A graveside service will be conducted at 11 a.m. today at Lauderdale Memorial Park for Julia Hospodar, who helped found the Polish-American Club and operated two dry-cleaning firms in Fort Lauderdale.
Mrs. Hospodar, 82, died after collapsing from a heart attack on Tuesday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. She was returning home from a vacation in Tucson, Ariz.
Mrs. Hospodar moved to Fort Lauderdale in 1945 from Bayonne, N.J., with her husband, Charles, who died in 1977. The couple operated Helpy Selfy dry cleaning at the Sears Town plaza for several years before opening Sunshine Laundry on the city’s south side.
At one time, she played hostess for Mrs. America contestants, who used the washing machines at the Sunshine Laundry for a dye contest.
Mrs. Hospodar helped start the Polish-American Club, then located across from the Broward County Courthouse, and often held clothing drives for Haiti’s poor.
After retirement, she traveled, spent time with her four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren and during the harvest season would sell mangoes from a makeshift counter at the corner of Southwest Ninth Street and Ninth Avenue.
“She was so energetic. At 82, she could still run rings around” her grandchildren, said a granddaughter, Marjorie Hendon.
