As a teenager, Leokadia Rowinski served as a courier for the underground in Nazi occupied Poland during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. She was apprehended by the Germans and placed in a concentration camp. After the war she moved to England where she met her husband, a Polish soldier who served in the North Africa campaign. They moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, where they raised their family. In her late 50s, Rowinski earned an undergraduate degree in Chemistry and worked for a film manufacturing company.