When the plane full of Polish dignitaries crashed on April 10, a local Catholic artist went down with it. Wojciech Seweryn was born on Sept. 1, 1939, the first day of World War II, in Zabno, Poland. He was the son of a Polish officer killed in the Katyn massacre in 1940 along with 22,000 others who represented the Polish elite. “My grandfather saw his son only once for 10 minutes. It was in the hospital on the day of my father’s birth,” said Anna Wojtowicz, the daughter of Wojciech Seweryn. Seweryn graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Tarnów, Poland. Following a negative response from the communist government to his plan to build a Katyn monument in Poland, he immigrated to Chicago in 1976. After working on the Katyn project for nine years, Seweryn saw the monument dedicated May 17, 2009, at St. Adalbert Cemetery in Niles. The artist received an invitation earlier this year from Polish President Lech Kaczynski to join him on his plane for the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre near Smolensk in Russia. He died April 10, on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday, along with 95 other plane crash victims. Seweryn is survived by his wife, two daughters and grandchildren.