Polish American Cultural Institute Of Minnesota

Established 1983

Irene Rose Jaworski Colston

Born in northeast Minneapolis and happily spent her early childhood living in her grandparents house on 19th Avenue N.E. along with her parents, her grandparents and aunts and uncles. She grew up with all the traditional Polish customs and the Polish language. Her maternal grandparents and her aunts and uncles emigrated to the U.S. in 1907 from a village in the Kujawy region in Poland.
 
She has always been proud of her Polish heritage and has worked on finding relatives in Poland through the Polish Genealogical Society of Minnesota and a geneologist in Warsaw, Poland. This has led to several trips to Poland and her feeling of truly "being home".
 
Her participation in Polish activities has been numerous, from working at the Polish food booth at the Festival of Nations to educating people about PACIM and why they should join the organization, to making bigos, the traditional dish of Poland to name a few.
 
She was honored to be asked to sit on the board of PACIM. She deems it a true privilage to be able to be one of the members to guide the organization in
 always a positive direction and is anxious to introduce new ideas that will benefit the entire organization such as the POLISH ARTIST EXCHANGE PROGRAM with Warsaw that will take place in September 2008.
 
PACIM will grow. They have a wonderful mix of the old traditions with the new traditions now that more young Poles have joined. Each group respects the others traditions and participates in them and this is one of the strong links that will allow PACIM to continue as a very important and vital organization.
 
After highschool, Irene attended the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. to study languages for a year. She also was employed in the Bell Telephone System in Minneapolis  in 1952 and was mentored in  her career as she rose through the ranks of the telecommunications business to developing and implementing  a program for the Federal government that provided telephone and wire communications for both Vice Presidents Humphrey and Mondale, the Secret Service, White House Communications Agency, visiting heads of state worldwide and both the national press and the foreign press.She travelled the 5 state area and personally supervised each installation. In 1981 she accepted an offer from AT&T in San Francisco to be a Systems Manager for the company in San Francisco and San Jose, CA. She retired from AT&T in April 1985 with 33 years of service. Irene started her photography career after her retirement and after numerous awards and years of photo exhibitions both in California and in Minnesota,Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin she had added writing to her resume and is working on a book of poetry.
 
From 1953 to 1957 she was the President of the Minneapolis Junior League of Catholic Women
 
From 1974 to 1978 she was asked to create a women's auxiliary for the Chidren's Heart Fund at the University of Minnesota and was the Chairperson during that time raising funds for children from impoverished countries so that they could have the  heart surgery that would save their lives.
 
Currently, she is on the board of Directors and is Chairperson of Arts and Culture at PACIM
  
LIKES: Travel, cooking, foreign films,  real blues music,walking around the lakes  and ART!