Frank Lasky
Frank Lasky was born Frank Waclawski on 20 July 1909 in New Jersey, a son of Joseph Waclawski and his second wife Helen Baclawska, Polish immigrants from the part of Poland then ruled by Russia. His Social Security file carries the name Frank Wachowski Lasky. A compiled genealogy gives his full name as Frank Theodore Lasky and his birthplace as Jersey City.
He was a baby when the census taker came in April 1910. The family was then living in the Seventeenth Ward of Cleveland, Ohio. His father Joseph, 32, and his mother Helen, 26, had both been born in Russian Poland. Frank, entered as Frances, aged eight months, was the youngest of five children. His mother had borne two of them, Frank and his brother Czeslaw; the three eldest were his father's children by an earlier marriage. His brothers Joseph, 10, and Alex, 7, had been born in Connecticut. His sister Casimira, 6, his brother Czeslaw, 1, and Frank himself had been born in New Jersey. The family had moved from Connecticut to New Jersey to Ohio inside ten years.
By 1920 they were back in Jersey City, in the Second Ward. Frank, again written Frances and now 11, was at school. Nine children were at home: Joseph, 19, a brakeman on the Erie Railroad; Alek, 18, a chauffeur for a private family; Kazimiera, 16, who worked in a laundry; Czeslaw, 12; Frank, 11; Alexandra, 10; Zygmunt, 7; John, 3; and Helena, 1. Everyone in the family gave Polish as their mother tongue. The census taker spelled the surname Wacloski.
In April 1930 Frank was 20 and still at home at 472 Henderson Street in Jersey City, selling goods from a street cart. His father Joseph was an ash man at a power house, his brother Charles a railroad brakeman, his sisters Kathrine and Alice a waitress and a can-factory solderer.
Frank and several of his brothers later took the name Lasky or Laski, which is very probably the second half of Waclawski. A compiled genealogy names a Charles W. Laski, born about 1909 and died at Lyndhurst, New Jersey, in 1983, as another son of Joseph and Helen.
In 1932 Frank married Eva Kukolax, a Jersey City girl whose parents had come from Austria and spoke Russian at home. Their first child, Frank Charles, was born on 1 January 1933.
In 1940 Frank, 30, was living in Jersey City's Second Ward, at the same address as in 1935, with Evelyn, 26, and their children Frank, 7, William, 6, Daniel, 4, and Joan, 2. By April 1950 the family was in the house at number 4 on its street in Jersey City, and Frank, 41, was a truck driver. He and Eva then had six children at home: Frank Jr., 17, William J., 16, Daniel C., 14, Joan, 11, Raymond, 8, and Diane, 4. Their seventh child, Anthony, was born in Jersey City in 1951. In the 1950 census Frank said both his parents were born in Poland.
Frank Lasky died in Jersey City on 26 September 1954, aged 45. His youngest son was about three. Eva filed with Social Security in November 1954, two months after his death.
He was very probably the Frank Laski buried on 30 September 1954, four days after his death, in Holy Cross Cemetery at North Arlington, section 53, grave 1013. No other Frank Laski or Lasky was buried in the Catholic cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Newark that year. His mother Helen had been buried at Holy Cross four years earlier.
Sources
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Researched October 2026. Cite: Heirology, "Frank Lasky (1909-1954)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/frank-lasky-1909-1954-21b6ee.