Well, actually I’m not ironman but my grandpa was.
We visited Nemesladony (name-esh-lah-doen) today, the ancestral home of the Borczi (burt-see) clan. Grandpa was a Borczi. We met at the home of Borczi Lujza, niece of Grandpa. She is the current family matriarch. One of the first things she did was ask one of her daughters (Gabriella Borczi Neidemeyer–roughly my age) how to say my name and my brother’s name. They said that they got my name close to correct (true) but had a difficult time with my brother’s name, Bryan. They wanted to call him bree-ann. We worked on that. (Lord knows my Hungarian needs help!)
We went inside where Lujza (lose-a) pulled out a couple of pictures to see if I knew who was in them. Bryan, me, Mom (Julshka here), Dad, etc. That may have been our test to see if we were who we said we were!
Then she went to another room and pulled lout a thick photo album. I shit the proverbial brick! This lady had all the family memorabilia! Pictures, newspaper clippings, etc. How I regretted leaving our Flip Pal in the hotel! She explained who everyone was and I diligently wrote it all down while Tom snapped away with his camera.
We came across a very small picture of a man, a woman, and a baby. I asked who they were and she didn’t know but she was told that they had gone to America before Grandpa. Well, guess what? I DID know who they were! They were Grandpa’s Aunt Rosalia (Kiss–pronounced keesh), her husband Jozsef Bella, and their child Jozsef Bella. They were the people who sponsored Grandpa when he came to the US. I discovered that on Grandpa’s ship manifest.
Last May, on a trip to St. Louis, I located their graves in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis. Jozsef died of tuberculosis in 1926 leaving his wife a widow. I located Jozsef’s obituary from the newspaper archives in the St. Louis County Library and there were the names of his two small children! He died very young, not yet 30, and he left a widow and child who had to fend for themselves during the Great Depression. Talk about having it rough! Through this small picture I may be able to find some pictures of the Bella family in St. Louis. The very least I can do is to send a link to their sites on Find-A-Grave. I made them!
(Actually I may have met these folks when I was small. From some city directories I learned that they live 3 or 4 blocks away from us. I do remember going to someone’s house with Mom before Bryan was born and visiting with this lady about Mom’s age. This would have been one of the Joseph Bella’s children or his widow. I don’t remember if the woman was Mom’s age or older. When you’re 3 or 4, does it matter?)
We vistited the cemetery in Namesladony and saw the graves of Borczi Janos and Janosne (AKA Anna Kiss), grandpa’s parents. Now I can tie him to his parents in Find A Grave and I may be able to tie Rosalia Kiss Bella with her sister, Anna. The only pictures I have of Anna Kiss are of her as an old woman and she is the exact picture of an old Hungarian woman you hold in your mind: sort of squat, gray hair peeking out from a black scarf, long black dress, sensible shoes, rosary in her hand–very nun-like. She had been the family matriarch and died just a few years before Grandpa.
We went to the home of Vera Borczi who is roughly my age. Vera fed us paprikás csirkét, AKA chicken paprikash. YUMMO!!! I make a pretty good one myself but hers was great! The best part were her home made tiny dumplings. Oh! They were to die for!
We talked a lot about Grandpa and about how he yearned to return home but could not because he was blind. Since Grandpa died in 1965, I don’t know that the Communists would have even let him enter the country–too big of a burden on the state, you know. We talked about Grandpa and how he liked Hungarian cooking and either Vera or her sister, Gabriella, said that Mom always wanted to be a better Hungarian cook; so, they sent her a cook book. I recall being on the receiving side of that (I have the book) and Mom was stunned that all the measures were in metric. She never made one thing out of that book. But I just may use it to work on Hungarian. All I know is that a fukenal is a wooden spoon–and, yes, you pronounce that they way you think!
The subject returned to Grandpa. They asked me if I knew what he did for a living and I replied, “Blacksmith” which is on several of his official documents. Well, this was no horse blacksmith! He was an artist! Apparently he was quite skilled and worked for awhile in Budapest. We were told that they believe some of his work still decorates buildings there! Now, isn’t that cool? And here I thought he made horseshoes! (That is how he started.)
The topic drifted to Grandpa’s blindness. I was the only of the 4 grandchildren (me, Bryan, Laura, Leslie) born before he died whom he saw. They asked me if I knew why he went blind and I suppose my recollection was way off base. I thought he had a World War I injury. Someone in the family had one and we believe that it may have been his brother, Sandor. Apparently Sandor had a very serious head trauma. I used to hear that someone had a plate in his head and I thought something like a dinner plate. I read THE BURNING OF THE WORLD which is a first hand account of a Hungarian World War I soldier and I imposed Grandpa in a lot of it. We have a picture of a young WW I Hungarian soldier who sure looks like Grandpa. Perhaps it is Sandor.
Anyway, we continued to talk about Grandpa’s blindness and about how he had a glass eye which I used to clean nightly when I was a young teen. Our translator, the boyfriend of the younger Gabriella’s daughter, said that he thought it could have been caused by working with the torch without eye protection. I asked my brother about it online and he reminded me that Grandpa had retinal detachment. We wonder if that may have been caused by hammering? We will never know the answers to these questions in our lifetimes.
The grandfather about whom I have been writing is not a blood relative. He married my grandmother (I may now have their wedding picture) after the death of her first husband from consumption. He may not be a blood relative but this ironman sure was good to me! This is the guy who taught me numbers and all those little 12 X 12 tables we memorized. But he went further than that with me. He gave me the relationship of numbers through the use of a home made abacus. I could see 2 + 2, not just memorize it. Thanks to Grandpa Borczi, I have a degree in mathematics.
I do believe that God has a special place in heaven for people who raise other peoples’ children. Grandpa had no birth children but he helped Grandma raise Uncle Gaza, Mom, and Uncle Leonard. He and Grandma took in Aunt Ethel after her dad’s death and Ethel’s mom’s inability to raise her kids. Aunt Edna and Uncle Leonard couldn’t have kids and adopted the extremely beautiful Laura, now Laura Null. And those are just the ones I know about. There a so many people who do that. I suppose I had better read PARADISO (Dante) to see if he made a ring for them!
But this little piece is dedicated to our family’s ironman, Janos Sandor Borczi 1892–1965. RIP
cybersyster 