Thomas D. Kalinowski, a polka enthusiast, instructor and longtime DJ of “The Maryland Polka Train” who raised thousands of dollars for the charity God’s Special Children, died Jan. 20 of a cerebral hemorrhage at his Dundalk home.

The former Bethlehem Steel payroll clerk was 83.

“Tom always treated me like I was a member of his family. I never felt alone and always welcome when I was with him,” said Tony Hall, a friend of 40 years, and fellow polka dancer. “He was just a great guy.”

Thomas Donald Kalinowski, son of Thomas A. Kalinowski, a Bethlehem Steel welder, and Mary Stucker Kalinowski, a department store clerk, was born in Baltimore, and briefly lived in Highlandtown before moving to Dundalk with his family.

He was the grandson of second-generation Polish and Irish immigrants.

“His Irish grandmother taught him to dance and his first dance he did was always an Irish jig,” said his wife of 64 years, Shirley Pierce, a retired caterer and his polka partner.

“We were high school sweethearts, and he gave me a friendship ring, and paid S. & N. Katz 50 cents a week for it,” she said, with a laugh.

After graduating from Dundalk High School in 1959, he went to work as a payroll clerk at Bethlehem Steel in Sparrows Point, where he worked until retiring in 1985.

He then worked for several funeral homes as an attendant and finally for Bradley-Ashton-Kehl Funeral Home in Dundalk, from which he retired in 2020. Mr. Kalinowski and his wife conducted polka classes at numerous Catholic churches.

“Even though Shirley was a head taller than Tom, he was a very, very good dancer and executed all of the routines without any problems,” Mr. Hall said.

The longtime German Hill Road resident was a past president of the Polish Community Association of Baltimore and was a past director of the annual Baltimore Polish Festival.

For nearly four decades, Mr. Kalinowski hosted “The Maryland Polka Train” on various local radio stations including WOLB-AM, which aired his final broadcast in 2013, and was Maryland’s last polka radio show.

But it was his friendship with Carl Szuba, an Anne Arundel County deputy sheriff, who had a child with Down’s syndrome, that led the two men to found God’s Special Children in 1969, an organization that hosted polka events to raise money for developmentally disabled children in the city and Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties.

Over 30 years, until holding their last fundraiser in 1999, God’s Special Children raised more than $500,000.

Mr. Kalinowski’s Annual Polka Party held at La Fontaine Bleu in Glen Burnie, became one of the largest events on the East Coast for polka lovers, often drawing nearly a thousand dancers, according to an article in The Baltimore Sun.

“He was the man who taught Maryland how to polka,” said his daughter, Kelly Kalinowski Melhem, of Dundalk.

In addition to organizing Baltimore’s Inner Harbor Polka Convention and Diamond Beach Polka Weekend in Wildwood, New Jersey, he coordinated numerous polka weekends and bus trips that drew East Coast polka dancers.

Mr. Kalinowski’s efforts on behalf of special needs children brought him wide recognition and a governor’s citation from William Donald Schaefer.

“Tom never wanted any recognition for what he had done raising money for those children,” Mr. Hall said. “He was a very modest person.”

He enjoyed fishing and boating.

Mr. Kalinowski was a lifelong communicant of the now-closed Sacred Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Graceland Park.

A Mass of Christian Burial was offered Saturday at St. Rita Roman Catholic Church in Dundalk.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Kalinowski is survived by a son, Mark Kalinowski, of Bel Air; a sister, Mary Kotowski, of Cape St. Claire; and five grandchildren. His daughter, Elizabeth Kalinowski-Harris, died in 2007.

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