Determined to be a doctor, Stanley J. Opalinski, 83, first became a nurse. The son of Polish immigrants, his family could not afford to send him to medical school. “He graduated from Alexian Brothers Hospital School of Nursing in Chicago, so he had a job to pay for medical school,” said his wife, Linda. The former head of surgery at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Chicago, Dr. Opalinski died of brain cancer Sunday, Jan. 25, in his home in Aurora. Born in Scottdale, Pa., he graduated from high school and received an undergraduate degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He hitchhiked from Pennsylvania to Chicago and graduated from the then-all male nursing school in 1943. When drafted by the Army Air Forces he requested the Medical Corps, but he was made a communications operator instead. “It was another detour for him,” said his wife. In 1944 he returned to Chicago and the University of Illinois, where he obtained a bachelor of science degree in 1947 and a doctorate in medicine in 1949. He served his residency at Hines Veterans Hospital near Maywood and interned at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago. He was on the staff at St. Elizabeth’s from 1956 to 1995 and was head of its surgery department from 1986 to 1988. While there, he also had surgical privileges at four other Chicago hospitals. He met his wife, an emergency room nurse, “over a gunshot wound” at St. Elizabeth’s, she said. They married in 1972. Fluent in Polish, he had a contingent of Polish-speaking patients, his wife said. The couple lived in Skokie for 15 years, then Geneva for nine years, moving to Aurora more than a year ago. Other survivors include his son, John; three daughters, Ashley Johannson, Lauren and Dana; and two brothers, Edward and Louis. Prayers will be said at 9 a.m. Friday in Hursen Funeral Home, 4001 Roosevelt Rd., Hillside, followed by mass at 10 a.m. in St. Domitilla Catholic Church, 4940 Washington St., Hillside.
