In Memory of Janie M. Polachek

1905-1991

Reminiscences by Ken Morgan

Victor and Lucille Polachek are my aunt and uncle. Vic’s father and mother divorced when he was quite young, and then much later his father, Armond, married Janie. I met her while she was visiting my aunt and uncle in Chicago some years after Armond died. I was then in high school. A rapport was immediately established, and she became another grandmother to me until she died.

We wrote often while I was in college, and once when I was in graduate school at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, she drove alone from her home in Indianapolis through the Virginia mountains to visit me. When I was teaching in Charlotte, North Carolina, I would stop to visit her at the trailer park where she lived in Indianapolis every time I went home to Chicago. She had a well-deserved reputation in our family for making the best homemade rolls, and she would always have a batch ready for me when I arrived.

On the right is a picture of Janie just before leaving for the church when Carol and I were married. She is escorted by Vic and Lucille’s son, Paul, on the way to the wedding. Paul was one of the groomsmen.

Janie was a wonderful Christian woman and wife. She and Armond had been married only nine years when he died, but the entire family knew there was something very special about that marriage. Janie once told me that they had never had a quarrel, and she was not speaking superficially. It was a profound assessment of the relationship they had in the Lord.

Although not blessed with a college education, what talents Janie had, she used them to the best of her ability for the Lord she loved. She believed that the Lord had called her to the specific ministry of writing tracts. If my collection is complete, she wrote 26 tracks and despite very humble means, paid to have them printed.

In one of her tracts, Janie included this paragraph:

I wish to insert in this tract the consecration I made in 1962. It reads as follows:

Lay any burden upon me,
only sustain me.
Send me anywhere,
only go with me.
Sever any tie,
but that which binds me to Thy Service
and to Thy Heart.

Janie is now with the Lord. In honor of her life’s work for her Lord, we have posted four of her tracts here. It is my prayer that they will bless you as much as her life and friendship has blessed me.

Janie with My Cousin Paul Polachek in Chicago (1973)

Tracts by Janie

  • No Return
  • Paid in Full
  • Without Excuse
  • Wrong Information