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Bill Barowski: The Veteran Shop Owner

Bill Barowski admits he’s led a pretty interesting life.

He and his wife, Nydia, are both U.S. Marine veterans of the Vietnam War, a source of painful memories.

“I was a member of a platoon called 258. That platoon went through Paris Island in 1962,” said Barowski.

Out of 75 men, he is one of eight survivors.

“Maybe it was something that was intended for me. Why? I still haven’t found out yet,” he said. “I for about 40 years had put all of it away and never looked at anything. A couple of years back, it just hit me and I woke up ... and I guess it was just a very very delayed reaction to something that was really horrific.”

Most of Barowski’s life, though, has been exactly the opposite.

“We had just gotten out of the service and we were working in New York and we went to a place called Woodstock. The very first one,” he said. “We were only supposed to be there a day and we wound up there probably almost a week.”

He said they were both working at Bloomingdales at the time and almost got fired from their jobs. But that experience, combined with a rock ‘n’ roll concert at the Apollo Theater, inspired the couple to open up a store selling rock band t-shirts and other novelty items.

They moved to Texas and opened several stores in San Antonio.

“During our years in business we’ve made a lot of friends,” said Barowski.

Musician Paul Anka wrote an original song for him and he’s met countless other artists like Nikki Sixx, Dave Mustaine, Metallica and Ozzy Osborn.

“I was at the counter (at the store) and I saw these five or six guys and they had magic markers and they were writing all over my t-shirts and I thought, ‘Oh god, what are they doing?’” said Barowski. “Joe (an employee) looks at me and he says, ‘Mr. B, you don’t know who they are?’ I said no, and he said, ‘That’s Pantera. All of the t-shirts that we have, they’re signing them.’”

Since then, he and his wife added scooters, bikes and ATVs to their inventory and opened up a store in San Marcos.

While working in San Antonio, Barowski said he became almost a professional student.

“We were on the GI Bill and it was pretty much paid for us,” he said.

He earned a degree in Spanish World History and began to discover how his own family history intertwined.

“Genealogy is like a triangle,” said Barowski. “At the very top of the triangle are our ancestors that go way back. How far back do they go? I think with ours they traced it back to the 700s, and it comes all the way forward to us today.”

Though he has a polish name now, he descends from the Ramirez De Arellano family, who hails from Northern Spain and includes Cristóbal Colón, who is often called Christopher Columbus.

“There was no Christopher Columbus. I don’t know who made that up, but it’s been going on for so long, it’s a bunch of junk that’s been passed down,” Barowski said. “I don’t know why, where and how, but there’s nobody of that name. If there was I’d know because they’re related to us.”

He said genealogy can get very complicated. Families can intertwine and move from origin to origin.

“At some point in time, you’ll be able to take a smidgen of blood and they’ll be able to do some sort of DNA test on the body fluid, and they will link you all the way back. And, god forbid, we all find out that we’re related to each other in one way, shape, form or another,” he said.

Barowski said he would like to see people remember the real history of this area.

“In this land, Spanish is not a foreign language. English is the foreign language. Spanish was spoken here in the 1500s,” he said. “We’ll say, well, there are two people speaking Spanish on the corner. They’re speaking a native language. People often assume that America was discovered in the English language. It wasn’t. It was the Spanish language.”

Bill Barowski's story was originally published in the San Marcos Daily Record on July 22, 2009.