Louise Szimonisz and Susan Szimonisz

00:07 My name is season series and I'm 38 years old today is July 19th. 2008. And where in Buffalo New York. I'm here today with my mother and her only child and her name is Louise salmonese, and she's 74 years old going on 50.

00:28 And I really wanted you to storycorps with her whenever I'd heard it. But recently we got some bad news in the end of May we found out that my perfectly healthy mother has stage 4 lung cancer and I'd grown up with this amazing kind of shimmering dad who was born in Hungary in the hot spring Empire and was a revolutionary in a freedom fighter it a fighter and he was always a really incredible guy, but when I found out in the last few months is that my mom was equally incredible. She was just quieter about it.

01:05 So we're here to talk about her today and mommy told me that one of your earliest memories that you remember was how your maternal grandfather would try to convince you to let him in the gate of your house when you were growing up. Why don't you tell me more about that? Yes, that's correct. It's one of my first memories. My maternal grandfather was a very active man in the community when he was in his thirties and forties. He was up politician. He was active in various organizations in the church and the community but unfortunately his wife died when she was at 34 years old my maternal grandmother and over the course of yours. He became very despondent and he became an alcoholic and by this procedure he had alienated himself from my mother.

02:03 And he became ill because of the alcohol abuse and came to a point where he really could not take care of himself and he approached my mother and asked if he could stay with her and she said she would be too hard too many painful memories, but I have no one else and he persevered and he would bring with him gifts later on and these gifts were small glass bottles of the liquor or wine. He had purchased and he didn't have very much money at that time, but they're pretty little glass figurines which had cleaned up and he came with that gift to my mother saying, how are you I brought this for Louise and of course that would make her very much more of them said it didn't work that particular procedure didn't work, but eventually he stayed with us for his last.

03:02 West days remind me I haven't grown up really with a bright future and then when her mom died everything changed and she was pretty bitter, but you seem to understand that an error and forgive her for that. What what a gun on with that won't my mother was very very smart. She was with Jesse Ketchum medalist in in grammar school, meaning that at the end of that. She was a top student in the entire school. She wanted to be a teacher she had many plans and then her mother develop breast cancer, which was at that time untreatable and inoperable died of that and that caused my grandfather. My mother's father to completely decompressing decompensating was he needed to drink he was unreliable. He became unreliable. He lost his prestige in the community before that for

04:02 Sample, he would through his political connections acquire limousines to pick women up to go to the voting booth to 2 to vote. Very proactive towards women towards Society but my mother and he then said to my mother that now that your mom has died, you're the oldest and you're going to have to stay home and take care of them little kids and she never was able to go to school and she was very bitter about that for a long long time.

04:33 She worked with some nuns. Yes, for example, this is one of the social activities of my grandfather when he was well on Payday on the railroad. He was the supervisor of the Pullman division which were railroad cars which were very nicely appointed inside generally speaking for the officers of the railroad and paydays. He would provide a handcart for my mother and one of the nuns to go from pay station to pay station along the railroad tracks and he provided them clothes for my mother as if she were the orphan and the nun was one of the caretakers of the orphans. They would go up and down the trash and money for the North and raising money for the orphanage.

05:29 I I think that my grandfather's probably said it probably wouldn't be good to take an orphan actually a problem daughter in there instead.

05:40 When your mom's mommy maternal grandmother had that breast cancer. Your mom was the main one who took care of her, right? What was the rest of the family's reaction to cancer then?

05:54 Well the rest of the family.

05:57 Did what they could to help but at that time this was my mother was born in 1903 and she was 14 years old. So that would have been the mid 1914 or so. There was very little that they could do to cure cancer or to treat it or even to detective that was probably the biggest problem that I thought you had told me. They were scared to come to the house.

06:27 I don't recall that. I'm at my must have been spoken about that. When you were fourteen your dad. Second. I was kind of a time when your mom had another important man in her life. Let her down what happened to your dad my father blood poisoning and this was in somewhere probably like 1948 or so 1945 perhaps he was home for the weekend and on Sunday. He began to feel he have temperature Monday. He can go to work and he was taking eventually to hospital with a high fever and a diagnosis of blood poisoning was made.

07:18 And our physician at the time trying to treat them in the various contemporary ways how to get down to the hospital now to get the blood poisoning when we think retrospectively it's because he climbed up a wooden ladder to replace a light bulb in the chandelier. And then when he came down he says I scratch myself and we think that's how the blood poisoning started threw up during ladder perhaps or a piece of wood that got inside and to Spud circulation. We he deteriorated there was nothing I or physician could do me a very good position from the sun called Lynnwood row of Physicians and he's simply got sicker and sicker over course of about two and a half weeks, but it was at the time that

08:13 Penicillin type drugs were being developed and our family physician was able to acquire some of these tablets. I believe they were aureomycin tablets are called the gold tablets and they cost the equivalent of gold eventually. He was able to get these tablets and my father after being put on them began to improve and perhaps two or three weeks later. He was able to come home and recuperate but those tablets really were like the price of gold and Not only was my father not employed for it probably at that time almost two months and there was no such thing as sick payments are sickly fumes or compensation for that and we own house, but it was mortgage. The mortgage payments were not being made. My mother had never worked. She didn't know what

09:13 Do and was really very hard time for us. He came home. He was getting better. But I took a long time and one point my mother decided. She just had to go back to work and she still herself for that not to go back to work cuz she has never worked outside of the house. She still herself for that and she went to work in the kitchen of a restaurant or a hotel then that evening. She came home in tears and she just doesn't know. I'm sorry. I can't go back there. It's all dirty swearing. I just couldn't do it. I don't do it. So we fell behind further some of my parents were able to get some money to keep the house going but we were we went into very deep poverty at that time.

10:06 They recovered when you decided to do something about that, right? I remember your sister was up here. You're the early eldest of three and she said when she was really shocked with your diagnosis. She said that you can't go anywhere cuz you're our leader and she meant that you took into your own hands getting out of poverty. So you were in Catholic school and you got a job, right?

10:35 Oh, yes. I was some.

10:39 It when my father became ill I think I was 15 or 14 years old and I had to wait until I reach 60 and to apply for job. I was in probably at that time high school and I on a day that I turn 16. I had already lined up a job at a when we would call perhaps a department store and that job would pay me about 50 or $0.55 an hour, which was what they would pay today and maybe some are kind of store and I work 20 hours a week and that money was for my tuition and for books and for clothing my parents supported me with a place to live at in food everything else. They could not do any more than that because of this type of bankruptcy that they were in so there's a department store statler's.

11:39 What did you do there?

11:41 I was in the food department or the jewelry department mostly in the food department and I would go to a type of counter where they would have different types of food. For example at the sugar counter where I was quite frequently, they would have 5 lb bags and 10 lb bags of sugar stacked up and people come to the counter there and say I'd like a bag of sugar. I would give them the bag of sugar. They would pay the me the money I would give them their change and they would go to the next counter or another counter for green beans and cans or pasta and I acquired a very strong hands.

12:27 Good for tennis

12:30 And if you had time for tennis actually earlier I did when before my father got sick my we live in a two-family home with my aunt and my mother and my aunt discover they could get rid of us kids by giving us tennis rackets and a ball and a nickel for a cookie and they send us off to the Schiller Park near the Cheektowaga Buffalo. We be out for the afternoon. So you'd walk home from Sailors, right? You were telling me a bus ride cost a whopping $0.03 then but that was a very sensitive earned. What time would you get home from work? Well, I work from 6 to 10 and I get home around 10:30, but it's correct the bus fare or the trolley fare was about 3 cents as I recall, but I was a lot more than $0.03 today and we just didn't have the money.

13:26 At one point is that as you're considering careers that maybe you should become a nun.

13:33 And even though there a lot of churches nearby you decide to go to Texas tell me about that was correct at the end of the senior year in college. We had a very very beautiful also called Retreat and I was impressed with that and I thought maybe it would not be a bad idea of me to find an order of nuns if did social work and I talked to a priest friend who gave me a book of different orders. He said pick one out that you like and go there and visit and this happen to be an order in Galveston a German order which was doing social work there in Galveston Texas thought it would be nice to see Galveston. So I wrote to them agreed that I would be there in a certain date and made railroad reservations to get there and I told him I'd be there around 6 at night, but I actually arrived at noon and that would give me time to see Galveston. I arrive then on that date in Galveston and I walked off the train.

14:33 And there were the nuns waves. I thought they took me to their mother house and showed me a very nice room and said you can stay here you can rest and then we'll have dinner and after dinner. We'll have Recreation someone dinner time came. We sat down and the meal was very good with a very clean the place and they seem to be very nice but there was no conversation and other where readings from some sort of book religious readings when that was finished they sent. All right now we'll go for a recreation upstairs on the second floor to the patio and it was beautiful the sky was beautiful but like a light blue velvet with the Stars have been coming out and I thought all this is going to be nice and we all sat down and chairs. They all the nuns did.

15:33 And they took out their rosaries and I said no for me and I told him I would be leaving in the morning and I did but I went to Galveston first.

15:53 But it was a very good way of sort of a problem solving way instead of sort of thinking about things do it. Try it. And then you'll find out what you take the train to Galveston.

16:08 Then later on you if I located this social work path and you worked in Appalachia.

16:15 Yes, I actually didn't work there but on a summer vacation from my job. I had a month's month off and I had a friend who also had the same time off was an x-ray technician and we went to a hospital Call the Frontier nursing service in app in Kentucky again with the same desire of becoming part of the growing New Order in the country, which was Pro helping other people win. And this was a wonderful time after the second world war in the decades after that. So we went there to the frontier nursing service and participate in their activities.

16:57 You and honey became a chemist you were to Roswell Park Institute doing research and you also taught at the calasanctius school, which is a school run by Hungarian Pirates father's which is that I order of Hungarian priests and around that time. There was the Hungarian Revolution and at one point you went to a picnic that the school was having at greycliff, which is a Frank Lloyd Wright House Down in Lake Erie. Would you meet there?

17:30 There I met my husband-to-be and it is correct. He was it was at the time of the Hungarian revolution of 1956.

17:41 It was actually just before I went to Appalachian but those plans had already been made and I drove my car into the parking lot for this festival for the Cal Central School. And there I saw a man who was handsome incredibly handsome Hartley very polished looking.

18:07 No, not not not funny but easy to approach and he spoke no English argue with you. But I knew that he was the one what was he doing? There isn't a parking space, but I didn't know that at the time but yes, he was a physician.

18:36 So you helps him and then we called him finally Abby, which means daddy in Hungarian. We kind of adopted that over the years you helped him kind of acclimate to being a American and he was very independent and you told me a story about one of his first shopping trips into the health and beauty aisle.

19:00 Right he up the order. They not afraid of the Cal Central School was under an order and they were Hungarian priest who came here after the second world war because they could not go back to Hungry. They would be arrested by the communist regime there and they would now in 1956 during this revolution gave housing to the refugees of the 1956 Revolution which was up and others that was in greycliff today, which is one of the Frank Lloyd Wright houses and near Graycliff was a drugstore and up. He wanted to become Americans quickly as possible and he decided he would no longer rely on the pyrus father's little gifts of shampoo and soap and shaving cream. He went to a little drug store on Old Lakeshore Road, and he thought he bought a shampoo went home. And I said I have started to shampoo is hair, but this was a green liquid.

20:00 And he became very very scared that it was a dying of some sort and his hair was prematurely gray Almost White. He says he just jumped out and try to find a mirror was running around all over the place and with great satisfaction. He saw that his hair was still quite so are there many many will incidents like we once had the conversation very entertaining very intelligent. He spoke about Brussels and I spoke about Brazil not as you got to know him more heat gun through World War II where he was in the Nigerian Airforce and then his first wife that died just a month before the Hungarian Revolution and he had two boys in their early teens in addition to all that he'd gone through this worse horrible experiences that really I think we can hear but we can't understand anything.

21:00 To tell you about some of those.

21:03 The day that the I guess Mongolian troops from the Russian Direction came into the little town near the border with Austria that he lived in where he was a town doctor. I he knew that he had to leave. Otherwise, he might be killed or worse before Stitt turn in other Freedom Fighters. So he told his sons to meet him at the train station. He didn't tell them.

21:35 That they were leaving their home that they were going to walk out and getting out across the Iron Curtain was a really dangerous thing to do. He needs some things about that. They want you tell me about that and about the shoelace moment. Just after the second world war the band Tire country of Hungary was surrounded with barbed wire and mines in the ground in order to keep people from escaping from the country and it was under the control of the Russians and they had troops there in the educated population was suspected as being not loyal.

22:18 Puppy however was not sent to Siberia or in prison because they needed doctors and he was the doctor for Border Tim.

22:27 When the revolution broke out he participated to the extent that he went to the hospital and there was one of his worst experiences because they start bringing in school boys who were shot during the revolution in the crossfire and these were friends of his sons of his wife had died a month earlier and the revolution succeeded after 7 days for a few short days until the Russians came back with tanks at the exact time when I say Russians, I'm speaking to the Russians right after the second world war in that in today's terms. We have to be careful about that.

23:09 The troops that were brought in to quiet Revolution were Mongolians whenever he saw that he realized that if he stayed there he would be arrested this time his brother-in-law who was head of an underground sell it up. He was part of was arrested publicly announced his confession in a drug speech. They was home.

23:34 Are puppies and as you said collected his boys and walked out of hungry though. What he heard was that the troops were told to stop people walking out on the roads. So those hungarians and I think there would like to half-million who fled walk down the railroad tracks and is he was walking with the boys. He passed by some guards and he was really scared what would happen? He couldn't help but bend over to pretend to tie a shoelace and Izzy Look Backwards. He saw that those troops were not watching him and then he just continued on and went to Austria.

24:15 Where he organized a refugee camp for the hungarians and after he organized it refugee camp you send a letter to his boy scout master here in Hamburg and said, he was a priest of pyrus father. He said dear Joe. I'm a refugee. Can you help me out within a week? He was Gallery reply in the airfare to to this to Hamburg with his two boys.

24:52 You guys would go on camping trips and he would take movies and he was really kind of a little kid, even though he was this grown up. Remember you telling me that he wanted to name me sunshine and even the nurses wouldn't let him but I travel a lot and he wasn't allowed to see his family in hungry. Cuz if he went back they would have potentially kept him and they wouldn't let all of his family out at once. But sometimes they would let one person out to visit in in Europe tell me about when you went to Norway when you were born. He was ecstatic and he also didn't know what to do with a little girl.

25:41 And therefore he thought he would call you sunshine. And as you said we did not do that way. We called you a suit button Hungarian for him. You were not put sugar which is I understand that means sunshine and because he was unable to go back to hungry and his family couldn't get out. We would go to Europe and they sometimes could get leave to go to the European countries. And one of our first countries that we went to where they could go was Norway and we came across social which we could spend the night. I'll be you and I and we waited for your bed because all the other Weiser just two cats bolted into the wall. Very nice place in April that all may be 2 ft tall narrowing container.

26:36 And they left that there and I was holding you in my arms and I looked at that and I looked it up anywhere we can do here. He says I don't know because it was about 2 ft. So finally we we just lured you into this to fade deep container. If you looked up at us and said the expression on your face was boy. Am I in trouble with these are and how old was he?

27:02 Five months and then I came with pillows. So you've always been an activist and growing up that was kind of mortifying because other moms were just kind of making brownies and going to Girl Scouts and you are always stirring the pot. I remember you would go into the school and make sure that the science textbooks in the math textbooks at girls and them not just boys and gender Equity was really a big deal for you and we grew up on I Street that have been kind of a Boulevard and then became a really busy street because of Highway was built nearby and there's a park across the street and you were the leader of the neighbors who wanted a stops us a signal button. How do you get that signal put in my sort of can-do attitude? Which Maybe?

28:02 I had a little bit of before I met up and you was magnified by him and especially by you because you enhance those jeans that you got and he was doing. It's a thing too and I just felt I had to keep up with the rest of the family, but it's corrected to her. We were no longer able to cross Parkside Avenue after Humboldt Parkway was abandoned and high-speed Route 33 was put in because Parkside became a feeder route for that busy road and the Parkside Community Association and other members including myself trying to get a signal so that we could at least go across the streets with the children and that was denied all the time. Finally. We organized a funeral procession because we also knew that Parkside was a route that the city took to bring in officials from the airport and we also put tires up and they they told us it

29:02 You're very poor citizens, but two weeks later a signal appeared in Florence and Parkside because one of the regulations by which a signal could be put up is if there were a playground on the other side. They have put on a small playground and then the signal all because of that, although it wasn't done because we ask but because regulations were there you organised a funeral procession mock mock. Yes because our kids might get killed them that busy road what's a mock funeral procession, but we just carried cardboard boxes.

29:42 I guess it worked. So you realized you've been a chemist. You've been a teacher you've been a mom you had run when up. He was running the path lab add a Buffalo General hospital. Then you would see hematology patients in our home in a home office at night. He done all those things and he kind of came to this point. We realized he was quite a bit older than you and you might need another profession did can you don't maintain income if he got sick or retired? So another activist mortifying thing you decided to do I remember we were in your Dodge Dart when I was 9 years old and you told me you were going to go to law school other people's moms really didn't do that. So tell me about going to law school in 1980 when you were what 40

30:36 To about moving about that somewhere in that area maybe 4445. Yes, it's true. And I regret and I apologize ever since for in a sensor is abandoning the idea of motherhood. So yeah, but I'm sorry I did that and put you through that but I'm not up he had a bad heart and he already had been in the hospital. He was hospitalized for a heart attack and he had to watch what he did all the time and I thought that I needed to prepare for that financially probably from what happened during our childhood. And yes, it's correct. I went back to law school and it was a wonderful experience who was one of the best things that I did because gave me an orderly approach to change and what could be done in the howling

31:35 Eventually, I'm limited my practice entirely to abuse children neglected children and juvenile delinquents.

31:46 Do you want to be talked about a lot of stuff? Sometimes you discuss things in the argument kind of style and you're growing up with a doctor and a lawyer. There's never a dull moment off of one thing. You talked about a lot with spirituality and you both have this kind of being cradled in the cosmos feeling of new relationship with God. Tell me a little bit about that.

32:14 Yes, that is true. I think you're correct. And we were both very strong-minded people and but the arguments were about piddly little things really like the grocery list yes, or went to go shopping so that food would be ready and he also thought the dining room table was his desk to feet height, but he has is spirituality and I never saw manifested by anyone or discussed by anyone. He was truly us a son of his father and his father was God and he related. I remember one day when he was a little bit older and the spirituality had already been there, but he never talked about it and where to go to dinner and I was watching TV and I said, come on. Let's see. Let's go we're going to be late came back 5 minutes later. He's still sitting there watching TV and I saw the tears down his cheeks as I come out.

33:14 We have to go what are you watching? And he says he was watching the refugees in Africa, and I said not so you can't do anything about that. You can contribute to charity. Let's go came back 5 minutes later and he's still there and I approach to me says mom, please, you know, I just would like to see something happen to be done about this and he said, you know, I just would like to heat hold God in my arms because God is crying too.

33:45 What spiritually and was very beautiful so

33:51 It's hard to describe they hadn't words but he was a very deeply humanely spiritual thing. You didn't talk about prime proximate cause or whatever it was. He gave us a gift of being able to get a lot of joy out of little things Sunset see the wake us up to go see a cool star in the sky. We pull over to watch the stars and some abandoned highway somewhere and we went camping when I was little and there was like some light behind us as he was carrying me on his shoulders.

34:26 Yes, first of all, you were the joy of his wife and whatever time he's had. He spent with you. We are camping and remote place up in Northern Canada and was a beautiful night warm you were on his shoulders and he was holding your hands around his neck. And as you walk down this path, I was behind you when they're tall spruces and he's came out to a little clearing the moon came out from behind a cloud and you said

34:56 Blob Leah, and he was so thrilled by that he held you even tighter in the two of you went down this path singing memory many moments like that many I'd be on his shoulders and we'd have liked the light of whatever they called and Lantern behind us and so we could see some really big shadows and the pine trees and we pretend we were giants we would go camping for one night and then we'd get up the next morning and go somewhere else. Yes, and remember up. He was always put sardines underneath the seats and cakes.

35:42 I'm starving, but you also saved us in the flood in the Appalachians where we didn't know we were driving into a hurricane and again you like in the mood for everybody.

35:56 Just got 5 minutes. Is there anything else you want to tell me?

36:01 Yes that appease adjustment and Recovery in his ability to be productive in this country after the horrors. He went through all his friends that had been shot all the problems with his children all his ability to adjust to that and recover who came from you especially from you. He adored you and he thought that you should have every skill and sometimes maybe he was a little harsh with you. And even with you. Sometimes he would have these ridiculous arguments. Do you remember when we were getting ready to go back to Hungary the first time and somehow the two of you he threw some chocolates at you through something, OK Google

36:51 We have those moments too in spite of that. I think we had a rich and happy life. You fall asleep really loved poetry. Especially I think that poetry that was spiritual man in the biblical sense. But in the power of the human Spirit sense, and this is a prayer that we've kind of adopted since he died that he had translated from I don't know. He spoke so many languages Latin Hungarian that we've adapted is kind of our Thanksgiving prayer. Would you read it for us?

37:30 I'm not sure I can could you please read it?

37:35 Since you're putting me on the spot, yeah, it's called a today and for Hungarian Catholics. It means thank you God from the song of the Liturgy of the closing mass of a school year.

37:50 God I praise you and thank you for everything that I have had my daily bread with no need to save for tomorrow. Thank you that I have had two coins to give away and I was not forced to beg. Thanks that I had the gift to be able to understand others and I did not have to cry for understanding. Thanks that it made me feel well to cry with those who cried and did not laugh with everybody who was laughing. Thanks.

38:23 That you showed to me all the Beauties and show it to me all the ugliness thinks that all the Beauties made me feel happy, and the ugliness is did not ruin my happiness. Thanks that I never ever heard from love and love those who did not like me. Thanks, and I remained a human being when people did not wish to remain Humane. Thanks that I was able to preserve my face and run the path of the small ones and I am able to run toward who comes again. Thanks that I was able to say yesterday. Amen. And today I can shout amen and tomorrow after tomorrow and afterward I wish to sing. Amen. Amen. Thank you my Lord. Thanks.