Fraternity-Testvériség, 1995 (73. évfolyam, 1-4. szám)
1995-10-01 / 4. szám
FRATERNITY Page 7 TRIBUTE to the GRANTOR of OUR CHARTER PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT The Hungarian Reformed Federation of America was chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1907. Theodore Roosevelt, then President of the United States, signed the charter on February 4, 1907. This document is one of its kind, since no other fraternal society in the United States owns a similar one. We are, therefore, very proud of our charter. In 1901, our Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, agreed to sign a petition asking Congress to grant the Federation a charter that would make it eligible to solicit business in every state of the Union. A young man by the name of Madarassy Tamás from South Bend, Indiana, who was comptroller of the Federation in that year, contacted his Congressman Abraham Lincoln Brick, and persuaded him to introduce a “Bill” in Congress, which would grant the Federation the aspired charter. In 1907, Congress finally passed a special bill granting the Federation its charter. In appreciation of this honor, a bronze relief of President Theodore Roosevelt bearing his quotation adorns the home office: “Only he can become a good citizen who remains true to the heritage of his native land. ” George Dózsa, President THEODORE ROOSEVELT and the HUNGARIANS According to historical records, Theodore Roosevelt’s connection with the ethnic Hungarian community started in 1899 in New York City when he was governor of the State of New York. In some early records, we found the following passage on Roosevelt’s encounter with the Hungarian immigrants: “He was persuaded by the Hungarian Republican Club to come down to the Lower East Side to a dinner at Café Boulevard. The café, as toastmaster pointedly remarked, was a ‘place eminently typical of the East Side, in the very heart there of, in the tenement house district, the home of the poor, the foreigner, the cosmopolitan, the immigrant.’ The very fact of the gov ernor’s presence was interpreted by his hosts as a form of recognition and at least an opening for taking up the problems of the tenements, the foreigners, the poor. Roosevelt chose, however, to take a different tack: ‘If you bring into American life,’ he said, ‘the spirit of the heroes of Hungary, you have done your share. There is nothing this country needs more than there should be put before its men and its future men - its boys and its girls, too - the story of such lives as that of Kossuth.’ Six years later Roosevelt was invited back, this time as President of the United States, to a restaurant named Little Hungary for another banquet and more exposure to Hungarian immigrants. The arrangement and reception committee of the Hungarian Republic Club on that festive occasion in 1905 consisted of fifty men. Roosevelt spoke about the Americanism and the contribution of the immigrants, stressing that the men before him ‘show by their actions that they know no differences between Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, native-born and foreign born.’ ” (The information on the 1899 meeting with Governor Roosevelt and the later banquet with President Roosevelt comes from the proceedings of the banquet, 14 February 1905, and from Antoinette Felek: Charles Felekv and His Unpublished Manuscript. Quoted from: Perlman, Robert: Bridging Three Worlds. Amherst, 1991, 205-206.) ‘ u Ay Ac can Aecame a yotxlcitizen wAo remains /rue to /Ate Avem/aye o^Aid na/Zvc Aa/ru/.
