Reformátusok Lapja, 1969 (69. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1969-01-01 / 1. szám
REFORMÁTUSOK LAPJA 13 gave up truck driving to work as an office boy in the steel mill offices, a ‘white collar’ job that was supposed to lead to better things. The work was light; escorting visiting salesmen in to the boss; filling inkwells; filing; doing errands. I often found myself with time on my hands. To keep amused, I began doodling, copying the inevitable calendars that spot the walls of every office. To my own surprise, my copies resembled the originals sufficiently so that the stenographers, who were my fellow workers, offered to buy them for fifty cents and a dollar each. One girl even became interested enough to buy me art supplies out of her own none-too-fat pay envelope. “I often think of these first patrons whose encouragement led me to begin seriously training for an art career—by enrolling at 18—in the International Correspondence School commercial art course! “For two more years I continued in the mills, part of that time as an apprentice to a pattern maker in the woodworking shop and finally as a clerical worker in the railroad depot, earning $35 a week. After hours I still acted in our Hungarian theatre and now I was able to paint backdrops and design scenery.” Steve now spoke of the marked change of direction his life took. He related, “It was at this point that I heard of real live art classes at the Cleveland Art School and decided to attend one night a week. After my first term I was awarded a scholarship which allowed me to take second and third year courses. I also attended a class at the John Huntington Polytechnic School an additional night a week. “It was at the Cleveland Art School that I met John Gee, my first instructor in commercial art; among the other teachers there, Gaertner, Young and Wilcox were all sufficiently helpful and encouraging so that when a job as an apprentice in a Cleveland Studio became available, I quit my mill job in Lorain. There was some opposition from my family; giving up a $35 job with security, to commute to Cleveland for a mere $22 a week, just didn’t make sense! “Though my work in the studio consisted of little more than lettering and layout,” artist Dohanos explained, “I kept on painting, going on weekend sketching trips with other artist friends. Then, in 1928, soon after my twenty-first birthday, considering myself fairly launched in the art field, I took the summer off to go abroad on a pilgrimage to the art centers of Europe, in company with my instructor and friend, John Gee. We ‘did’ the museums, bicycled through the Alps, and then, on my own, I took a side trip into Hungary to visit my parents’ birthplace.” Then Steve began to tell me about his first visit to Hungary. “The village of Bácska,” he said, “lies forty miles west of Budapest and isn’t even a whistle stop. I did the last few miles on foot, arriving on a Sunday afternoon, clad in plus fours and a beret, that artist’s trademark of those days,” he interjected, “and strolled down the one dirt road along which all the inhabitants live. A flock of geese escorted me to my great-uncle’s door. The house, a long, masonry rectangle, with storks nesting in the thatched roof and well-sweep in the yard, was identical with all the others that lined the village street. Although I had arrived unannounced, I was warmly welcomed, as another nephew from America— most of the villagers had relatives in the new world— and that night I slept in the front room in a four poster bed reserved for guests, under a great feather tick. “I remember,” Steve said, “the sand floor and wondering how one managed not to get sand in the bed. 1 remember the good food, the wine, the rounds of calls to be made, for many of the villagers were related to me. I remember watching my Uncle bringing in the oxen at dusk and getting them into the barn, which was simply an extension of the house. Their horn spread must have been five or six feet and the barn door was narrow so that he had to turn their heads to get them through. I remember that when I left, I was given a boiled chicken, wrapped in newspaper, to eat on the train. But most of all, I remember waking up in that big bed and thinking that if my parents had not migrated to America, I would have been born here, István Dohányos of Bácska—and trying to identify myself with that imaginary character. All I could feel was an infinite gratitude for whatever star had guided my parents overseas so that, instead, I was Stevan Dohanos, artist and American.” His thoughts turned back to America and to how his career was launched. With a sigh he said to me, “All of us young artists lived for the day when we would be good enough to ‘show’ in the annual May exhibit of the Cleveland Museum. For me, that bright day finally arrived in 1930. I received an honorable mention for a black and white drawing and no prize I have received since, has meant more to me. “By now,” Steve continued, “nearly three years had gone by and my earnings had caught up and surpassed the $35 I had been earning in the mills and my family felt a little better about me. Then came the chance to go to New York City. As part of the process, I went to a doctor for a routine physical check-up and, instead of New Y ork, I found myself hustled off to a sanitorium. A tubercular condition had been uncovered. Fortunately for me, it was in its early stage and I could he cured.” • Listening to Steve relate the story of those early years up to 1932, I felt that I wanted to pick up the narrative and say that Steve’s personal experience with tuberculosis was one that would have crushed lesser men. First stricken with the disease at the age of 25, lie suffered a relapse ten years later in 1942. His brother, Bert, and a sister, Irene, both died of tuberculosis. His wife’s brother, Valentine, was also a victim of TB.
