‘It’s always been good times’

Sandy canceled the first time her friend tried to set her up with Stan — and she was heavily leaning that way again.

“Oh, for God’s sake why don’t you just go out with him?” asked her exasperated mother on a Saturday night in 1970. “You’re not going to marry him.”

Within hours of meeting Stan, Sandy had to disagree. “I knew right away that I would be getting married to him,” she said. “I just knew it in my heart.”

Stan was charmed by Sandy’s brown and green eyes. After that first night with their friends at The Shack, he called her every day. Their second date — just the two of them — was a movie: Hello, Dolly!

“It took me most of the film to reach over and hold her hand, I was so scared,” said Stan, then a 27-year-old English teacher at Father Judge High School. “I’m happy to say I missed most of the movie because I was just so happy to be there with her.”

Not even a month after they met, Sandy, then 21 and a legal secretary at Nazareth Hospital, invited Stan to her parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. A friend who owned a store on Jewelers Row gave Stan a sweetheart deal on the string of pearls he gave to Sandy’s mother, Kathryn.

The young people wanted to be alone after dinner. It was a beautiful evening, warm for November. They walked, holding hands, past the display windows of Frankford Avenue shops closed for the holiday. Sandy came to a sudden stop at Lloyd’s Furniture and gazed at the display with wonder. Stan’s interest in furniture was feigned at first, then Sandy spoke words he will never forget:

“This is an Italian provincial bedroom suite,” she said, in a voice just above a whisper. “That’s what I want for our bedroom.”

Sandy knew Stan really liked her, but she also knew he was a little nervous. “I wanted to nudge him along,” she said.

“I love her nudges,” said Stan.

He went back to his jeweler friend, who put him in touch with a diamond broker. When Stan asked Sandy’s father for his blessing, Samuel put on a tough-guy act. “He said I better do this, and better not do that, and made a fist to show me how powerful he was,” remembers Stan. “Then he started laughing and said, ‘Of course! If that’s what Sandy wants.’ ”

It sure was.

On Valentine’s Day, Stan drove from the Port Richmond home where he lived with parents, Rosalie and Stanislaus, to Sandy’s house in Frankford. He knelt on the floor, held out the open ring box, and asked her if she would.

“I said yes, and then we went out to dinner — at The Shack,” Sandy said.

They wed in a Catholic ceremony on Sept. 4, 1971, at Mater Dolorosa Church. The ceremony was performed by their friend the Rev. Edward Rauch, who also taught at Father Judge.

The reception was held, of course, at The Shack. A band played hits of the day. Sandy tossed her bouquet and Stan tossed her garter, and it all went by so fast. “We had 200 guests, and we went from table to table thanking people,” said Sandy. “I don’t think I ate anything.”

They honeymooned for five days in St. Thomas.

Sandy, now 72, and Stan, now 78, lived in a Mayfair apartment until they found the three-bedroom Oxford Circle house that was home for the couple and their six sons for 32 years. Steven, Joseph, Thomas, Michael, David, and Brian showed up one by one, two years apart, for more than a decade.

When Sandy and Stan told the first five that the sixth was coming, their second eldest had a question: Where would they put another kid? “Joey, just move over,” Sandy told him.

Each of the two kids’ rooms had bunk beds plus a twin. In the heat of summer, all of them crowded into their parents’ room — the only spot with air-conditioning. “They were everywhere!” Stan says with a laugh. “Mostly on the floor, but the littlest one at the time would always climb up on our bed.”

Sandy left the workforce to stay home with their young children, but when Brian went to kindergarten, she returned to work, becoming tuition manager at St. Martin of Tours.

Raising six boys “was chaos, but it was fun,” said Sandy. “We couldn’t afford to do much of anything with six kids, but we would go to the hot dog stand at the mall. We brought soda with us, because soda was the most expensive thing, and they would all get a hot dog.”

When school sports were in season, it was often divide and conquer, with Sandy going to one event and Stan another.

Six kids have a lot of friends, and they were all welcome, too. Sleepovers meant boys in sleeping bags scattered everywhere.

The biggest annual family event was a summer week in Wildwood. Stan would get up early and buy sea shells — a giant bag for $1 — then bury caches of them in the sand. He made a show of assessing wind direction and sun position for the benefit of his boys. “This is a good spot for shells,” he would proclaim. The gang was well into adulthood when they found out Stan had planted the shells.

He retired from Father Judge after 43 years, then went to seminary and was ordained a deacon. He served in this volunteer role at St. Martin of Tours and Holy Redeemer Hospital, including St. Joseph’s Manor, until he retired from active service in 2017. The couple had previously served many volunteer roles in their church, including teaching pre-Cana classes to young couples about to marry.

In recent years, Stan has had some health issues and Sandy has spent much of her time helping him. “Now, my service is to pray,” said Stan.

He requires dialysis three days a week. Sandy “wakes up at 4:30 in the morning so she can help me get dressed,” he said. “It’s exactly what we had promised to do — for better, for worse, for sickness and in health, in good times and bad. Thank God, it’s always been good times. It hasn’t always been healthy, but it’s always good.”

The couple now lives in Fox Chase with their son, Brian, who bought his parents’ home so that Sandy could retire and assist Stan. Their sons also help take their father where he needs to go. All of them live close by, with Joe — now known to many as Father Joe — the farthest away in Drexel Hill.

Proximity means lots of family time with the sons and their spouses, Nicole, Aricelma, and Michelle, and 10 grandchildren: Halley, David, Kendal, Victoria, Cecelia, Emily, Joshua, Brayden, Matthew, and Abigail. The whole lot will crowd into the Zaleski home for an Easter dinner of kielbasa, sauerkraut, potatoes, coleslaw, stuffing, and green beans and then — even better — a Monday brunch with the same foods plus the eggs from their Easter baskets.

Some of those grandchildren will stay overnight on Easter Sunday. If there’s thunder, or just to be silly, the little ones will do what their fathers used to and climb onto Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop’s big old bed — the same one their grandparents saw in a Frankford Avenue store window on Thanksgiving night in 1970.

“Sandy, as usual, was right,” said Stan. “I love Italian provincial.”