Happy Pulaski Day

Having grown up in Chicago a block from Pulaski Road, I became familiar with this man at an early age.



That is Kazimierz (Casimir) Pułaski. Born in 1745, he spent much of his 20s fighting the Russians. But he made his way to the American colonies and offered his assistance to the revolutionaries. In 1777 he began fighting for America's independence from England under the command of George Washington. An experienced cavalryman, he helped train troops and started Pulaski's Legion, "one of the few cavalry regiments in the contemporary US army". He died in October of 1779 from a gunshot wound.

Here in Wisconsin, we have the village of Pulaski which is the northeast part of the state near Green Bay. The city in which I was born & raised, Chicago, has the largest ethnically Polish population of any city outside of Poland itself and so Crawford Avenue was renamed Pulaski Road in 1952. Twenty five years later, the state of Illinois officially recognized the first Monday in March as Casimir Pulaski Day.