Walter J. Prusko’s job for 50 years was washing windows on office buildings and department stores in Chicago and its suburbs. It was a job, but also an occasional opportunity for amusement.
While washing windows at the Washington National Insurance Building in Evanston, his antics once ended up in the company newsletter with a photo showing him hanging from the building and playing with a yo-yo, said his daughter, Charmaine Zuchel.
Mr. Prusko, 86, formerly of Chicago, died of natural causes Sunday, June 18, at Plum Grove Nursing Home in Palatine.
When his four children were young, they occasionally saw him working on buildings in downtown Chicago.
“The heights never concerned him, but my mother was always concerned,” his daughter said. “She would say, `Don’t look up at him!’ because if he saw us, he would start doing a little dance to entertain us, and it scared her.”
Mr. Prusko was born in 1920 to Polish immigrants and grew up in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. After completing 8th grade at Holy Trinity School, he went to work in the early 1930s at a brewery and a towing company to help support his mother, his daughter said. His father had died when he was young.
He lied about his age to enlist in the National Guard and later enlisted in the Army. He was stationed in Shreveport, La.
In 1943, Mr. Prusko married his wife, Estelle, who was the girl next door when he was growing up. The two returned to Chicago from Louisiana and raised their family in the Mayfair neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
He began washing windows in 1948, and worked on many well-known buildings in Chicago, including the former Goldblatt’s and Fair Department Stores.
Family members said Mr. Prusko had a few scares during his window-washing career, but remained fearless about his job. He worked attached to belts before the advent of platforms. The belt would clip to hooks on either side of the windows, and occasionally became loose.
“Sometimes the hooks would pull out on one side, and he would swing from the remaining belt until someone came to get him,” his daughter said. “He said people would be inside eating their lunch and just scream to see this happening. But he never made a big deal about it. You had to earn your dollar, he had a family to feed, and he just did what he had to do.”
One incident that did scare him occurred at Cook County Hospital in the 1950s, on a hot day when many of the windows were open. He worked his way down the building and as he passed the psychiatric floor, the patients reached out and tried to knock him down.
“That did it,” his daughter said. “He didn’t go back there again.”
Mr. Prusko was employed directly by many window-washing companies but eventually worked through Local 34 of the Service Employees International Union.
He retired in 1998, after suffering a serious stroke. He had been helping neighbors shovel snow and fix storm windows, his daughter said.
“He went to bed and had the stroke,” his daughter said. “He spent the previous day doing good deeds, like he always did.”
Mr. Prusko loved to dance the polka and often pulled his wife and daughters onto the dance floor at picnics and weddings.
He moved two years ago to the Plum Grove Nursing Home, which was closer to the homes of two of his daughters.
In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by two other daughters, Camille Hjelm and Christine Clark; a son, Walter Jr.; two sisters, Estella Passananti and Josephine Pekara; a brother, Frank Klimas; 12 grandchildren; and 10 great-grandchildren.
Mass will be said at 10 a.m. Wednesday in St. Edward’s Catholic Church, 4350 W. Sunnyside Ave., Chicago.
