Magyar News, 2005. szeptember-december (16. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
2005-11-01 / 3. szám
Farewell to a Hungarian Soul They say if you are a Hungarian then it doesn’t matter where you are, you are a Hungarian. Olga Bodi Réthy was one of of these people. She lived in a Hungarian community in Transylvania, cut off from the motherland. Her parents were prime examples, her father for thirty years was the chief elder of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Monostor. Following in the footsteps her two daughters were enrolled in Kolozsvár in a traditional Hungarian school and attended the Hungarian church. As it happens the circumstances move people out of their place and land them in strange, unknown places. With her family they ended up in the United States where they found a Hungarian community in Fairfield, CT. Olga brought with her the love of Hungarian activities. Joined the Calvin United Church, organized Hungarian school for Saturday mornings, and other Olga Bodi Réthy activities as dance group, celebration of traditional Hungarian holidays, the long Hot Summer dinner-dance at the beach pavilion in Fairfield, and the list could go on. The smile never left her face, she was happy because she was able to be Hungarian without restrictions. Olga joined the local Hungarian organizations, became vise president, then the president of the Pannónia American Hungarian Club. She was a member of the Hungarian Cultural Society of Connecticut. The two girls attended the American schools, but she made sure that they received higher education in Debrecen and Sárospatak. She gave the roots of Hungarian heritage, and also the wings. After a long suffering with an illness Olga passed on. We all in the Hungarian community will miss her dearly, buy we know that Olga’s Hungarian soul will be with us forever. ■ fill mmmmzom GARDEN WOODLANDS and THE WIDE WORLD BEYOND EVELYN DÓMJÁN - PAINTINGS AND PRINTS EVELYN ALEXANDRA DÓMJÁN , a one-time student of Joseph Domján's at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, his wife, mother of their three children and a lifelong collaborator in the woodcut work first won recognition for her art work in nationwide competitions at age six. "As soon as I could walk I was taken to the museums" - she remembers. Although she was educated in Latin school and at home in music, literature, foreign languages and the arts, according to traditions of European intellectual middleclass, her preference for the arts was immediate. She learned early the satisfaction derived from creating art and developed the taste and pleasure of looking at art created by others to the point of ecstasy. It is a fact that she fell in love with Domján's early color compositions years before she met Page 6 the man. Sharing the dramatic life of the artist with its lights and shadows - to be rich or poor - made no difference to her since her basic and urgent need to be surrounded by beauty was always satisfied. Medieval arts, Oriental arts have taught her to be proud of being a nameless member of the universal brotherhood of artists - artisans that reaches through the centuries. She plans to continue her research work in museums, her work in the woodcuts, her garden and her writing. She shares Dómján 's motto: "Art is my life." Kálmán Magyar Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation, 300 Somerset St. New Brunswick, NJ. September 25, 2005 - February 12, 2006. Tel:732-846-5777
