Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 1998 (15. évfolyam, 51-54. szám)
1998 / 53-54. szám
IN MEMÓRIÁM: M. John Marko M. lohn Marko, who provided distinguished leadership as chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Hungarian Foundation from 1972 to 1975, died in Greensboro, NC, on November 1, 1998, He also served as vice chairman and then as a life long member of the Foundation's Advisory Council. He retired as department chief, Government Customer Relations Engineering at AT&T. He received special recognition for his work on worldwide communication for the U.S. Government. He was named "Admiral of the Flagship Fleet" of the Admirals Club for his contributions in the development of air transportation and national airpower. Born in NYC in 1919, he was a graduate of Rutgers University and New York University. He is survived by his wife of 26 years, Cecilia E. "Ceil" Marko. Aladar Komjáthy (1931-1998) Dr. Aladár Komjáthy, pastor of the First Hungarian Reformed Church of Pittsburgh and Adjunct Professor of History at Duquesne University, died barely eighteen days before his sixtyseventh birthday. He was the author of the best synthetic history of the American Hungarian Reformed Church, which - although originally written in English as a Ph.D. dissertation at Princeton Theological Seminary appeared only in Hungarian under the title A kitántorgott egyház [The Uprooted Churchl, Budapest, 1984. Aladár Komjáthy was a stiff-necked Calvinist, who described himself in an article a few years ago as follows: "I am not a Hungarian, but a Calvinist Hungarian-American.” His “American- Hungarianness," however, was so intimately interlinked with his Reformed faith that his national identity and religiosity merged into a synthetic whole. He was never able to fathom his Hungarianness without his Calvinist identity. During his sixty-seven years, Aladár Komjáthy walked a long and rocky path. He started off from his native city of Miskolc, where his father and most of his ancestors had been Reformed clergymen. Given the political conditions in Hungary, he decided to leave his native land. His path took him across several countries, among them Austria (1949-1950), the Netherlands (1950-1955), the United States (1955-1968), Canada (1968-1989), and then the United States (1989-1998) again. He began his theological studies at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and then continued it in the Netherlands at Kämpen, with brief excursions to Switzerland, more specifically to Geneva (1952) and Basel (1954). He finally completed his studies at the Princeton Theological Seminary (1955-1962), where he received his double doctorates in theology and church history in 1962. Aladár Komjáthy’s original intention was to become a scholar and a university professor, but his mentor, the influential Bishop Zoltán Béky (1903-1978), persuaded him to give up this idea and to choose pastoral service. In line with this decision Reverend Komjáthy served as the pastor of the Hungarian Reformed TO EDITORS, DIRECTORS, CHAIRPERSONS AND COMMUNITY LEADERS: Please consider this new beginning of the Hungarian Studies Newsletter as an additional opportunity to expand your information network. We would like to have you consider the Newsletter as your forum. We invite all fellow Hungarian related newsletters, studies centers, institutes and programs to share information with us and to subscribe to the Newsletter and/or establish an ongoing exchange of our publications. a . 1. Congregations of Roebling, NJ (1955-1963), Passaic, N) (1963- 1967), Warrenville, CT (1967-1968), Montreal, Canada (1968-1989), and Pittsburgh, PA (1993-1998). During the same period, Dr. Komjáthy also served as the personal secretary of Bishop Béky (1958-1967), and as Adjunct Professor of History and/or Hungarian Studies at Bishop’s University of Canada, (1976), McGill University of Montreal (1977-1989), and Duquesne University of Pittsburgh (1983-1998). Reverend Komjáthy was a humble man, yet at the same time a man of immense knowledge. He was rightfully proud of his book A kitántorgott egyház [The Uprooted Churchl, but his pride never turned into a scholarly arrogance. In point of fact, as he often stated, he always felt better among the members of his congregation, than among learned university scholars, and even learned clergymen. Reverend Komjáthy loved Pittsburgh and his Hungarian Reformed congregation, which he rightfully viewed as the birthplace of Hungarian Calvinism in America. This was particularly true because of the late 19th-century activities of Reverend Ferenc Ferency (1857-1898), whom he viewed as the true founding father of Hungarian-American Calvinism. No wonder, therefore, that soon upon his arrival in Pittsburgh, he declared that he wanted to be buried in Homestead Cemetery, immediately next to Reverend Ferency. That is exactly what happened a century after Ferency’s tragic suicide. And here it is imperative to point out a strange and unusual parallel between these two men: Ferency came to Pittsburgh in 1893, while Komjáthy arrived in 1993. Ferency died in 1898, while Komjáthy died in 1998. In other words, Komjáthy assumed Ferency’s mantle exactly a century later, and he left his congregation and his earthly existence exactly a hundred years later. One wonders what sort of unknown spiritual forces may have guided the lives of these two soul brothers precisely a century apart. Steven Béla Várdy Suzanne Szász (Continued from page 3 ) numerous books on her work including Photographing Children and The Silent Language of Children. Her work has been exhibited at the New York Camera Club, the Kodak Gallery, the Parents Gallery and the International Center for Photography. She has been part of many group shows, including the "Family of Man" exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art. She was also honored with a major retrospective exhibit at the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest in 1982. She married a fellow photographer, Ray Schorr, in 1956 and lived in New York City and Westhampton, New York until her death in 1997. 4 NO. 53-54, AUTUMN-WINTER, 1998-99, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER
