Colleen Shaughnessy in Ghana, circa 2002

Is immigration a wall or a door? Or could it be first one, then the other? Many impoverished Lithuanian immigrants to the U.S. scrambled over the wall between their old and new lives and never looked back. Others stayed mostly walled off from the American mainstream within their native language and culture.

Due to our relative privilege and our distance from immigration’s urgent traumas, maybe it’s no surprise that the doors our predecessors had to close behind themselves, and the ones they found closed in their faces, for us swing back and forth between two countries, two cultures. For Colleen Shaughnessy, granddaughter of coal-mining Lithuanian immigrant John (Makarauskas) Mack, the door actually swings back and forth between the U.S. and an almost unlimited number of countries and cultures.

Colleen’s mother JoAnn (Mack) Shaughnessy (in red) with brothers (l to r) John, Jr., Jim, and Tom.

Colleen’s grandfather (who went on to found Springfield’s first McDonald’s restaurants) was one of the many who experienced immigration as a one-way passage between his old and new worlds. That makes the cultural plasticity of Colleen’s chosen career all the more remarkable. As an English as a second language (ESL) teacher and teacher trainer, Colleen has become something of a “professional” immigrant, shipping out to Africa, Asia, and South America—often on what would seem to us pretty short notice.

Whereas someone transplanted by rank necessity to the lowest social rungs of another country might find a wall—a people and language absolutely foreign–Colleen, visiting by choice as a friend and teacher, finds a door to cross-cultural contact, understanding–and ultimately, belonging.

Colleen and her mom JoAnn

The youngest of seven children of JoAnn (Mack) Shaughnessy, Colleen attended St. Mary’s Grade School in New Berlin, and then graduated from St. Cabrini and Ursuline Academy. Her love affair with learning—and teaching—around the world began at Monmouth College when she spent two spring breaks volunteering on a Native American reservation in South Dakota.

Those experiences inspired her to spend a study-abroad semester in Zimbabwe during her junior year. Colleen recalls, “I had never been on a plane before, so my first plane trip, ever, was from Springfield to Chicago to London to Harare (the capital of Zimbabwe).”

After graduating with a bachelor’s in biology, Colleen then joined the Peace Corps and served for two years as a teacher of high school science in Wulugu, Ghana. After her return to the U.S., she ended up volunteering with an organization that taught ESL. She recalls, “It was sort of love at first sight. I stood in front of my first class and thought: ‘This! This is what I should do!’ ”

from left: Colleen, Terry, Pat, Mike, and Tim Shaughnessy, Deb (Shaughnessy) Blazis, and Pam (Shaughnessy) Becker

Since earning her master’s degree in ESL, Colleen has worked in Bolivia, South Africa, Kyrgyzstan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She has also worked with Somali Bantu refugees in the U.S., and taught inside U.S. prisons. Basically, when Colleen isn’t evaluating English language programs abroad for the U.S. State Department or teaching teachers in other countries, she revels in teaching English in the U.S. to international students and “pre-literate” adults: people who do not yet know how to read or write in their own tongue.

Colleen in action with South African colleagues

When we touched base last month, 30-something Colleen was living in Michigan and working to complete her Ph.D. in adult education at Penn State University. Then suddenly, she was off to Africa again (South Africa, to be exact). Below, she describes her deep affection for the people of Ghana and her experiences there:

“While my technical job in the Peace Corps was to teach high school science in a village in northern Ghana called Wulugu, the real work I did was building and maintaining relationships. I left Ghana over 10 years ago, but in the last week I have communicated with 4 Ghanaians from my time there. My host-family became my family. My village friends, mostly older women, became my aunts, mothers, and grandmothers. My colleagues became my brothers; my students, my nieces and nephews. More importantly, they allowed me into their lives and let me be their niece, daughter, granddaughter, sister, and aunt.

The grace with which the Ghanaians I came to know allowed me into their lives and hearts has been their greatest lesson — and a skill I have developed in my post-Peace Corps professional life. Ghanaians offer a sincere compliment with the phrase: “You are free,” which encapsulates an approach to life and others that is open-hearted and friendly. Thus, in Ghana, I learned to laugh, cry, and live with more of my being.”

Colleen

Reading this, I think again of our immigrant forbearers, who due to the marginality of their existence, were forced to totally exchange their existing way of being for a new one–or hold out against the new way at all costs. How difficult were their burdens and how few their opportunities. And how wonderful that now finally, we, their descendants, enjoy lives of such high potential that culture and language need no longer limit us, and we can embrace the world.

Passersby on East Cook St. may not know that today’s Kings Court Apartments, operated by an arm of Abundant Faith Christian Center, were once part of a Blazis (Blazavich) family-owned hospitality complex that, in the heyday of old Route 66, welcomed thousands of vacationers, salesmen and legislators to Springfield.

The complex was built from nothing by Lithuanian immigrant and Blazis family matriarch Mary (Chunis) Blazis (later Stulzinski) and her American-born general contractor son William Blazis, Jr., with the help of her other grown children: Enoch, Ann Ackerman, Helen Summers and Mary Yazell. It included the “ultra-modern,” 48 one- and two-bedroom-unit Magnolia Court motel (named for magnolias planted on the property)–and the Muncheonette Diner. A new family home on nearby White City Boulevard was also part of the ambitious Blazis family-business complex in the 2600 block of East Cook St., the main artery connecting Route 66 to the Lincoln sites downtown.

Part of Magnolia Court motel complex, 1957

I have a personal connection to this story. In the 1950s, my father worked part-time on the construction of another Blazis family real estate development: the Regency Court duplex apartments, also on East Cook. Even more personally, I have a childhood memory from 1963 or ’64 of playing with two little daughters of William, Jr. and Irene (Pietrzak) Blazis. Even though I only met her once and never knew her last name, I never forgot sweet, little Mary Agnes Blazis (who died of the complications of cerebral palsy in 1965), who was so lovingly taken outside by her able-bodied sister Barbara to play on a swing set with me and my sister Terry. Only this weekend did I connect the dots between my long-ago memory of Mary Agnes and the family she belonged to.

Irene and William (Bill) Blazis, 1958

Lithuanian immigrants William, Sr. and Mary (Chunis) Blazis (born about 1884) moved to Springfield from the coal town of Dubois, Penn., in the early 1930s to join Mary’s brother Julius Chunis, who was already working in the mines here. They brought their five children with them to settle in a large home on the corner of 18th and Jackson Streets. Mary worked to support her family as a housekeeper at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. (Interestingly, the obituary of son Enoch lists the Blazis surname as Blozavich, indicating that it may have been Americanized by William, Sr.)

William, Jr. in front of the E. Cook St. family home built from the bricks and stones of the old White City Amusement Park

After sons William, Jr. and Enoch returned from serving in World War II, Mary and her children saw new opportunity in booming family vacation travel on Route 66 (now Dirksen Parkway), along with the advent of the motor inn or motel. With their drive and family teamwork, the Blazis clan made their American dream a reality only one generation after arriving on U.S. shores with nothing but their ability to work hard and take risk.

William, Jr. in World War II Army uniform

On the construction project for the Magnolia and the Muncheonette, William, Jr. was his mother Mary’s right hand, taking care of all the construction hiring, ordering, supervising, and even stepping in help perform the manual labor. Matriarch Mary held the family purse strings, taking a second loan from Illinois National Bank to cover construction bills and payroll. Mary’s daughters Helen, Ann and Mary helped with all the bookkeeping and chores like keeping work crews fed. Once the Magnolia Court motel and Muncheonette diner opened, William, Jr. and his brother managed the motel (Bill personally did all the maintenance) and sisters Helen Summers and Mary (and husband) Fed Yazell managed the diner (with trained butcher Bill Blazis cutting a hindquarter of meat for the diner once a week.) Family members only took salaries while their mother kept ownership of the properties (and the bank loan).

Then disaster struck: William, Jr. died of lung cancer in 1967. Enoch continued managing the complex for awhile, but in 1972, with Howard Johnsons and Holiday Inns eating the Magnolia Court’s business, matriarch Mary sold the family’s motel, diner and home complex to the Kresse family of Riverton. After a long slide into dilapidation and crime, in 1998, the old motel was rehabbed down to the bricks into the 1 and 3-bedroom Kings Court Apartments in a $1.5 million project.

State Journal-Register photo of Kings Court rehab project, 1998

While it’s sad to think of a family’s dream fading into oblivion, the Blazis immigrant achievement lives on in memory. In addition, Mary Blazis and her son, William, Jr. sponsored two Lithuanian DP families after World War II: Dr. Joseph Petrakus with his wife and two children, and Walter and Tamara Danelevich and their daughter. Dr. Petrakus, under the supervision of Dr. Master, became the first foreign doctor to intern at Memorial Hospital, which paved the way for others, such as Dr. Chatara from Soviet Georgia.

The Blazis family also were proud members of St. Vincent de Paul Lithuanian Catholic Church, where William, Jr. sang in the choir, where he married Polish DP Irene in 1954, and all six of Bill and Irene’s children (Mary Agnes, Barbara, twins Fred and John, Vincent and Enoch) were baptized. When Mary Agnes died of pneumonia in 1965, followed by her father in 1967, both had memorial masses at the church.

Irene Blazis holding daughter Barbara, William, Jr. holding Mary Agnes, and matriarch Mary (Chunis) Blazis (Stulzinski) in center. 1958

Lithuanian immigrant Mary Blazis Stulzinski passed away in June 1976 at the age of almost 92.

As a footnote, the White City Tavern and the nearby home the Blazises sold to Orlandini Distributors was used for the Orlandini family’s offices. A large parcel known as the White City property was developed into single-family homes, with a portion sold to the Springfield School District for the Washington Middle School and to the Springfield Park District for Jaycees Park.

White City Amusement Park, circa 1920. The park included a roller coaster and dance hall, & was modeled after Coney Island.