Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1987. július-december (41. évfolyam, 26-48. szám)
1987-07-23 / 29. szám
Thursday, July 23. 1987. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZO 15. FRANCIS BENEDEK: RETURN TO THE MOTHERLAND Our train pulled out of the Hegyeshalom station. I am standing by the window and looking at the panorama spreading out before my eyes. It is an old transdanubian scenery, well-known by me. Crops sparkling in innumerable shadings of green. Perhaps it is somewhat delayed in ripening due to the inclement weather earlier in the year. I love to enter Hungary by train. One tastes special old wine but slowly, carefully. I am not a tourist in this country. I came home. A native returning to the old motherland. Let the tourists come by plane and let them immerse themselves at once in the tumult of the metropolis. That is not the way I greet my native land. Keeping rhythm with the clatter of the train's wheels, I keep repeating to myself: "I came home, I came home, I came home!" Meanwhile the gorgeous countryside of the Little Plains spreads out before my eyes. Little stationhouses whizz by. My country. What do we mean by it? As we were growing up we were taught about it's meaning in our school, first in melodious jingles, than in poems and finally in our histories. We had our "Credo" (I believe in one God, in one country, in the resurrection of Hungary). We have our national Anthem: "God bless the Hungarian". We have Petöfi's rousing "On your feet Hungarian!" Our nurse sang Hungarian songs over us when we were in our cradle. No, no, no! This is not the concept in my heart about my country. The profound essence of this concept has to be carved out of one's soul amidst almost like a mother bears her child in anguish and pain. And while I am contemplating what the motherland is, our train pulls into the station at Győr, this lively, vibrant city of the Little Plains. The station is teeming with people, everyone carries his or her own cares, worries. A soldier is kissing his sweetheart. Hungarians! All of them Hungarians, my people, my kind of people, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. And then the train resumes its clatter; "I am home now, I am home* now!" Back in the States I often hear the phrase "Old Country", or "New Country". There is no "New Country". There may be a country, a land where you live, where you establish your existence, where you give allegiance to its laws, to its noble objectives, where you raise your children, but there is only one motherland. Just as inexorably as one has only one mother, whose name you carry in your heart throughout your life whose thought brings tears in your heart as long as you live and... even beyond it. That is what "motherland" means to me. The sun is setting. Citylights are taking over, buildings, housingprojects appear in ever increasing frequency in a riot of gay colors, parks among them. Old poems are crowding each other The Stone Flung High in the Ain A föl-föl dobott kó' Even as a stone flung high in the air, My tiny land as he must fall from there, Thy prodigal returns. He has seen many a distant tower, Saddened and dizzy into the powder His native dust he falls. Pining and panting that plays come and go, To flee into some fairy long ago When yet he must stay put. Thine I remain in my infinite rage, Ever faithless, yet in thy loving wage, Sadly, verily thine. From high in there As a stone keeps falling My tiny land I shall always heed thy calling, For I wear thy face. Were thou to order me a hundred times thrown, I would sally right back, broken, woe worn Four score and twenty times. Translated by Dr. Eugene Bard in my mind: Petőfi whispers on his way to his mother: "I hang silently on her lips... what shall I tell my mother when I see her again?" And then Ady's poem *over- whelms me: "Even as a stone flung high in the air your son, my tiny land, returns again and again..." Unaware I am transposed in my childhood again. Those smoky locomotives near where we lived! How often they forced tears in my eyes! But my train is an electric one. How come my tears flow in a flood from my eyes? How come? 1893-1987 With you a part of us hath passed away For the teeming forest of our mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array Santayana Most of her contemporaries have passed long ago, very few could be present at the final tribute, among them hér dear friend, Bertha Papp, who delivered the moving final eulogy. The people who filled the funeral chapel were members of her family and friends belonging to the second and third generations of Hungarian-Ameri- cans. Our beloved Magda Kalótzy is being mourned by her two daughters, Gizella and Rose, two grandchildren: Ilona and Loretta, three great grandsons, and son- in-law, John Sebestyén, also two brothers in Hungary, a sister living in France and Mary Sabo in Cleveland, also her old-friends, Mr. and Mrs. Mezey. Next to her boundless love for her family, Magda Kalótzy lived a passionate life dedicated to help other Hungarians, to cherish her Hungarian tradition and to read and support the newspaper which she considered the embodiment and representative of her conviction and belief in human progress, the Magyar Sző. We at the Hungarian Word say with the poet Santayana, that we will treasure her memory, her gift of charity, her young heart and honor her memory. Forever. D. For Hungarians in U.S., a wav to retire back home NEW YORK - When Janos Gabriel, a Hungarian-born real estate consultant, started thinking about a way to provide for his mother still in Hungary, he came upon an idea that could help her and at the same time send hundreds of retired Hun- garian-Americans back home. He decided to build a retirement community in Hungary that will cater to Hungarians who now live in the United States. "The idea came to me in Budapest," said Gabriel. "My mother was retired, and I wondering how we could care for her." His solution was to plan a retirement community on 20 acres of farmland, in Fot, about a 20-minute ride from Budapest. His Gabriel Associates, an international hotel and real estate consulting firm, set up a Hungarian-American joint venture that will build some 300 to 400 apartments for retired people. The facilities, which will eventually number five centers, will be managed by HungarHotels, a state-owned hotel chain. Construction is expected to begin by next spring. If the project stays on course, people will be able to move in by early 1990. Gabriel enlisted New York architect Richard Roth of the firm Emery Roth& Sons, New York's largest architecture firm in terms of revenue and also founded by Hungarians. The firm was started in 1902 by Richard Roth's grandfather, Emery Roth, an immigrant from Hungary. (Reuters)
