Ed Jablonski Rose from Bay City Polish Newspaper Family to Famed Author
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A young Ed Jablonski (right) displays the pensive look of a creative mind that evolved into one of America's foremost authors.
One of Bay City's most amazing success stories ended February 10, 2004 in New York City.
It was on that date that 81 year old Edward Jablonski died at a hospital in Manhattan of heart failure.
The amazing part comes because Jablonski's career began as a teenager with a fan letter to composer George Gershwin that evolved into a lifelong friendship.
Besides his more than two dozen books on music, aerial warfare and the Middle East, Jablonski encouraged a young pianist from Bay City, Kevin Cole, whom he introduced to Gershwin's music and who today is considered the greatest living interpreter of Gershwin music.
Jablonski sprang from a family tradition of Polish language newspaper publishing in Bay City and became a world-renowned author. He was born here in 1922 and doubtless absorbed the spirit of journalism from his family.
Many Jablonski family members, including his father, William (Boleslaw) Jablonski, worked for the Sztandar Polski (Polish Standard) Publishing Co. at 1018 S. Madison Ave. Publisher was Ignatius W. Kopec and Stanley Jablonski was manager in 1929. Another relative, Paul F. Jablonski, was telegraph editor of The Bay City Times until his death in 1960.
Besides writing, two other boyhood preoccupations shaped his life. As a boy, Jablonski became fascinated with music and corresponded with famed composer George Gershwin, little knowing that he later would become his biographer. He also "hung around the airport and watched the planes," presumably at James Clements Airport near the South End of Bay City where he grew up.
Ed Jablonski was graduated from Central High School in 1941 and spent several years in the U.S. Army during World War II. He earned a Silver Star with the artillery in New Guinea. He returned to Bay City after the war and moved to New York in 1948 after graduating from Bay City Junior College as a "pre-journalism" major and "made it" for 50 years as a freelance writerin the "Big Apple."
While doing promotional work for the New York chapter of the March of Dimes, Jablonski began writing record reviews for magazines and liner notes for record albums.
Jablonski was a founder of Walden Records in 1949 and was graduated from the New School for Social Research in 1950. He also studied anthropology at the Columbia University Graduate School.
Jablonski began his freelance writing career with an article on Bela Bartok, exiled Hungarian composer, for a literary magazine, "Twelfth Street." He also wrote for Saturday Review, Stereo Review and American Record Guide.
He co-authored "The Gershwin Years" with Lawrence D. Stewart in 1958, chronicling the Gershwin brothers' contributions to the "Jazz Age" of American music.
Jablonski wrote "Harold Arlen: Happy With the Blues," published by Doubleday in 1961, and contributed to Isaac Goldberg's "Tin Pan Alley: A Chronicle of American Popular Music."
"Flying Fortress: The Illustrated Biographies of the B-17s and the Men Who Flew Them" was next (Doubleday, 1965), followed by "Ladybirds: Women in Aviation" (Hawthorn, 1968).
"Warrior With Wings" (Bobbs-Merrill, 1968) and "Seawings," (Doubleday, 1972) were next by Jablonski the author. He teamed with famed broadcaster Lowell Thomas on a biography of Gen. James H. Doolittle (Doubleday, 1976). His four-volume series "Airwar" and two pictorial histories of World Wars I and II were publishedby Doubleday in the 1970s.
His work on army and air force bombers won him recognition from veterans as honorary member of the 100th Bob Group. A little-known work on airwar was "Double-Strike: The Epic Air Raids on Regensburg-Schweinfurt, August 17, 1943."
He also compiled "The Encyclopedia of American Music" in 1981 and "A Pictorial History of the Middle East" for Doubleday in 1984. "Gershwin Remembered," "Harold Arlen: Rhythm, Rainbows and Blues," "Man With Wings: APictorial History of Aviation," were among other works.
In his last book, "Irving Berlin, American Troubadour," (Henry Holt, 1999) Jablonski explains how Berlin became the living personification of the American musical theater.
Just before his death he was working on a comprehensive history of American popular music to be entitled "Masters of American Song."
Jablonski and his wife, fashion magazine writer Edith Garson Jablonski, had three children, son David, of Chicago, and two daughters, Carla Jablonski of Manhattan and Emily J. Ahlberg of Audubon, Pennsylvania. Also surviving are a sister, Mary Birdsall of Versailles, Kentucky, and two grandchildren. Mrs. Jablonski died in 1979.
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