Mary LeSawyer

Mary LeSawyer (October 8, 1912^[1] – June 13, 2004, born Mary Wallick)^[2] also known as Mary Poliniak^[3] or Mary Polynack, was an American opera singer, a lyric soprano who had an active international career during the 1940s through the 1960s.

Mary Wallick^[4] was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania,^[5] the daughter of Frank Wallick (or Wallach) and Anna Mazur Wallick.^[1] Both of her parents were Polish-speaking immigrants from Galicia; her father was a coal miner.^[6] She began singing in church and took piano lessons in Shamokin,^[7] then studied voice with Frank La Forge in New York City.^[8]

LeSawyer had a long and fruitful partnership with the New York City Opera (NYCO) from 1949^[9] through 1961. With the NYCO she appeared in Carmen, La Traviata, Madame Butterfly, and others. In 1957 she was in the NYCO's televised world-premiere production of War and Peace.^[8] In 1958 she created the role of Mrs. Muller in the world premiere of Robert Kurka's The Good Soldier Schweik for the NYCO at Lincoln Center.^[10] She took part in the company's celebrated 1960 national tour,^[4] performing in four American operas: The Ballad of Baby Doe, Street Scene, Susannah, and Six Characters in Search of an Author.^[11]

LeSawyer sang at Expo 58 in Brussels.^[8] With her husband, she was active in the Ukrainian National Association (UNA),^[12][13] and with the Ukrainian National Women's League of America. She sang at the UNA's Bicentennial festival in Shamokin in 1976.^[12]

Mary Wallick married twice. She married her first husband, Walter Poliniak, in 1931; he died in 1938.^[14][15] She was married for many years to her second husband, Joseph LeSawyer, president of the Ukrainian National Association from 1961 to 1978.^[16] The couple lived in Scotch Plains, New Jersey before moving to Venice, Florida when they retired. Mary LeSawyer died in 2004, at the age of 91, in Orlando, Florida.^[11] Her gravesite is in the Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, because her second husband was a veteran of World War II.^[17]