When Margaret Dzwilewski was young, her family moved from Illinois to Yokohama, Japan, where her father had accepted an overseas job in the chemical industry. As a ninth grader at an all-girls Catholic school, Dzwilewski discovered on her first day that all of the instruction was in French. In addition to learning some Japanese in her daily life, she’d be tackling another language, too.

“My life is one surprise after another,” Dzwilewski, who’s now 72, told Forum. That early experience helped teach Dzwilewski the power of learning new things and adapting. It’s why Phi Kappa Phi’s embrace of lifelong learning is so meaningful to her -- a connection she deepened recently with a $50,000 donation to the Society to benefit other scholars.  

Half of Dzwilewski’s donation will support an endowment for the Society’s Love of Learning Award, which helps fund post-baccalaureate studies and career development for active Society members. The other half of Dzwilewski’s gift will support an endowment for Phi Kappa Phi’s Student Opportunity Fund, which helps ease financial barriers for ambitious scholars who might not otherwise be able to join the Society. Through her support of these endowments, Dzwilewski is helping to fund these two programs in perpetuity.

As an officer at the chapter level for 10 years, Phi Kappa Phi Executive Director and CEO Bradley Newcomer saw firsthand the challenges that some academically ambitious students face in affording Society membership. “This allows us to be able to invite more worthy students to join,” Newcomer said about Dzwilewski’s gift. The donation will also help support Love of Learning scholars as they expand humanity’s pool of knowledge, Newcomer added. 

Dzwilewski joined Phi Kappa Phi in 1975 at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she was majoring in economics with a minor in French. She’d already earned a liberal arts associate degree from College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, heading southwest after graduation for a change of climate. “My mother came with me by Amtrak train when I moved from Illinois to New Mexico. I went to New Mexico on a train with my things in seven little boxes,” she recalled. 

In her new community, she met a young Air Force officer named Peter Dzwilewski. “On July 17, we celebrated our 49^th wedding anniversary,” she told Forum earlier this year. 

It’s been a full life for the Dzwilewskis, who now live in Littleton, Colorado. They’ve raised three children together and now have four grandchildren. Peter is retired from a successful career as a civil engineer, and Margaret’s work has been varied. While earning a degree from the University of Colorado School of Public Health with a concentration in biostatistics, “I realized behind every number is a person,” she recalled. Dzwilewski earned a certified nursing assistant certification and an early childhood teacher certification from a local community college, too. 

Dzwilewski has worked at a mortgage company, as a certified nursing assistant, as a local co-leader on the 2000 U.S. Census, and as a teacher’s assistant at a Montessori school.

“I served with AmeriCorps for four years before entering the world of charter schools,” Dzwilewski said. “I was a math tutor at one school, and when that program closed down, I completed my service as a literacy tutor. This service influenced me to continue to work with young children at the Montessori school.”

At times, Dzwilewski has also been a full-time wife and mother, active as a school volunteer. “I was a stay-at-home mom who was never home,” she said. 

Dzwilewski was headed to work at her school job on Nov. 8, 2022 when she was involved in a car accident. She feels lucky to still be alive.

“I look on this part of my life now as my borrowed time, my extra time,” she told Forum. While recovering at home, Dzwilewski had time to reflect on the life she almost lost and her ultimate legacy. “I thought about what kind of impact I’d made,” she recalled. “I needed to do something that’s really going to benefit more than just me and my family.”

Supporting Phi Kappa Phi with a substantial donation seemed to Dzwilewski like a good way to help new generations embrace the love of learning that’s defined her life.

After donating some money to a local Montessori school, Dzwilewski was offered the chance to have her family’s name placed on a brick. Instead, she asked that the brick be inscribed with something else: Learn one new thing every day.

“That’s Phi Kappa Phi,” she said. “That’s what it’s all about.”