH communities are responding to the food insecurity need and how appreciative the pantries that receive PORCH food are.  https://wydaily.com/latest/local/2025/06/09/new-food-pantry-donation-program-in-williamsburg-makes-it-easy-to-give-back/

 

Monthly food drives are on-going.  Starting this month, New Town will be collecting donations on a rotating basis for Williamsburg House of Mercy, FISH, and Grove Christian Outreach Center.  If you would like more information or would like to volunteer, please contact either Gale Hyatt (ladyhappy73@gmail.com) or Eden Glenn (edenaglenn@gmail.com.)

 

 

 

On June 5th and June 27th, Williamsburg resident  Grace Konar (Konarkowski) and New Town resident Aneta Leska, who has worked at William and Mary's Global Research Institute, spoke about their lives in Poland.  They captivated their New Town audiences with vivid family stories, with Grace at the first talk drawing on her parents and grandparents memories to talk the German invasion of Poland and the Holocaust.  At the second talk, both Grace and Aneta shared stories from their own memories of state surveillance, escape and resistance in postwar Communist Poland.   Family photos and documents from the concentration camp archives provided vivid images, complimenting their stories.

 

This is Part 1 of a series about their talks.

                                                                   

 

On June 5, Grace Konar described  the impact of the war on her mother’s family, who lived in Warsaw. With the German invasion of Poland in 1939, her grandfather, Leopold Grzechni, was mobilized to fight, was captured and then disappeared, possibly having been sent to France as a slave laborer. At the end of the war six years later, he returned by ship to Gdansk, a northern port city, too weak to be sent home to Warsaw.   

 

Her mother, Janina, and her siblings, all young adults, were among the three million Poles deported to Germany as forced laborers to toil on farms and factories. Her grandmother, Stefania, and her youngest child remained in occupied Warsaw. With food in desperately short supply, Stefania told Grace stories of how she engaged in the dangerous practice of smuggling food from the countryside, which carried the penalty of death. Stefania survived 1944 Polish resistance uprising, which the Germans brutally repressed, killing more than 200,000 Poles. Amazingly, Stefania and her children all survived the war and after regaining contact with Leopold settled in Gdansk. Scarred by the violent separation of her family, for years she insisted that all her children, their spouses and grandchildren live together. Grace lived in this large household with seven cousins.

 

Drawing on remembered conversations with her husband’s parents, Balbina Marcinak (maiden name) and Czeslaw  (Iga) Konarkowski, Grace described Balbina's activities with the Polish resistance. In 1943, Balbina was captured, tortured, and transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland where the number 45917 was tattooed on her arm. Iga, a Polish soldier, was captured shortly after Germany invaded and initially held in a POW camp in Germany.  

 

Both ended up in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria, where men and women were separated. Conditions in the camps were horrendous; random beatings and killings, back-breaking work, constant hunger, no coats or gloves during the winter and no other belongings aside from a thin blanket and a bowl or cup. Grace passed around the audience the small metal cup that Iga used at Mauthausen and also spoke of the notorious quarry, where for a short time Inga helped carry giant slabs of granite up 186 steps. (See photos of Mauthausen below.) However, Iga’s fluent German, his skills as a musician and in Grace’s words “his beautiful Gothic German handwriting” mostly protected him from such brutal work.  

 

     

           

In early May 1945, in the midst of the confusion associated with the U.S. Army’s liberation of Mauthausen, Balbina and Iga met on the grounds of the camp and three weeks later married and made their way back to western part of Poland. Balbina gave birth to Michal (Mike) Konarkowski, who at the age of fourteen met Grace at a youth camp. They both went to university in Gdansk, where they subsequently married. Grace and Mike believed that his parents suffered from PTSD, with Iga always nervous and afraid that the Germans would invade again. Balbina was obsessed with hunger and never would throw away any food, even stale bread.

 

   

 

As time for the talk ran out, at the audience’s urging, Grace agreed to finish her story at a second talk later in June.  After the session ended, residents gathered around Grace to ask more questions. Among them was New Town resident Aneta Leska. Although there is a tiny group of Polish immigrants living in Williamsburg, Aneta, who is a generation younger than Grace, had never met her. As fate would have it, Aneta was born in Poland in 1978, the very year that Grace and Mike emigrated, and her family was part of the Polish democracy movement led by Solidarity that ended Communism in 1989. Aneta readily agreed to provide insights from her family’s perspective at the next talk.

 

Look for Part 2 of the families' stories in the August Town Crier.

 

“Grace’s Story:   A Polish Family’s Experience Under Nazi Fascism and Communism, 1939-1978”
                                               
THURSDAY JUNE  5
 
11:00 AM
 
NTRA Meeting Space
 
5118  Center Street

 

Join us this Thursday for a talk by Williamsburg resident Grace Konar.  Grace immigrated from Poland to the United States with her husband, Michael and young son in 1978.  She will share family memories of the impact of World War II on her family, the Magnusenwski’s, and her husband’s family, the Konarkowski’s.  

       

The war shattered Poland and both families.  During the German occupation of Poland, Grace’s mother and several of her siblings were sent as forced laborers to Germany, while Michael’s parents struggled to survive in concentration camps in Poland and Austria.  She will also share her memories of life as a child and young adult in post-war Communist Poland and her family’s immigration experience.   

 

 

Looking for some family fun this summer?  There are a number of free local outdoor events that only need you, your chairs and some friends to make a special evening.  Of course, maybe adding a picnic from local vendors would top the night off.

 

 

The fun continues (weather permitting of course) in Sullivan Square on Wednesday evenings from 5 to 8PM.  Here’s the remaining June concert lineup including a June 18th postponed/makeup concert.

 

 

 

Join your neighbors for a New Town clean-up.

 

Saturday, May 3rd, 9:00 am, meet at the New Town community pool.

 

Trash bags, gloves, and pickers will be provided.  Hope to see you there!

 

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Summer with its high temperatures and humidity is right around the corner. While it’s well known that exposure to high temperatures for long periods of time can be dangerous and possibly life threatening, there are steps we can take to prepare our homes to provide us with cool sanctuaries. Some of these preparatory steps are to:

Do not rely on ceiling or other fans as a primary cooling source. While providing comfort, they do not reduce body temperature. 

May 7 — The Fuzz Band
Food Vendors: Corner Pocket, Curry in a Hurry, The Dog Father, Old City BBQ and Polar Snow

 

May 14 — Two bands: London and WOAH
Food Vendors: Bali Bali, Corner Pocket, Dominion Dogs, Don Chido and Polar Snow

 

May 21 — Wolph
Food Vendors: Corner Pocket, Curry in a Hurry, The Dog Father, Old City BBQ and Polar Snow

 

May 28 — Slapnation
Food Vendors: Bald Guys Pies, Bali Bali, Corner Pocket, Dominion Dogs and Polar Snow

 

June 4 — Wilder Horses
Food Vendors: Bald Guys Pies, Corner Pocket, The Dogfather, Old City BBQ and Polar Snow

 

June 11 — Nashville Nights
Food Vendors: Corner Pocket, Dominion Dogs, Don Chido, Hungry Arrow and Polar Snow

 

Alewerks, Billsburg, Frothy Moon, and the Virginia Beer Company will be onsite with beverages available for purchase. Note that scheduled food trucks and bands are subject to change without notice.

 

All concerts will be from 5-8 p.m., and attendees are invited to bring lawn chairs, picnic baskets and their families.