Lillian Synoracki Wilczak

Born: 1910, Chicago, Il.

Died: May 1, 1991

Married: Frank A. Wilczak, 1934

Children: Marilynn, 1936; Barbara, 1939

Lillian Synoracki Wilczak came to Stony Wold Sanatorium to cure in 1928. She had been working for DuPont in Chicago when she contracted TB from her older brother. She was 18 when the company physician diagnosed her and offered to send her to Stony Wold, as the company would pay all expenses there for their employees. She went against her family's wishes.

Lillian was quite ill when she arrived, but as she got better she and the new friends she met there were quite active. She kept an album of photographs during her stay, and it is full of photographs of them skiing and swimming. It also contains photographs of nurses and scenes of daily life at Stony Wold.

She told her family about going into Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, and described the cure cottages in town where patients stayed. She also saw a doctor in town. Her experience was life-changing. She was introduced to a whole new lifestyle, was impressed by wealthy women who came to visit, and wanted to be like them. She returned to Illinois in 1930, and married Frank Wilczak in 1934.

Lillian was told that she should not have children because of TB, but in 1936 she had her first daughter, Marilynn, and her second, Barbara, in 1939.

Lillian was a first-generation American; her parents moved to Chicago from Poland sometime between 1905 and 1910 and both her older brother and sister were born in Poland.

Information provided to Historic Saranac Lake by her granddaughter, Karen Jacobs, who donated an album of Lillian's Stony Wold photos to the collection in 2020.