Adam and Tinie (Hagen) Filipowski, born and raised residents of Orange County, are celebrating their 70th Wedding Anniversary on Thurs., June 11.
Adam is a retired local business owner of the W.B. Phillips Agency in Greenwood Lake and WWII Navy Veteran. Tinie (Hagen) Filipowski was a valedictorian graduate of Goshen High School and awarded three scholarships to Barnard College.
The two met when they were setup on a blind date by Adam’s best friend, Roy Baldwin, and Tinie’s sister, Annie (Hagen) Baldwin. The four attended a basketball game at Goshen High school. They hit it off right away! The first time they talked about their future together was on a concrete bench, in a bower in a neighbor’s backyard on Golden Hill Ave. in Goshen. They also shared their first kiss there and that very bench is still there today.
Adam recalls; “I gave Tinie her engagement ring at the top of the Empire State Building, and we also made a recording that we still have.”
Father Fogarty married them at 2 p.m. on June 11, 1950 in St. John’s Church in Goshen, NY. It was a very simple five-minute ceremony because they were only the second marriage performed in St. John’s Church instead of the rectory. Their wedding was as humble as they come. Tinie wore an aqua suit with white blouse and white hat and white gloves and white shoes and white corsage. Adam wore a gray gabardine suit.
They were simple people, raised with value of people, not material trappings. Their secret to a happy marriage is love, laughter, family and music. Before having nine children, the couple had their own Polish Polka band where they performed in and around Pine Island, Florida and Warwick.
The two have shared many laughs through the years. One recollection of a certain pillow fight event, which Tinie stated, “One thing we still laugh about was the pillow feathers all over the house after the kids had a pillow fight upstairs. They wafted down the stairs and ended up all over. It took us hours in the middle of the night to clean it all up.”
Another time they remember, “Just laughing and laughing” was one of their famous “F-Troop” (that is what they call the whole gang) family camping trips. Tinie recalls that there was a foot of water around the picnic table at the campsite and the tarp was falling down in the wind and the kids were sleeping through it.
They started from their very humble backgrounds on both sides as immigrant farming families.
“A goal I set and hopefully I think I’ve reached was to be a wife and mother and have a big family and to do it the best I knew how and to bring up kids who would be content with their lot, do the best they could, and contribute to society to make the world a better place to live in,” said Tinie.
Adam and Tinie have definitely succeeded with many of the children, and now grandchildren making differences in the world they live in. They have come from and created a family lineage with much to be proud of and the legacy continues. From their nine children, the two now have 17 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren. Adam and Tinie have lived in Newburgh, Monroe for many years and now Greenwood Lake where they currently reside.
Tinie and Adam said the following as their most prized possession: “The dearest people on this earth is our family.”
Happy Anniversary Adam and Tinie! Na zdrowie! Proost!
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