Sept. 18, 1976: Teen polka promoter Bernie Zolnowski
An unforgettable character at the beginning of his bizarre career. How bizarre did it get? See the footnote.
Sept. 18, 1976
Teen-age Polka Whirlwind
Plans All-Star Musical
THE
One recovers enough to shake Bernie
Zolnowski’s hand and follow this 15½-year-old whirlwind to the room where his
polkamania is headquartered.
There’s a drum set (he’s a pickup
drummer for polka bands), a pair of turntables from which he’s broadcast polkas
(with FCC approval) over Citizens Band Radio Channel 14, half his polka albums
(the other 250 are out on loan) and posters for polka shows.
Right now most of his energy is
focused toward the Polka Blast he’s putting on Sept. 26 in the Sky Room,
On stage from noon to whenever it
stops will be “World Polka King” Li’l Wally, Li’l Richard’s Polish All Stars
from Chicago, Ed Guca’s Polish Canadians from Toronto and one of Bernie’s
favorite Buffalo groups, the Dynatones.
* * *
“I’M JUST gonna die that day,” he
says, rolling his head back in mock despair.
“The trouble is, I gotta go to school
the next morning. Yes, I go to school, unfortunately.”
He’s a sophomore at
And then there’s the record company he
and a friend are putting together.
“I can’t stand rock music,” he says
flatly. “Just polka music. The other kids in school? They won’t admit it openly,
but there’s more than one or two of them in polka bands.”
Polka music, however, is not without
pop music influences these days.
Among Bernie’s records are polka
renditions of Clint Holmes’ “Playground in My Mind” (retitled “Michael Polka”)
and the Creedence Clearwater Revival hit, “Down on the Corner.”
His collection includes one
Polish-made album which, ironically, is not polkas at all, but highly-amplified
rock ‘n roll.
Bernie’s love of polka came from his
grandfather and his parents, but many of Bernie’s
Blazonczyk, a 300-pound
He’s a millionaire, owner of a string
of record companies which market most of the polka records produced in
* * *
BERNIE FLIPS through a disheveled pile
of albums, looking for representative Blazonczyk cuts. “Come on,” he implores
when the objects of his search are slow to show up.
In some ways, Bernie admires
Blazonczyk for his tireless promotion and far-flung enterprises as much as for
his artistry. Because Bernie is quite a promoter himself.
“There isn’t a big name in polka music
I don’t know or that my feelers haven’t touched,” he explains. “I send out
letters and all kinds of things.”
A couple of his letters led to the
proclamations of last Jan. 18 as “Polka Band of the Year Day” by Mayor Makowski
and County Executive Regan, complete with recommendations of best singers,
bands and songs.
The plaudits were inspired, the
proclamations say, by Polish Power Polka Productions, Polish Power Public
Relations and WKBB Radio. Wait a minute, Bernie, isn’t that you?
* * *
HE GRINS and nods his head. Yes, it
is. He’s been doing this kind of thing since he was 11.
First there were the radio broadcasts,
which drew news cameras from the three major Buffalo TV stations.
Then there were various promotions at
school. Next, a Muscular Dystrophy benefit show with polka music in the Como
Park Mall in
“They had the most business that day
they’ve ever had,” he says. “The pizza place ran out of pizza.”
From that came a Polkathon in Como
Park Mall, then a Polka Festival and a Polkastration in the Polish Falcons Club
in
He relishes the thought of how he’ll
be putting Li’l Wally and Li’l Richard, longtime rivals, on the same stage for
the first time.
Indeed, Bernie is a fountain of
point-blank opinion and unvarnished polka scene gossip.
His mother, who’s just arrived home
from work in a red Tops supermarket smock, admonishes him not to say things
like that. Bernie’s 15 th summer has not been an easy one, she implies.
“He just comes in,” she says, “and out
of nowhere he tells me: ‘I’m going to a dance. I’m going to
“Then he comes home in a taxi and
wakes me up and says: ‘Ma, the taxi man wants $8.’ At 2 o’clock in the morning?
I hollered!”
* * * * *
IN THE PHOTO: Bernie Zolnowski,
15-year-old polka entrepreneur.
* * * * *
FOOTNOTE: Bernie’s hustles got him
nationwide attention just before Christmas 1990 when he was a shopping mall
Santa and sued the mall operators for dismissing one of his elves. It wasn’t
his first legal adventure. Here’s the story from The Buffalo News by my late
great colleague Michael Levy:
* * *
Santa is a con man. A bad check artist. A repeat
drunken driver. And he once tried to bilk an order of nuns out of $10,000.
On top of it all, he is a man of the cloth, a
sub-deacon in an obscure religion.
This Santa – aka Bernard J. Zolnowski Jr., 29, of
But there is a lot more to Zolnowski's story than
those newspaper headlines tell. Court records, for instance, show that he:
Passed bad checks in at least three states.
Served time on felony drunken driving charges – only
to demand that his jailors provide him with sacramental wine.
Filed several lawsuits, tying up the
Illegally paid attorney's fees with $10,000 that an
order of nuns loaned him to make bail.
"We could not prosecute him criminally,"
the nuns' attorney said, "because theirs is a monastic order that will not
leave the convent. But we did recover most of the money in a civil case."
Most recently, Zolnowski has threatened a $2 million
lawsuit against the Seneca Mall after the mall ordered the elves from his
Old-Style Music Co. to leave the shopping center, claiming one of them made
suggestive comments to a mall employee.
The threat of the $2 million suit – no legal papers
have been filed – mirrors the amount Zolnowski sought in U.S. District Court in
1988, when he filed six separate suits against the Erie County Correctional
Facility while jailed there.
"When he was with us, he wanted a
24-hour votive candle, a ciborium (goblet-shaped vessel for holding Eucharistic
bread), a pyx (small metal box for carrying the Eucharist), incense, charcoal
and sacramental wine in his cell," said John Moerle, the prison's chief of
security who was named in the federal suits.
"No way was he going to get wine. He was
serving a term for felony drunk driving. He had an admitted problem with
alcohol."
James F. Lagona, a Buffalo Municipal Housing
Authority lawyer who represents Zolnowski in the mall lawsuit, identified
himself as Zolnowski's bishop during the flap over the wine.
Zolnowski first made headlines in 1980, when he was
billed as the youngest polka disc jockey in the
By 1984, he was promoting the "biggest Dyngus
Day celebration in the
That event left a trail of unpaid bills and a bad
taste in many mouths, according to various
"How many enemies does Bernie have?" asked
a former business associate. "You got a phone book?"
The man claims that Zolnowski still owes him $3,000. Zolnowski also has had problems with insurance fraud and bad checks.
Records show he served concurrent
nine-month sentences for grand larceny and insurance fraud while serving time
in the Erie County Correctional Facility from December 1987 until March 1989
for felony drunken driving and driving with a revoked license.
And, somewhere, Zolnowski found religion.
He became a sub-deacon of the Orthodox Catholic
Church, Western Rite. Its members consider themselves Catholics, but not Roman
Catholics, because they do not recognize the primacy of the pope.
The sect is not listed in the 1990 Yearbook of
American and Canadian Religious Faiths.
While in prison, "Bernie would write to his bishop – or his lawyer – who were pretty much the same person," Moerle said. On one occasion, when a letter from his attorney was opened by prison personnel, Zolnowski claimed his rights to privileged communication were violated.
"That letter didn't say James Lagona Esq., or
Bishop James Lagona, so how were our people to know?" Moerle said.
In a letter to prison authorities, Lagona identified
himself as Zolnowski's bishop and said Zolnowski is a sub-deacon in his church.
That position gives Zolnowski the right to preach and dispense consecrated
hosts during
But that apparent conversion occurred sometime after
Zolnowski victimized an order of nuns.
In February 1987,
Zolnowski approached the nuns for help – one of his
relatives is a member of the order – telling the mother superior that his
father would make the bail good when he returned from
When his court-appointed attorney got the criminal
charges reduced and drew probation contingent upon paying a fine and
restitution, Zolnowski told the lawyer to cash the nuns' check and pay his
legal bills.
Zolnowski supplied a letter, authorizing his use of
the "loan" for those purposes. The letter turned out to be a forgery.
"Because the nuns will not leave the convent to
appear in court, we resorted to the civil, rather than criminal courts. We got
most of the money returned a year later," said their attorney.
He asked not to be identified in order to protect
the sisters, who do not want publicity.
In April of that year, Zolnowski opened an account
in the Laurel Bank of
He then apparently returned to
That netted him the grand larceny conviction, for
which he served time here.
And
In prison, Zolnowski began papering the walls with
grievances.
And all of those cases were filed at taxpayer
expense, for Zolnowski did not have an income and filed them as a pauper.
"Bernie sued us for everything," said
attorney David Kane, now in private practice. "He filed at least 20 inmate
grievances, and when those were found without merit, he followed up with
lawsuits.
If there wasn't a pencil in the library, he'd sue
about that."
Kane was in the county attorney's office from August
1988 to February 1990 and "spent pretty much full time on Bernie's
cases," according to County Attorney Patrick NeMoyer.
"I handled between 14 and 19 of them,"
Kane recalled. "All were dismissed as being without merit by every judge
who heard the original motions.
"He is a very bright man who used this to get
back at the county," Kane said. "It was a deliberate attempt to
harass individuals and the state."
Last March, Full Compass Systems of Madison, Wis.,
contacted West Seneca police to help them recover $20,000 worth of audio
equipment in what
"Bernie had identified himself as a reverend
belonging to the Servants of the Good Shepherd in order to get a clergy
discount," said
Zolnowski returned the equipment and the company
chose not to prosecute. But Zolnowski stands by his claim of his religious
affiliation.
"I am a sub-deacon in the Orthodox Catholic
(Western Rite) Church," he said.
And his bishop backed him up, correctional facility
personnel said.
"You want to hear the best?" asked
Frederick Netzell, director of the correctional facility.
"After all those grievances and all those
lawsuits, when he got out, Bernie came back wearing a priest's collar. We had
to let him back for a clerical visit to another inmate."
It didn’t end there. An article in The News in 1995
noted that Bernie had racked up his ninth drunken driving charge since 1986. What’s
more, his time locked up for DWI gave him a new focus.
A year later he was a legal assistant with the New
York Civil Liberties Union western regional office. In 1997, he led paralegals
in a lawsuit against
Even his death on Nov. 13, 1997, came under dispute. First
reports said he suffered a heart attack. But soon West Seneca Police determined
that he died from a head injury. And then a longtime friend named Michael
Jaeckle, a crack addict, was arrested.
It came out during his trial that Jaeckle pushed
Bernie down a flight of stairs when he refused to give him money for drugs
after the two of them had spent a night together drinking heavily. Jaeckle was
sentenced to five years for manslaughter.
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