Diane and Dziadek’s Violin
Ms. Diane Elaine Markoya, nee Czop, recently resumed playing the violin. In 1975, she graduated, with High Honors from Ridgewood High School, in Ridgewood, New Jersey, where she played First Violin in the High School’s award winning orchestra.
Photo: Diane with her Dziadek’s Violin and this writer at the Danbury Symphony Orchestra Concert of March 17, 2024.
A 1979 B.S. Degree and a 1981 M.S. Degree graduate of the University of Virginia (UVA), in Charlottesville, Virginia, Diane played First Violin in UVA’s Orchestra during her six years at the University.
She stopped playing her Dziadek’s violin during the years she was working as a chemical engineer and rearing her son, James Daniel McCafferty, MD, and her daughter, Elaine du Ross McCafferty, who practices law in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Diane’s Dziadek, Jan Jozef Kozlowicz, played the violin at weddings in the years just after he emigrated from Rudka, near Rzeszow, to Garfield, New Jersey in 1912. He was a parishioner of SS. Peter and Paul Polish National Catholic Church. in Passaic, and a member of the Tadeusz Kosciuszko Society, Branch Five of the Polish National Union (Spojnia).
Recently, Diane had her Dziadek’s violin repaired and she successfully auditioned for the Danbury, Connecticut Symphony Orchestra. She plays Second Violin.
On Sunday afternoon, March 17, 2024, this writer attended the Danbury Symphony’s energetic performance of Brahms and his Contemporaries, at Western Connecticut State University. The auditorium has outstanding acoustics.
Diane studied ballet at the Irene Fokine Ballet School in Ridgewood for many years. Recently she resumed dancing with the competition team of the Arthur Murray Dance Studio.
She has successfully combined a distinguished career in chemical engineering with violin and dance. She holds several patents in her field of specialization, the production of computer chips.
Moreover, Diane has ensured continuity over three generations by putting to excellent use her Dziadek’s violin.
By John Czop
