Hungarian Studies Newsletter, 2000 (17. évfolyam, 58-61. szám)
2000 / 58-61. szám
OBITUARIES JEAN SINOR 1946-1999 Eugenia (lean) Sinor was a phenomenal person and a great teacher. She is one of those individuals whose presence and personality had a lasting impact on all who knew her personally or who had the chance of being beneficiaries of her role as a teacher of music. This impact is reflected in many things, including the personal recollections of friends, colleagues and family as well as the professional recognition she received from her home institution, Indiana University, and the Organization of American Kodály Educators, which posthumously awarded her their Lifetime Achievement Award with the inscription “Always Our Guiding Star." Jean was born in St. Louis, MO on September 22, 1946. She received her undergraduate education at Webster College in St. Louis and continued her music education at the Liszt Academy in Budapest. There she received a certificate in solfege, pedagogy and conducting. She continued her graduate studies at Indiana University where she earned both her Masters and Doctorate degrees. From this time onward her career was closely tied to IU, first as a Lecturer in Music Education, becoming the Assistant Director of the IU Children's Choir and later also appointed Associate Professor and Chairman of the Music Education Department. In 1991 she was named Undergraduate Studies Director and in 1998 she became full Professor. During this time she devoted a great deal of time to research and authored four textbooks, more than twelve scholarly articles, and was invited for visiting lectureships numerous times. However, beyond these scholarly achievements, she was a great organizer of instructional work. As one of her friends and admirers, Ruth Boshkoff pointed out "lean was an expert in the Kodály concept of teaching music. Indeed, it is hard to imagine where the Kodály movement would be [in the USA] at this point in time without lean. She was one of the first American teachers to train in Hungary and she returned to this country completely dedicated to the Kodály philosophy....and unafraid to follow the path that these dictated." In recognition of her tireless dedication Professor Jean Sinor received a National Endowment for the Humanities Kodály Fellowship and the Hungarian government presented her with the International Kodály Award. Truly, lean Sinor was an active proponent of what she advised other music teachers to become. In her article "Who is a Good Music Teacher?" She said: “Kodály set us quite a challenge. Being a good music teacher is no easy matter. You can’t be ordinary, you have to be extraordinary, out-of-the-ordinary. It doesn't take money, power or good looks to be a good music teacher. It does take ideals and effort, commitment and faith.” Jean Sinor was extraordinary, she will be sorely missed. a.l. PETER F. SUGAR 1919-1999 Peter Sugar was born in January 1919 in Budapest, at a time of great social and political upheaval, which may have affected his apparently prosperous family. He received his baccalaureate degree from the famous Lutheran Gymnasium in Budapest where some of the world’s greatest mathematicians and physicists were trained. He was a sportsman, a member of the national hockey team, and when drafted into the Hungarian army, he served in the cavalry. The latter was a very exclusive branch of service which expected either aristocratic descent or considerable wealth from its reserve officer candidates as well as a relatively small stature and a perfect physical condition. Young Peter was obviously able to fulfill most of the requirements. His biographies report that, before the Hungarian right-wing governments began the persecution of those they found unacceptable, his family sent Peter to Istanbul. There he learned Turkish, started the process of turning himself into a Southeast European specialist and, with the adventure and mystery surrounding so many East Central European lives, we find him serving in the United States Army counter-intelligence during World War II. It was this service that enabled him to emigrate to the United States after the war ended. After a brief career in business in New York City, Peter entered City College from which he graduated in 1954. He then went to Princeton where, in an amazingly short five years, he earned a PhD in history and Near Eastern studies. In 1959, he joined the history department at Washington University in Seattle from where he retired in 1989. In that same year, the mayor of Seattle proclaimed March 9 to be "Peter Sugar Day,” honoring his thirty years of teaching Western civilization. Peter Sugar belonged to what one may call the second generation of East European specialists; he learned his trade from, among others, C.E. Black, Hans Kohn, and S. Harrison Thomson, who were the first generation. Peter remained professionally active through several generations and had no difficulty learning new approaches and historical methods. His publications, extending over a listing of fifteen pages, begins in 1954 and includes his last publications in the same list dated from 1998. These three essays dealing with the Balkans, East European nationalism, and Hungarian fascism, respectively, involuntarily point to the three main fields of Peter's life-time research. In fact, one more book of his appeared, in 1999: entitled, East European Nationalism, Politics, and Religion, it contains a collection of Peter’s essays. I never had the chance to hear Peter teach, but I heard him giving papers and was impressed by that mixture of wit, decisiveness, and self-assurance that summed up his speaking style and his personality. In the words of Gregory Morgan, a former student: “His unique lecture style and strong personality, combined with his thick Hungarian accent and his powerful command of his subject matter, made him a mesmerizing force in the classroom.” There are several other books to Peter’s credit, first and foremost among them, Southeastern Europe under Ottoman Rule, 1354-1804, which appeared in 1977, as part of a series entitled, "History of East Central Europe.” The latter Peter co-edited with Donald Treadgold, his long-time colleague and friend at the University of Washington. There is also his Nationality and Society in Habsburg and Ottoman Europe (1997), and no less importantly, there is a whole series of notable books that he edited, or co-edited and, to a large part, also wrote. During his long career, Peter accumulated many fellowships as well as distinction, and he served as chair of an extraordinary number of associations and institutions. This was certainly because of his talent as an organizer. What he wrote and did will stand the test of time, perhaps because it represented a consistent liberal point of view without excesses and also without flashy insights. Peter died on December 5, 1999, after fighting lung cancer. He will be greatly missed. István Deák FRANCIS S. WAGNER 1911-1999 The Hungarian community of North America lost one of its outstanding members when Ferenc Wagner died recently in Kensington, Maryland. He was a linguist, librarian, historian and prolific author. During much of his adult life he worked for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. While there, he devoted his spare time to writing books and articles about Hungary and Hungarian culture for the English-speaking world. Ferenc Wagner hailed from an ethnically mixed region of East Central Europe, where German, Hungarian and Slavic influences had mingled throughout the centuries. He was born in the town of Korpona, in (Continued on page 4) NO. 58-61, WINTER/SPRING/SUMMER/AUTUMN 2000, HUNGARIAN STUDIES NEWSLETTER 3
