Kraków 2024-12-31
In memory of Mr. Teofil Lenartowicz.
At the age of 96, on December 20, 2024, Mr. Teofil Lenartowicz passed away to the Blue Squadron. Beloved husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend and colleague. Mass for the deceased – December 27, 2024, at 11:00, in the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Częstochowa at 11 Kochanowskiego Street in Wrocław. Burial – January 4, 2025, at 10:30, in the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Przecław. Rosary for Mr. Teofil at 10:00.
Some memories.
Poland is a country with a very rich history of aviation. Many successful aircraft structures have been created here, often in series production. Many people participated in building the Polish Aviation Industry. We had and still have talented pilots, designers, engineers, technicians, mechanics and workers. Thousands of people have linked their lives with aviation. This is how our wonderful history was born and continues. But human memory is fleeting. Fortunately, there are people who, in various ways, try to protect facts from being forgotten.
One of them was Mr. Teofil Lenartowicz.
“20 years ago I thought about my life and came to the conclusion that it is worth writing it all down. Childhood, the hardships of life under occupation, hard work. The period before the war, after liberation. Communism. Many foreign stays in exotic countries. Work on foreign and domestic delegations. All this is worth writing down,” Mr. Teofil once said.
But an incentive was needed. At that time, Mr. Teofil, lying in a hospital bed, received an extraordinary book from a nurse who was collecting voluntary donations for the renovation of the hospital bathroom. The book contained 250 blank, unwritten pages with a beautiful message. And it began. – “The patients in the neighboring beds were sleeping, and I was writing. Soon, 250 pages of the book were written in small letters.” – said Mr. Teofil.
Mr. Teofil said about himself – “I have never been a pilot, and even less a designer.”
However, Mr. Teofil was associated with Polish Aviation throughout his professional life, including the years of his well-deserved retirement. First as an employee of PZL WSK Mielec, and then with agricultural aviation. He was an active member of the “Loteczka” Club in Wrocław and a member of the Silesian Genealogical Society. Co-organizer of many events and meetings related to aviation. He is the author of the books: “100 years of Mielec’s adventure with aviation” and “Notatnik syberyjskiego zeslańca”. Mr. Teofil Lenartowicz was a Mielec resident through and through. He was a Pole and a true patriot. His family has been settled in the Mielec Land for several generations. Mr. Teofil linked his professional life with aviation at WSK PZL Mielec, primarily as a mechanic. He knew Mielec’s planes inside and out, as their builder and serviceman. He was one of the few specialists in radar stations installed in PZL Lim-5 P planes. He spent many years on foreign contracts, in those countries where Mielec’s planes ended up.
Mr. Teofil tried to perpetuate the over 100-year history of Mielec in various ways. Mr. Teofil was an advocate of erecting a monument to the Działowski brothers in Mielec, as local heroes. He wrote – “My wish is to change the attitude in this direction and hence I would like to tell you how the Mielec society became enchanted with aviation many years before the construction of PZL Mielec.”
Since 2011, Mr. Teofil has been running a blog “My life and planes”, with the subtitle “What a mechanic knows about aviation”. There are already over 200 articles written by Mr. Teofil Lenartowicz there.
Mr. Teofil was a very warm, sociable person and willing to talk. He gave facts and events in which he participated with extraordinary precision. He had a well-developed judgment on many issues and was able to defend it effectively by providing relevant facts. He defended the ethos of the Polish worker, giving a beautiful example of the quality of workmanship of Lim airframes, and MiG-15s made in CCCP and China. “It was enough to approach the airframe and run your hand over it. On Polish airframes, the rivets were made flat, so your hand could not feel them. In the airframes of others, the hand caught on the heads of the convex rivets.”
Mr. Teofil! I thank God that I got to know you.
Eternal rest grant him, O Lord!
Karol Placha Hetman