Magyar News, 1994. szeptember-1995. augusztus (5. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1994-11-01 / 3. szám
IN MEMORY OF DR. LESLIE ÁKOS TURY Excerpts from Alexander Havadtoy’s sermon When a physician lays down his work and closes his eyes, it is not like the passing of an ordinary citizen. He has held a peculiar relation in the community. He is not simply a public agent for the transaction of business. He is a public friend, and to many of his patients a personal friend. He deals not with the simple external goods of men. He holds the most sacred trusts. Under his hands a strong man lies down upon the scant couch in an unconscious sleep and trusts the thread of life to his careful skill. To him the woman tells her deepest secrets and trusts implicitly to his truth and honor. He watches over our entrance and exit from the world. He is a family friend. The sick one looks impatiently for his coming and opens the eyes with trust and hope and gratitude into his cheerful thoughtful face. His people feel that they own him; he is subject to their call by day and night. And how many I have heard during the last few weeks with that peculiar consciousness of this close relationship: “He was our doctor.” Just when it appears he had a moment to relax, just when he was beginning to unwind and enjoy himself, there was a knock at the door or a ring on the telephone: “Doctor, we need your help. It’s urgent. Come quickly.” Dr. Tury was well trained for such emergencies. As a young surgeon, graduating at the University of Budapest, he went to Vienna to study with the most famous trauma surgeon of Europe, Professor Bohler, who invented this specialty. Going back to his homeland he organized this art at many hospitals, and taught it at the University of Kolozsvár. The life of Dr. Tury was full of interruptions and distractions. Not only patients interrupted him but also the cruel times in which he lived. He was teaching as an assistant professor of trauma surgery at the same University where I was a first year student. I remember him as a very popular young man, revered by his peers and medical students alike. Those were the happiest years of his life. Butthecruel war put an end to his career as a professor. He was called into the army to operate on the hundreds of wounded soldiers. His skill and professionalism saved the life of innumerable young people. After the war, the Communist occupation forced him out of his country. Then came many years of struggle and learning to reestablish himself in his adopted new land. What a blessing it was that we regained him here in America as one of the best practitioners of the art of surgery. From time to time Dr. Tury, for the patient’s benefit, had to say, “Listen, if you want my help, you must do something to help yourself.” Many a patient has learned to be grateful for those stem words. Dr. Tury was methodical and stem in the operating room, for he knew that his patients lives depended on his insistence on perfection. page 6 Dr. Tury chose his profession because he had a great heart. He sincerely cared about humankind. He wanted to do his part to relieve the suffering of humanity. While he lived in the comfort of his beautiful home on the hill, his heart was not only with his immediate patients here, but also with his suffering friends in the old country. He supplied his former students, many of whom had become the professors of the old University, with books, literature and medical instruments. He also supplied the church and many of the young ministers who were serving under inhospitable conditions. Dr. Tury had a heart, because he was a man of deep religious faith and convictions. On one of his many visits to the old world, he visited the church of his grandparents in Transylvania. While in the church, he noticed that there was a bird’s leg, standing above the pulpit. Suddenly he remembered that in his childhood’s home there was the statue of a pelican with one leg. What happened was that the pelican, the symbol of the Reformed Church in Hungary, was given to his parents to have it repaired, since it fell off the pulpit. But because wars and peace treaties separated the family from the ancestral land, the pelican could never be returned to the old church. Dr. Tury immediately recognized the connection between the single pelican leg in the church, and the pelican statue with the missing leg in his childhood home. He asked a famous sculptor to refit the leg with a new pelican. Why the pelican? Because according to an old legend, when a pelican runs out of food, she feeds her little ones with her own blood. Dr. Tury’s life is symbolized by that old pelican. He gave his life, his knowledge, his skill, his heart to his patients that they might have life and health, and have it restored abundantly. A Transylvanian poet, who was close to the heart of Dr. Tury, wrote before his death: “I have done everything I could. Repaid everyone I owed. Cancelled everyone’s unpaid balance. Forget my passing earthly countenance.” Yes, indeed, our good friend, has done everything he could, and forgave our debt to him. One thing, we will never do. We will not forget his caring and loving countenance as long as we live. Mintapéldányt és árajánlatot szívesen küld: Mrs. Gabriella F Koszorús-Varsa 4000 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington DC 20016 Telephone: (202) 686-0390 MŰVÉSZI TERVEZÉSŰ MAGYAR KARÁCSONYI KÁRTYÁK 7W cleíiver Ui from évit. . IVe tfianh Jftee főt jtt t cominq...
