Fraternity-Testvériség, 1968 (46. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1968-11-01 / 11. szám

Presiding over the festival session (form left to right): — Az ünnepélyes ülés elnökségi asztalnál (balról jobbra):

Mr. Donald H. Hadley, Lt. Col. Walter E. Parker, Rév. Baan Vitéz, Rev. Stewart J. Rankin, Maj. Gen. Thomas A. Lane, Hon. Albert A. Fiók, Rt. Rev. Bishop Zoltán Béky, Gen. Lajos Veress de Dálnok, Dr. András Pogány, Mr. László Gábossy and

Dr. Elemer Bakó.

Dr. Zoltán Beky:

In Memoriam - Captain Ákos Székely

On the seal of the American Hungarian Federation the motto is engraved: Fidelissimus ad mortem —Most loyal unto death.

Nowhere has this attitude toward life and Fatherland been proven more than in the shining examples of many a young man who came from Hungary to serve with the American armed forces and to find death in the defense of the freedom of the new country and for the freedom of men in general. The honor roll of the American Hungarian heroes is long indeed reaching from Colonel Kovats of the War of Independence to General Zagonyi and other American Hungarian generals, officers and NCO’s in Lincoln’s armies giving their supreme sacrifice for their new country. They believed with the great President from Springfield, Illinois that a world cannot live half free and half slave and that freedom is an indivisible good of mankind, Americans and Hungarians alike.

Their rows were filled with the American Hungarian GI’s of the two World Wars, the thousands of young American Hungarians who had participated in defending freedom against Communist tyranny in Korea and by those now fighting by the hundreds in our proud army in the jungles of Viet Nam like Captain Ákos Szekely did.

These youths are aware of their duty as citizens of our great country, but they also represent an ideal higher than the average citizen’s virtue in accepting the draft and armed service. They represent a spirit of patriotism which is not so vocal today in America, an ideal of the love of freedom and the hatred of

Dedication sermon, delivered at the dedication ceremonies of the Akos Szekely Memorial Medal at the House Office Building.

tyranny, and an affirmation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights against those who want to enslave the spirit by totalitarian philosophies and terroristic governmental institutions. They have managed to unite in themselves the best of what they learned in the schools and churches of America and the best of heritage they or their parents have brought from their homeland where honor was considered to be the highest good of man.

Captain Akos Szekely, born in Hungary, educated in America, a graduate of West Point Academy, exemplifies this attitude, this spirit abundantly. He and the many other American Hungarian youth who have sacrificed their lives in the defense of the freedom of other peoples are an inspiration to us all in the American Hungarian Federation, in the American Hungarian Community.

He and his colleagues must and have become the pride and ideal of the American Hungarian youth. It is, therefore, that the American Hungarian Federation welcomed the opportunity of organizing together with other American Hungarian groups the Memorial Medal in Memoriam Akos Szekely to be contributed to the living heroes who served their country and also the ideals of their homeland in Viet Nam and who bear witness that the vocal anarchism of a small percentage of our youth in America cannot and should not make us forget even for a moment the laudatory work and heroism of the American youth in Viet Nam, or the contribution the American Hungarian youth is making to the safety and ideals of these United States.

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