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Edward Jan Paul Pawlowski was
born in Three Rivers, MA on October 19, 1928. His parents were
Stanislaw and Emilia Pawlowski. His father was born in Lithuania and
his mother in Poland. They entered the United States through Ellis
Island. His father worked in a steel mill and his mother in a woolen
factory. Polish was the spoken language of the family.
Ed graduated from Palmer High School in Palmer, MA in
1946. During his high school years he worked daily after school at
various jobs and during the summers in Connecticut tobacco fields.
During WWII he wrote letters to newspaper editors in support of
Poland and the Polish National Government in exile in London. The
letters, some critical of the Soviet Union and some critical of
President Roosevelt’s decisions, became part of a widely followed
debate in western Massachusetts newspapers.
In 1946 Ed enlisted in the Army and served for two
years in Japan. His service coincided with the establishment of the
U.S. Air Force, and Ed ended up an airman. He was awarded the Good
Conduct Medal, WWII Victory Medal and Occupation of Japan Medal. He
entered the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was a member
of Kappa Sigma fraternity while also serving in the Air Force
Reserve as a sergeant.
Ed was determined to attend West Point. He began a
letter-writing campaign seeking support from local newspapers,
clergymen and politicians. Ed received an appointment to West Point
from Representative Philip Philbin and entered in July 1950. He was
in Company G-2. Through his cadet years he was very active: baseball
(numerals), squash (numerals), handball, pistol and Russian Language
clubs, Debate Council and Catholic Chapel Acolyte. Ed was a true and
loyal friend to his classmates, always with a warm smile and ready
to give assistance, especially helping the “goats” in Russian.
A week after graduation Ed married Janice Pikul.
Commissioned in the Infantry, he attended the Basic Infantry Officer
Course at Fort Benning, GA and while there earned Paratrooper Wings
and the Ranger Tab. From 1955 to 1957, he was with the 101st
Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, KY and then with the 502nd
Airborne Battle Group in Munich, Germany, serving as a
Reconnaissance Platoon Leader, trained to jump/infiltrate behind
enemy lines to reconnoiter troop movements.
Recognized for his facility for languages, Ed entered
the Intelligence School in Oberammergau, Germany to study the Czech
language with concentration on the Czechoslovak Intelligence
operation, completing the course first in the class. Ed then served
at the Army Interrogation Center, Oberursel, Germany, interrogating
displaced persons and Polish and Czech defectors from Eastern
Europe, 1958-59.
His two children were born in Germany, and the family
returned stateside. Ed attended the Advanced Infantry Officer Course
at Fort Benning, and in 1960 he was assigned to the Defense Language
Institute, Monterey, CA to study the Russian language.
Ed’s next assignment was to West Point as Assistant
Professor in Russian Language, 1961-64. During the summers he
attended Middlebury College and earned a master of arts degree in
Russian language. He became the first Army officer to win the
National Defense Education Act Modern Foreign Language Fellowship.
He attended Georgetown University, earning a doctorate in Russian
Area Studies. His doctoral dissertation was “Pan Slavism During
WWII.”
Following the Cuban missile crisis, the
Washington-Moscow “hotline” was established and Ed was assigned as a
presidential translator, 1966-68, translating Premier Alexei
Kosygin’s communications with President Lyndon Johnson. Ed’s
additional duty was to edit a daily military command summary on the
war in Vietnam for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Ed attended the Command and General Staff College,
Fort Leavenworth, KS, 1968-69, followed by an assignment to the
Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was Chief of the Soviet and
Warsaw Pact Area Division, staffed with defectors from the USSR,
Poland and East Germany. His division produced a weekly briefing on
Soviet affairs for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and
reviewed the Soviet press and publications on the Soviet Armed
Forces. Ed retired in 1972 with the rank of lieutenant colonel.
In 1974 Ed applied for a position with the Central
Intelligence Agency and, while waiting for his clearance to come
through, worked at the Library of Congress as a researcher and
writer. In 1975 he joined the CIA as Branch Chief, Soviet Area
Division, serving in Washington, 1975-1991, and in Munich, Germany,
1991-1993. He worked on the sensational case of Polish Colonel
Ryszard Kuklinski, who turned over 40,000 pages of classified Warsaw
Pact documents. (See A
Secret Life by
Benjamin Weiser, 2004.) Ed’s activities during his CIA years are
cloaked behind a curtain of secrecy. He was awarded the CIA Medal
for Honorable Service when retiring in 1994.
Ed remained active in retirement. For the next 20
years he volunteered at the White House in the Office of
Presidential Correspondence. A man of deep religious faith, Ed also
volunteered at his Catholic church as an usher and visited shut-ins.
Ed served in leadership roles in several Polish-American cultural
organizations. In 2012 the DC Division of the Polish-American
Congress recognized him with a Special Award for his years of
distinguished service.
Dr. Edward Jan Paul Pawlowski died on February 20,
2014 in Lansdowne, VA. His wife, Janice Pikul Pawlowski, died in
1988 in Vienna, VA. He is survived by his daughter Edleen F.
Bergelt, his son Edward Joseph Pawlowski and four grandchildren. |
