Wroblewski, Al.

Al Wroblewski was born ca.1945, one of two sons in a Polish-American family that made their home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father, John Wroblewski, was a laborer in a factory making gears. Wroblewski attended Beloit College (Beloit, Wis.) in the mid-1960s, and after college worked as a city planner. In 1968 he was living in the Bronx, New York, and was employed by a planning consulting firm known as F. P. Clark Associates. In 1970-1971 Wroblewski was living in St. Paul and working as a planner for the South St. Anthony Park Association, a neighborhood development firm. In 1971 he was associated with with a Twin Cities group called the Metropolitan Housing Committee. In 1975-1977 he was director of the Crossroads Resource Center, Minneapolis.

In 1974 Wroblewski resurrected the Minnesota Leader newspaper, which he called "the voice of the Farmer-Labor Association," and which he wrote and published until July 1977. In the Leader Wroblewski railed against what he called the "corporate liberalism" of such figures as Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. From 1979-1981 Wroblewski was state coordinator of the Farmer-Labor Association, which was organized in 1979 and which apparently saw itself as a successor to the old Farmer-Labor Party. Wroblewski described the Farmer-Labor Association as "an independent political association working within Minnesota's DFL Party...intent on building an anti-corporate movement for the 1980s."

Wroblewski was hired in September 1977 by the Hallie Q. Brown Center, St. Paul, and went to work as a community organizer in the city's distressed Selby-Dale neighborhood. He last appeared in the local city directories in 1981-1982, living on the East Side of St. Paul, but the directory does not list his occupation. In the late 1990s Wroblewski was living in Cambridge, Massachusetts and was working as a financial planner for American Express. He left American Express in 2001 in order to start his own financial planning firm.

In addition to his many other activities and pursuits Wroblewski spent time in VISTA, "worked for the Catholic Church," and taught occasionally in small colleges. A campaign flyer in the collection indicates that he was at one time a candidate for a seat on the St. Paul school board. City directories indicate that during his years in the Twin Cities he lived at varous locations in both St. Paul and Minneapolis. Wroblewski and his wife Susan had at least one child, a son named Nicholas, who was born in 1973.

The information above was taken from the papers, from St. Paul and Minneapolis city directories, from the pages of the Minnesota Leader, and from the internet.

From the guide to the Al Wroblewski papers., 1936, 1965-1984., (Minnesota Historical Society)