David Komarnicki
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Born in Chester, Pennsylvania, in the early days of the Great Depression, David came of age during World War II while four of his older brothers and a brother-in-law were fighting overseas for their country. He was number eight in a line-up of ten kids born to Ukrainian immigrants Joseph and Anna.
After graduating from high school, David attended Philadelphia Bible College, the Kings College, and Reformed Episcopal Seminary. In 1958 he moved out to Southern California, where he earned a teaching credential from Long Beach State and became a public schoolteacher in the Watts area of South Los Angeles. He later transitioned to the corporate world, eventually founding a securities training company, where he prepared personnel for examinations given by the various exchanges and regulatory bodies. In 1986 David sold his school to the Longman Financial Group and returned to Pennsylvania with his family. There he pursued various occupations, including the teaching of memoir writing for a few semesters at Neumann University. Since the return to Pennsylvania, David has sought to reconnect with the elusive ghosts of his childhood, and the book FIVE STARS IN THE WINDOW is the result of rendezvousing with some of them. |
Five Stars in the Window: Growing Up during World War Two
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Memoir
The city of Chester, Pennsylvania, is pulsing with activity during World War Two, grinding out ships, planes, and helicopters at record rates to fuel the fight against Hitler and Hirohito. Its winding streets are a patchwork quilt of ethnic neighborhoods, and families are displaying stars in their windows to show that they have sons or fathers off serving their country. There are five stars in the window of young David’s house, representing four of his seven brothers and the husband of one of his two sisters. While he prays daily for their safe return, David peddles newspapers to the shift-workers at the war plants, dodges the local traffic cop who tries to interfere with his shoeshine business, hookies school to hear Louis Armstrong in Philadelphia, dazzles his classmates with his yo-yo prowess, downs the pierogi and halupki his Ukrainian-born mother dishes up by the dozens, and does his best to negotiate adolescence on the home front. 
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