Born in Passaic, New Jersey, on the eve of the Great Depression in 1929 and only two years after his parents Jan and Aniela arrived from Poland, beginning at a young age Thaddeus V. Gromada took his ethnic heritage very seriously. The experience of growing up in a family with recent memories of Poland and speaking Polish at home, coupled with the trauma of the German invasion of Poland when he was only ten years old, solidified a lifelong interest in and promotion of his Góral heritage and the study of Polish history and culture.Bilingual from his early youth, skills he used to help interpret for his family the terrible radio news about the outbreak of war in 1939, he was likewise involved in local Polish activities including performing in his family's Highlander dance group. While honing his language skills and further developing an interest in history under the tutelage of the Felician Sisters in St. Joseph's Parochial School, one day in 1943 he came across Oskar Halecki's newly published The History of Poland which spurred him to publicly announce to his classmates that he intended to become a historian. This led him and his sister Jane to establish and coedit, beginning in 1947, the quarterly Tatrzański Orzeł/The Tatra Eagle in order to promote Tatra Highlander folk culture in America.He began preparation for his chosen career by earning a BA degree at Seton Hall University in 1951. He then entered Fordham University where his graduate education was greatly shaped by working under the direction of the preeminent Polish scholar whose work he so much admired, Oskar Halecki. Specializing in East European studies, after taking time off to serve in the US Army during the Korean War, he wrote his MA thesis on “The Spisz-Orawa Dispute: Peace Settlement 1919–1923” and his PhD dissertation on “The Slovak Question in Polish Foreign Policy, 1934–1939.” Luckily, given his already strong ties to New Jersey Polonia, the newly-minted historian landed a position at Jersey City State College (today New Jersey City University). After establishing himself as both a recognized academic expert on things Polish and an ethnic community leader, Governor Thomas H. Kean appointed him chair of the newly-formed Commission on Eastern European History with a mandate to, in Gromada's words, “conduct a thorough study of the public school curriculum including textbooks” and offer recommendations on how material on this region could be more effectively woven into students’ educational experiences. The resulting report eventually added to the curriculum elective courses on Eastern Europe as well as scheduling periodic appearances by guest speakers, sponsoring conferences, creating a Slavic student club, and undertaking other Slavic-related activities. Additionally, he also served as a consultant for The Immigrant Experience: The Long, Long Journey, a production of the Learning Corporation of America with Gromada playing the role of an immigration inspector at Ellis Island, and PBS television for the production of the documentary The Polish Americans. Other consulting activities included working with the US Department of Education, the National Education Association, and the Smithsonian Institution.Concurrent with his interest in promoting Polish history and culture was his growing interest in ethnic and immigration studies during the nation's bicentennial celebrations. Intellectually led by Michael Novak, Monsignor Geno Baroni, and Irving Levine, this “New Ethnicity” stressed a pluralistic view of America as a “melting pot” where immigrants were melted into “Americans” but during the process some of their ethnic culture become part of mainstream America. This “cultural pluralism” soon replaced the previous view whereby immigrants had to shed their “foreign” ethnicity to become “real” Americans. One could be proud of one's ancestral heritage while still being a loyal American, a view Gromada strongly endorsed.All of this would have been enough for most careers, but not for Ted Gromada. Nominated for membership in the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America in 1961 by his mentor Halecki, he soon gained election to its Board of Directors and then Secretary General from 1972 to 1990 and Executive Director from 1991 until his election as President in 2008, a position he held until his retirement in 2011. But a recitation of his offices, though impressive, does not do justice to his irreplaceable contributions to virtually every major Institute initiative during that period. It was his foresight that pushed for the purchase of a townhouse in Manhattan as a permanent home for the institute and his fundraising and financial management that paid off the mortgage in a very short period of time while still growing the endowment. Through his initiative, an agreement with the Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych brought a badly needed professional review of the PIASA archives, a plan for future development, and a series of professional archivists from Poland to undertake the work. Later, this was expanded to an agreement whereby PIASA's important archival materials were conserved on microfilm and made available to scholars, while an agreement with the Biblioteka Narodowa led to professional cataloguing of the collections and their listing on the Internet databases SEZAM and IZA.Academically, he changed the PIASA annual meetings into modern academic conferences, promoted scholarly and student exchanges with Poland, was largely responsible for reopening normal activities with the postcommunist democratically elected Polish government, and began the practice of holding some annual meetings in Poland. Gromada also supported the development and expansion of the Institute's early awards program to recognize excellence in scholarship, worked tirelessly to recruit new members from a broad spectrum of academic disciplines and national origins, including outreach to young American scholars, and built bridges to other kindred organizations such as becoming an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (later the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies) and promoting formal ties with the Polska Akademia Umiejętności, the Polska Akademia Nauk, the Kościuszko Foundation (of which he served as a Trustee from 1981–2009 and Vice Chair), and the Polish American Historical Association (President 1984, and 1994–1996). In the latter position he handled with professionalism and aplomb some difficult situations that arose prior to his second presidency.As if all of this were not enough, he authored Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America 50th Anniversary, 1942–1992 and a memoir, My Years In and Out of “The Ivory Tower”: Chronological Review of Noteworthy Events. As an editor, he produced Essays on Poland's Foreign Policy, 1918–1939, Tatra Highlander Folk Culture in Poland and America: Collected Essays from “The Tatra Eagle,” Oskar Halecki 1891–1973: Eulogies and Reflections, Essays on Poland's Foreign Policy, 1918–1939, and Halecki's posthumous Jadwiga of Anjou and the Rise of East Central Europe. His articles appeared in several scholarly collections, as well as such prominent journals as Central European Federalist, East European Quarterly, Nationalities Papers, Polish American Studies, The Polish Review, Przegląd Polonijny, and Slavic Review.Among his many recognitions, Gromada received PAHA's Mieczysław Haiman Award for sustained scholarship (1985) and the American Council for Polish Culture's Distinguished Service Award (2000), was elected an honorary member of the Związek Podhalan in Poland, received the Officer's Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1993) and the Commander's Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland (2000), was elected as a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków (2017), was presented with the “Honoris Gratia” medal by the Mayor of the Royal City of Kraków (2017), and received the Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2020).All these accomplishments and accolades would be enough for several people, let alone the legacy of a single individual. But when he passed away at the age of 96 on August 10, 2025, my own thoughts turned to Ted the person. Aside from his many professional accomplishments, he was very easy to like the first time a person met him. Endowed with a good sense of humor, a helping disposition, and a friendly demeanor, his even temper was perfect for conducting meetings on sensitive issues and winning friends for both himself and the Institute. Quick to give others credit for good ideas, or to share recognition, he was equally at home chairing an international meeting or chatting amiably with colleagues or someone to whom he had just been introduced. His casual friendliness and smile easily turned a first-time acquaintance into a new friend. His passing is a major loss to Polish studies, as it is to his family and widespread network of friends.An abbreviated version of this obituary appeared in the October 2025 issue of the PIASA Newsletter.
James S. Pula (Thu,) studied this question.