L. Stanley Zielinski

1928 - 2023

L. Stanley Zielinski, 94, was born August 31,1928 and was raised in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. He passed away August 20, 2023 under hospice care at home in Fairbanks, Alaska, after a brief illness. He is survived by Marge, his wife of 74 years; his eldest and youngest daughters, Tamara Zielinski and Theresa Parker (Sam); his son-in-law David Cosby and David's daughter Stephanie; and his daughter-in-law Kari Zielinski and her son Damion. Stan and Marge's grandchildren are Abigail, David, Steven, Rose and Maile. The great-grandchildren are Edie Rose, Susu, Nabil, Violet, Avery and Fiona.
Stan served in the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, California, after high school, from 1946 to 1948, and again at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, from 1951 to 1953. He was married on September 3,1949 to his childhood friend and sweetheart, Margaret Ann Vargo, in Phoenixville. Stan and Marge had three daughters and a son. Their son, Louis Zielinski, left this life in late 2021, and their middle daughter, Michele Cosby, passed away just three days before her father.
Stan was a lifelong woodworker and ceramicist. An early and lasting memory when just a boy was of "that perfect curl of wood coming off a perfectly sharpened plane" as he watched a neighbor man repairing a broken gate, and knew even then that he wanted to work with wood and fix things. He had early ceramic experiences working in a brickyard in high school, and after his military service attended the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, NY, on the GI bill, where he received his BFA in Ceramics Design, and later his Masters of Fine Arts in Ceramics Design. He taught ceramics and industrial arts at both the high school and university levels, first as a traveling shop teacher for three years in the Adirondacks Mountains of New York; then for twelve years at the New York State College for Teachers in Buffalo, New York; and then, far to the north in Alaska.
The mid-sixties brought great changes for the Zielinski family when Stan went to Kodiak with his friend Ray Tufts, their first time in Alaska, to help with the ongoing recovery efforts after the devastating 1964 earthquake. A year or two later, his family joined Stan in Fairbanks for the summer of 1967, in time to experience the Big Flood and another earthquake.
Do you remember seeing that big orange and white-striped hot air balloon over the Alaska 67 Centennial Exposition (now Pioneer Park) in 1967? Perhaps you even went up in it on a tether ride, or if you were really lucky, you were invited for a cross-country flight? Stan enjoyed piloting the balloon for a number of years, sharing a unique view over the fields and forests and lakes in the Fairbanks area. This was quite the feat in the days before cell-phones and drones, when the ground crew had to have sharp eyes and know the lay of the land to be able to chase and collect the balloon and its passengers when the breeze died down.
He loved aviation. In addition to being a hot air balloonist, Stan had been a private pilot, and a parachutist with over 500 jumps from airplanes. He helped restore the Curtiss JN-4D "Jenny" airplane that hangs in the Fairbanks International Airport.
During the big flood that submerged much of Fairbanks in the summer of 1967, the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus became a refuge for many Fairbanksans who had been forced to seek higher ground. Stan was a resident advisor at one of the dorms at the time, and spent countless hours helping unload the military helicopters bringing in supplies, and assisting the evacuees from town until the Chena River waters receded. Many still have those little P-38 can openers on their key rings from the C-ration meals they sampled that summer.
Around that time, Stan received an offer to work for the University of Alaska Fairbanks Art Department, where he taught ceramics for eighteen years. Colleagues remember his ready smile, his patience and delight in sharing detailed explanations of complicated processes and techniques, and above all his encouragement of those he mentored. His students loved him. While on sabbatical leaves from UAF he studied Japanese ceramics for a year in Japan, and later Korean ceramics for a year in Korea. He also made trips to Taiwan and mainland China to study the rich ceramics history of those areas. He retired in 1988, and dedicated the next 35 years volunteering in various capacities at all levels, from local to international.
Stan was well-regarded as a man of high character, and even if you didn't always agree with him, you knew he was kind and generous, with that smile and a helpful hand, and a work ethic that knew no bounds.
He remained active with the potters of the Fairbanks Potters Guild, having taught many of them during his years as a teacher at UAF. He generously mentored any who asked, and became lifelong friends with them. He had large, strong hands, and yet he could make the smallest most delicate bowl … truly a gifted craftsman. It came about that the efforts of the local potters complemented another important association for Stan, who had seen kids in his youth being made fun of because they couldn't read, and learned that they were so poor that not only were there no books in their homes, they often did not "get to eat that day." He felt that having access to food and education were rights that everyone should have, and that no one, especially children, should ever go hungry. It was natural that his generous spirit would steer him towards seeing how he could help hungry people.
Stan was thus involved with the Fairbanks Community Food Bank almost since its beginning, helping with everything from construction of the current building (including a safe play area for the volunteers' kids), to gathering and sorting the food donations, crushing boxes, building shelves, and being available for anything else that needed doing. Capitalizing on his association with the Potters' Guild, he was instrumental in creating one of the Food Bank's most popular fundraising efforts, bringing the Empty Bowls concept to this community in 1991. For over 30 years now, area potters have donated hundreds of beautiful ceramic bowls, which might be filled with donated soup or chili from area restaurants. Community members come year after year to buy a bowl to benefit the Food Bank, and be reminded that not everyone has enough to eat every night. But they also know that more folks will be nourished going forward because of this community's generosity.
As Stan got older and wrangling clay became more difficult, he expressed his creativity in other ways, taking an interest in glass and being encouraged by his friend Debbie Mathews at Expressions in Glass to experiment with stringers and dishes and pendants and the like. Many of his more recent contributions to Empty Bowls have been in the shape of small square dishes with a silhouette of a bowl, and perhaps a few grains of rice.
His strength and know-how served him in many areas of creativity, as he also figured out how to get "the clearest ice in the world" out of the ponds where it "grew" each winter. He became a regular in helping to harvest the huge blocks of stunningly clear ice with massive chainsaws for Ice Alaska, and then participated in the carving contests as well. He is perhaps best known for the several exquisite chapels he designed and helped build, and within whose glittering walls of colorfully lit ice at least one couple was married.
Stan donated his first pint of blood in 1950, on the day his first daughter was born, as a way to "give back" and thank the hospital. He wouldn't want any big deal made about it, but he has been a regular donor to the Blood Bank of Alaska - Fairbanks for years, and was working on his 33rd gallon at the time of his passing. Do the math - if each pint can save up to three lives, Stan's gift affected hundreds.
In 2010, tragedy struck when the rolling blackouts and electrical surges of that wildfire summer sparked a blaze that destroyed the Zielinski home on Chena Ridge. Stan and Marge were safe but they lost everything, and that was when they truly knew the love of their community. So many people stepped up then to help them get on their feet again. Fairbanks truly cares.
Stan was active in Toastmasters, helping to start several clubs in Alaska, because he felt that the ability to communicate well and effectively was so vital to living in harmony with his fellow human beings. He was a big man, always head and shoulders taller than classmates and colleagues, but never wanted anyone to feel threatened by him; he always just wanted to be a likable guy.
He would lend a hand to any friend or group who mentioned it, including repairing a bird house for a friend, laying in a garden, or rebuilding some of the bridges in Creamers Field.
Stan and Marge loved to travel, and after his retirement they spread that spirit of community also to foreign countries with their journeys on behalf of the International Executive Service Corps (IESC). This group recruited him for his ceramics background to serve as an expert consultant on thirteen different government-sponsored projects, lasting anywhere from a few weeks to several months, in ten countries: Guatemala, Peru, Dominican Republic, Armenia, Poland, Soviet Georgia, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Thailand and Zimbabwe. Friends all over the world remember his smile!
He also continued his love of woodworking, building with passion and diligence dozens of scale models of bridges and buildings. The wooden models are actually fairly large, with a scale of an inch to a foot, and comprise various structures that piqued his interest. There are covered Burr arch bridges like those that spanned the rivers and creeks back in Pennsylvania, and a curious "lamella arch" walkway, based on a type of arch whose most familiar use might be in the Astro Dome in Houston. There are typically Alaskan buildings like a Russian block house and a cache, a windmill from Barbados, and "the world's first example of the reverse gear": the lift mechanism that was used in constructing Brunelleschi's dome in Florence, Italy. Many of these models are set to be auctioned as part of a fundraiser for the local Food Bank, to be announced later, in honor of Stan Zielinski.
Stan had nothing but praise for all the nurses and doctors and certified nurse assistants - everyone! - who aided him in his two brief stays at the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, and later for the nurses and CNAs of the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital Hospice Services, who came to his home and helped him throughout the last month. The Fairbanks Senior Center Meals on Wheels folks checked in on him, and the Fairbanks North Star Borough Bookmobile Library staff brought reading material for his many interests. He lived his life in the spirit of helping out and giving back, so if friends want to, they can remember him by also donating: to the Fairbanks Memorial Hospital or FMH Hospice Services, or the Fairbanks Community Food Bank, or the Fairbanks Senior Center Meals on Wheels Program, or the Blood Bank of Alaska, or FNSB Public Libraries Bookmobile, or to their own favorite charity. Stan did not want a formal funeral service, but condolences for the family may be left online at the Blanchard Family Funeral Home website.