A lifesaving reminder of the value of immigration

Stanislaw Musial was born in Morawiany, Poland, in 1936. This week, he passed away in Surprise, Arizona, at the age of 81. His life, though not one that graced the pages of newspapers or magazines the way his baseball-playing namesake often did, was nevertheless an essential part of the fabric of America and the vibrancy of Arizona. Stan’s time in Arizona was also of personal importance to people he never met, such as my brother Joe.

Stan came to the United States in 1980, followed by his wife, Bozena, and two children, Izabela and Piotr, in 1983. Stan left behind in Poland a thriving business but was determined that his children would have economic opportunities in the United States that they would never know in their homeland. The family settled in Chicago, where Stan worked as a repairman and then a homebuilder, eventually saving enough money to invest in land before the Musials moved to Arizona.

Izabela learned English for the first time in grade school in Chicago. She returned to Krakow, where she attended medical school, then completed her residency in Chicago. She later joined the faculty at the University of Arizona medical school, where I met “Dr. Iza.”

In June 2006, my brother was in Tucson, visiting our parents for their 50th anniversary and running a qualifying race for the Boston Marathon. On a Friday night, I received a call from my sister — Joe was in the ER at the University of Arizona-adjacent Kino Community Hospital, and I needed to get there quickly. I entered the ER and found my brother in septic shock, with his vital signs dropping. The ER staff had run every test but could not diagnose the problem. Then Dr. Iza came on shift.

Within a half-hour, she had the chief of surgery for the UA in the room, a urologist speeding across Tucson and a UA pharmacist opening up the lab to give her access to newly approved, lifesaving antibiotics. The source of the sepsis was found and treated, with hours to go. Two years later, Joe completed the Boston Marathon at age 50 with a sub-fourhour time, and I met Stan and told him of the impact his family had on mine.

Lately, when I hear politically charged attacks upon immigration, I don’t engage. Instead, I think of Stanislaw Musial signing his name and listing his family members as they begin their new lives in America. I think of all those people saved or healed by Stan’s daughter, Izabela, and encouraged by her in the process. I think of my brother Joe, now a grandfather retired in Georgia, who, but for that daring decision nearly four decades ago by a Polish man willing to give up everything for the American dream, might not be here today.

And I think of all those people and say nothing. Because to those who would deny others the same opportunities that their own ancestors once embraced, as individual ripples in a pond who are collectively a wave of optimistic, industrious and nation-changing first-generation immigrants such as the Musial family, there is nothing to say. The lives of people such as Stanislaw Musial have already said it all.

Rest easy, Stan. Your race is won.