Janina Dreslius ZdanysJanina Zdanys was born on December 9, 1927, in Kaunas, Lithuania. During the Second World War, she and her family escaped the Russian occupation of Lithuania and lived for nearly five years in a refugee camp in Seligenstadt, Germany, under the sponsoship of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. It was there that she met her husband Alfonsas, to whom she was married for seventy years. They came to the United States in August 1949, settling first in Vermont as part of a U.S. Department of Agriculture refugee resettlement program, and in 1950 moved to New Britain, where she raised her children and worked in local manufacturing. In 1969, she and Alfonsas bought the Maple Motel in Newington, which they owned and operated until retiring in 1985. Letter to My Family was discovered in a desk drawer after her death. Read More Read Less