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Through heartbreak and tragedy, Irene Jamrozik has never faltered Faith conquers all
By JoAnn Jones
Nothing can shake the faith of Irene Jamrozik.
Nothing.
Jamrozik has experienced cancer, has taken care of a husband with multiple sclerosis, has cared for a child born with a brain injury, lost her sister and her family in a fire, and has been hospitalized a few times recently.
But throughout all her trials, she has relied on God.
“He’s helped me all my life,” said Jamrozik, who is a 48-year survivor of breast cancer. “Having faith is the most important thing to pull you through terrible tragedy. God hears you.”
Honored in August at the Junior League of Youngstown’s 22nd annual Pink Ribbon Tea, Jamrozik said she was stunned when the speaker, retired surgeon Rashid Abdu, asked her to remain standing when she stood to say she had survived 48 years.
“He asked me, ‘To what do you attribute all this?’ I told him all my prayers and God. Everyone clapped.”
“It was a special afternoon,” she said. “I was the longest-living survivor.”
Reminiscing on how she learned about her cancer, Jamrozik said that in 1968 she was planning for a trip of a lifetime to the Vatican in Rome.
“I was supposed to go on a tour with a group from church,” she said. “I had my [passport] picture taken and everything, but I thought I should go to the doctor for an exam first.”
Her doctor told her she wasn’t going anywhere.
“He told me, ‘You’re going to the hospital. We found a big lump.’”
“They took the breast right off,” she added. “They didn’t even tell me that’s what they were going to do. I couldn’t go to the Vatican. That broke my heart.”
She never had another opportunity to visit the Vatican, she said.
Jamrozik said she had chemotherapy treatments and did her exercises faithfully for several months, adding, “They weren’t that bad.”
“I was trying to accept everything, and it was very, very hard,” she said. “But I also tried to help some of the women who had had mastectomies. God pulled me through all of this. I tell you this with all my heart.”
Jamrozik said she has tried to be an inspiration to others who have had breast cancer.
“There was one woman who used to walk in the park [near her house], and she would stop to see me,” Jamrozik said. “She would always ask me how I was doing because it had been a long time since my cancer. She had had a double mastectomy.”
“She asked me if I thought she could be like me, and I told her, ‘Sure, you can.’”
“I’ve talked to women ever since I had my cancer,” said Jamrozik, who has belonged to Christ the Good Shepherd Parish in Campbell all her life. “I tell them all you have to do is pray to God for help, and he will.”
Jamrozik said it’s important for women to get regular exams, too.
“Doing it yourself is just not the same,” she said.
Hardship has always been part of her life.
The lifelong resident of Campbell said she never finished high school at Campbell Memorial because she went to work to clean homes for people in the area in the 1940s. Her husband, Walter, was a sailor on the USS Birmingham in World War II. After he returned from the war, he developed multiple sclerosis.
“He had to go to the hospital in Butler [Pa.] and would come home on the weekends,” she said. “We fought for two years to get his pension, and during that time, my parents took very good care of us.”
She said her husband was in a wheelchair but was eventually able to go to work for the city of Campbell. However, he died at age 63 in 1987 after suffering a heart attack and a stroke.
“My mother had it hard in her younger days,” said Jamrozik’s son Richard, whose family tries to have a traditional Sunday evening dinner with his mother every week. “She took care of the family, including my brother, who lived to the age of 24.”
“Our son Dennis was born with brain injuries,” Jamrozik said. “He was completely bed-ridden. He would have up to 21 convulsions a day. I took meticulous care of him for 21 years – making sure he had no bed sores, grinding his food — until we put him in an institution at Apple Creek.”
Jamrozik said the family would make the drive to Wayne County every Sunday to see him even though he didn’t know them. Dennis died three years later.
“He was a very good boy,” she said sadly.
Jamrozik has suffered more than her share of heartache, it seems.
“My sister and her husband and four children died in a fire in Campbell,” she said with tears in her eyes. That broke my heart and still does. It was 65 years ago, but I remember it today; Jan. 14 they died.”
Jamrozik, who will be 90 on March 10, has had a few hospital stays recently, but they haven’t kept her from cooking, preparing for Christmas and spending time with her son and his wife and their two children.
“There are a lot of things in life we don’t like, but we have to accept them,” she said. “You’ve got to have a lot of faith and pray day after day. Never miss your prayers.”