{"id":1097739,"date":"2023-03-11T19:42:04","date_gmt":"2023-03-12T00:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/?p=1097739"},"modified":"2024-09-30T18:27:04","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T22:27:04","slug":"my-goal-is-making-hungarian-culture-known-a-conversation-with-emese-kerkay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/en\/my-goal-is-making-hungarian-culture-known-a-conversation-with-emese-kerkay\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018My goal is making Hungarian culture known\u2019 \u2014 A Conversation with Emese Kerkay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: hungarianconservative.com<\/a>
\n<\/em>This is an abridged version of the original <\/em>interview<\/em><\/a>\u00a0first published on\u00a0<\/em>777.hu.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018From the moment I met her, when she invited me to teach at the Hungarian school she ran, Emese was for me one of the best and most enthusiastic of the many selfless workers of the Hungarian nation\u2026She was able to recruit selfless and dedicated teachers to head the classes, to raise the necessary funds from nothing, was teaching herself, organizing, inspiring, serving as a role model for all, and fighting without stopping against the fatigue, pettiness, resignation,\u2019 Hungarian fellow teacher and scout Istv\u00e1n S\u00e1ndor, who passed away in 2019 and whom Emese always remembers with great respect and affection, wrote about her.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Emese Kerkay, n\u00e9e Maczky and her husband L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kerkay were both born in Hungary and have been living in America for over 50 years. They have been cultivators of the rich Hungarian historical and cultural heritage and overall active contributors to the life of the Hungarian community of Passaic, New Jersey, having served at the Hungarian school for over 30 years: Emese as teacher and principal, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 as treasurer. Emese has also been an active scout since the age of six and was a founding member and for 25 years curator of the American Hungarian Museum of Passaic. Regardless of several changes during these decades, she\u2019s been able to preserve, enrich and disseminate the treasures entrusted to or discovered by her, be they children (whom she affectionately used to call \u2018little Hungarians\u2019), knowledge, publications or events. She has also actively contributed to the preservation of Hungarian folk traditions by creating several artefacts herself: she has loved painting and carving eggs, embroidering Hungarian folk patterns, burning pictures on wood, and compiling countless cultural publications.<\/p>\n

After long months of slowly getting to know her, attending a variety of events together and reading some of her publications, she finally trusted me enough to invite me to her home in Garfield, New Jersey, where we chatted among her beautifully decorated eggs, countless photo albums and books.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"
PHOTO: Ildik\u00f3 Antal-Ferencz<\/figcaption><\/figure>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She started our conversation with her usual firmness, warning me that all she\u2019s willing to talk about for publication is the work she had done and no details would be shared about her private life. By that time, I had already had an impression of the magnitude of her accomplishments from the books she\u2019d lent me, but I knew very little about her private life. So I tried to persuade her to open up about the latter as well, since I was very much interested to learn where she got her extremely deep and creative affection of Hungarian identity and cultural heritage, her dedication and incredible work ethic, and last but not least the origins of the tremendous knowledge and experience she has passed on to hundreds of Hungarian families in hundreds of different ways. She wasn\u2019t too talkative, but later I was able to map her private life a bit better from her collections and writings about her family lineage, which helped me put together a much more authentic portrait of her.<\/p>\n

From Noble Ancestors to Stateless \u00c9migr\u00e9s<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Emese\u2019s latest research, following the history of the Kolossv\u00e1ry, Maczky and F\u00e1y families, traces the origins of the ancient Transylvanian \u00d3-Tordai Mikola family back to B\u00e9la IV, King of Hungary in the mid-13th century. She inherited values and talents from her ancestors, including her deep commitment to her Hungarian identity, her love of the Hungarian language and culture as well as her dexterity. She believes that these aspects of character feature all the descendants of her great-grandfather, the Lajos Kossuth-loving postmaster of Heves. Her beloved grandmother was one of her role models, too. She has a treasure of knowledge and data collected about her parents and her siblings who live in four different countries (the U.S., Germany, Canada and Hungary) due to the tragic history of Hungary in the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Emese\u2019s grandmother, Anna Maczky (n\u00e9e Mikola) didn\u2019t have an easy life. Not only did she experience poverty in the storms of Hungarian history after World War I but had to face her children\u2019s tragic fate, too. Her son, Emil disappeared on the Eastern front at the River Don (today\u2019s Russia) in 1943, while her other son Gy\u00f6rgy was beaten to death by the communists in 1945. Her beloved brothers suffered deportation by the Germans, and her husband died suddenly. She was deeply religious, and her strong faith helped her through life. In April 1945, she was evacuated to Germany with her daughter-in-law and first granddaughter, Emese, where she was tormented by a terrible homesickness. She was at rest only when, 16 months later, she moved back to Hungary with her daughter and son-in-law. She was an extraordinary woman, not only for the way she led her life, but also for the many talents she inherited from the Mikola family: she loved God, her country and family, she was fond of arts, especially music and poetry, and she was incredibly skillful and inventive overall. She wrote beautiful letters to her son and grandchildren in Germany. \u2018Her letters reveal the soul of a woman of infinite intelligence and spirituality, who always included some kind of spiritual message in her letters: poems, stories, anecdotes, pictures, photos or postcards\u2019, Emese explained.<\/p>\n

Emese\u2019s father, L\u00e1szl\u00f3, was Anna\u2019s second son and a captain of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie (an elite unit of the Hungarian army) as well as a jurist and accountant, who became an American prisoner of war, and after being released, lived in Germany for the rest of his life. When his first child, Emese, was born, he was serving in Szolnok. In May 1941 he was transferred to D\u00e9s in Transylvania, and in 1943 was assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Budapest. His family survived the bombings of 1944 in the countryside. In December, the Ministry\u2019s Gendarmerie Department was relocated to Szombathely to avoid being trapped in Budapest by the advancing Soviet forces. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 had to leave the country, so he was separated from his family, whom he later met in Austria.<\/p>\n

\u2018During the 24 years of his exile, he served the Hungarian cause in every minute of his free time until his last breath: he worked at several Hungarian organizations, supported all good Hungarian causes, gave lectures, even designed a portable hero\u2019s monument, reorganized the Szent L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Society, produced and published all alone a very successful quarterly magazine (GESTA), which was highly acclaimed by the Hungarian diaspora all around the world, and carried on a worldwide correspondence.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

With the help of his incredible memory, he hand-wrote multiple long ballads by J\u00e1nos Arany by heart, creating the family\u2019s first book in exile. He didn\u2019t tell stories, but rather recited poems to his children, and in the last years of his life he wrote poems himself as well. Emese inherited the love of the beauty of the Hungarian language from him. His early death was the result of homesickness: his heart was literally broken. His wife, Erzs\u00e9bet Kolossv\u00e1ry, survived him by nearly 47 years. In 1990 she moved in with her daughter Enik\u0151 but took care of herself until the age of 96. In her last five years, she was lovingly cared for by her three daughters.<\/p>\n

\u2018God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emese was born in 1940, and arrived in Germany at the age of four, where she went to elementary school in a German convent in Alt\u00f6tting for four years, and then attended the Hungarian high school in Kastl, Germany for six years.\u00a0\u2018My training for Hungarian life began in December 1940 on the banks of the Tisza. The name I received from my parents is obligatory. I have tried to fulfil this obligation since my youth, both in Germany and here in the United States. We fled when I was only four years old, with a high fever and pneumonia. God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0The 9\u201310-year-old girl had such a strong homesickness that while her parents were preparing to emigrate to Canada, she prayed secretly that they wouldn\u2019t succeed. \u2018My prayers were answered; they gave up their Canadian emigration plans after three failed attempts.\u2019<\/p>\n

Emese did eventually end up in the U.S., where she hadn\u2019t wanted to go either, but where she believes God later led her:\u00a0\u2018If I had come here as a child and hadn\u2019t attended the high school in Germany, for example, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to fulfill my mission here. For me, the most important goal in the last 50 years has been the cultivation and spreading of Hungarian language, history and culture, especially folk art, egg painting and embroidery. For these, I had to be an adult.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Before her marriage in Stuttgart in 1967 to L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kerkay, a 1956 refugee who had been living in the United States since 1958, Emese attended an interpreter school and worked as a translator and correspondent in Switzerland, Portugal and Germany. After their wedding, she came to America as a tourist, and six months later she received her permanent residency permit but never applied for American citizenship. After their wedding, she said goodbye to her father, not knowing that she would never see him again and that he would only know his first grandchild from a photograph.<\/p>\n

From the Hungarian School to the Hungarian Museum<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Upon her arrival in New Jersey, Emese immediately became involved in the vibrant Hungarian community of Passaic, taking on whatever tasks came her way naturally at the (by now) 120-year-old St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church and the Hungarian Weekend School, the Hungarian Scout Troop in Garfield (founded in 1953) and the Hungarian American Museum (founded in 1981, closed in 2014). Garfield still has a particularly strong scouting presence, as G\u00e1bor Bodn\u00e1r lived and worked there, establishing and directing with \u2018anxious love and uncompromising determination\u2019 the headquarters of the Hungarian Scout Association in Exteris (KMCSSZ in Hungarian). Emese, being a scout since the age of six, worked closely with him until his death in 1996.<\/p>\n

Emese first became a Hungarian school teacher and then the principal from 1979 until 2006. The most important dates and events of these close to 30 years, and the nearly 70 years that preceded them in the life of the school, are recorded in the publication\u00a099 Years in Hungarian<\/em>\u00a0written by her. Reading through the adventurous history of the Hungarian school, we learn that on 7 February 1914 the sisters of the Divine Charity Order started their work in Passaic at the request of Rev. Lajos Kov\u00e1cs pastor. Later, \u2018despite all efforts, the second generation began to forget their mother tongue at an alarming rate. Half of the 640 families in the parish neglected their religious life and began to stay away from church\u2019, but the nuns who were invited (back) by pastor Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r took over the management of the school. The issue of Hungarian education faded again after World War II, and by the time the first wave of post-war immigrants arrived in the early 1950s, the Hungarian school in Passaic ceased to exist\u2026 However, after overcoming the initial difficulties, preservation of the Hungarian language, culture and traditions became important also for the \u2018new Hungarians\u2019. Since the post-war immigrants who were mostly highly educated also brought with them the knowledge and love of scouting, the weekend Hungarian school restarted mostly with scout leaders as teachers.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"
Emese and her husband L\u00e1szl\u00f3 at the church Christmas lunch in 2022 PHOTO: courtesy of Emese Kerkay<\/figcaption><\/figure>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The new wave of refugees after the revolution and freedom fight of 1956 were first welcomed by the Reformed Hungarian Saturday School. The Catholic school had a more difficult start, but in 1958 Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r managed to (re)open the St. Stephen\u2019s parish\u2019s Hungarian Weekend School, too. In 1965, thanks to Rev. Dr. Antal Dunay, daily Hungarian lessons started after the English classes for more than 100 children. The one-hour daily Hungarian class had excellent results. According to Emese,\u00a0\u2018by successfully overcoming financial and technical difficulties, this school could have been a model for other settlements, but none of the 16 Saturday schools existing at the time could implement Hungarian education daily. Despite the great opportunity, even Hungarians of Passaic had to be regularly encouraged to join\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

A new chapter in the history of Hungarian education started in 1974, when the reformed Rev. Zolt\u00e1n Kir\u00e1ly founded the Weekend Hungarian School with his wife Zsuzsanna. In 1976, the Reformed and Catholic parishes jointly reorganized the Hungarian School, in which L\u00e1szl\u00f3 became the treasurer and Emese a teacher. Since then, there has been Hungarian education continuously on each Saturday between 9 am and 1 pm, from kindergarten to school for 12\u201314-year-old students (back in Emese\u2019s time, even up to 18 years when there was a demand for it). Originally, there was an English class for non-Hungarian speaking students, but it wasn\u2019t successful, so it ceased to operate in 1988.<\/p>\n

\u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Therefore, during the last 20 years of Emese\u2019s administration, a prerequisite for schooling was speaking Hungarian. She was regularly criticized for this decision, but she has always believed that\u00a0\u2018results can only be achieved with children where the family wants the same. We can only build on a strong foundation. Decades of experience have shown us that we cannot teach Hungarian to children 3\u20134 hours a week who haven\u2019t been taught at home. If we would switch to English for them, the purpose of the Hungarian school would cease to exist, and we might as well close our doors.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0Great emphasis was placed on the acquisition of the basics, like Hungarian speech, writing, reading, composition, grammar, history, literature, geography and ethnography, traditions, singing, and activities that were sometimes supplemented by crafts and even runic writing.\u00a0\u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary. Since I always taught the older classes, I focused my attention on making my students proud of their heritage, stand up for Hungarians, defend our nation when attacked, correct misconceptions about Hungarians, the Hungarian language and our ancestors when they hear about them at school. They should write on Hungarian topics when they are allowed to do so, and they should present our history, culture, art and traditions to the world.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Emese was a leading example in doing so: when Principal Zsuzsanna Kir\u00e1ly resigned in January 1979, she took over the management of the school. Officially parish priest Rev. B\u00e9la T\u00f6r\u00f6k pastor was the principal until 1990, but Emese did all the school-related administration until the summer of 2006. In addition to her administrative tasks and her work as principal, she also taught regularly. In fact, for eight years she cleaned the school herself, then for two years with her daughter\u2019s help; only after that did she involve the teachers and the parents, but half the time she was still left with this \u2018noble task\u2019 until someone finally took it over from her.<\/p>\n

Teaching traditions have always been important in Hungarian schools in general, thus folk singing has constantly been taught everywhere; in Passaic it\u2019s been an integral part of the curriculum from the very first moment, based on the inexhaustible treasure trove of Hungarian folk songs. Folk games, sayings, readings and storytelling were always part of the kindergarten curriculum, while older children learned many folk customs, wedding songs, folk ballads. Folk dancing was not left out of the curriculum either, if there was a suitable instructor; for nine years, Emese\u2019s and L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s two children took the lead. The students were taught handicrafts (often by Emese herself), and at year-end there was an exhibition of their creations which were often used as gifts. Later a drawing competition was introduced, and an exhibition was also held at the end of the school year. Almost every year a nativity play, as well as caroling were performed at the Christmas celebrations. The students\u2019 favorite activities were usually painting eggs and acting.<\/p>\n

\u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a curator of the American Hungarian Museum, Emese organized exhibitions, wrote several brochures and publications about e.g. Easter, Christmas, embroidery, lace-making, Hungarian costumes, folk instruments, Trianon, 1956, and the Holy Crown. The exhibitions and programs included various contemporary artists\u2019 work, such as painter Jen\u0151 Doby, engraver J\u00f3zsef Domj\u00e1n, pianist L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Fornwald, photographer B\u00e9la K\u00e1sa, woodcarver Gy\u00f6rgy P\u00e1ndi. She also regularly held lectures, presentations and courses on Hungarian embroidery, folk costumes, and egg decoration, mainly for English-speaking audiences. Hungarian history always provided the framework for these sessions. \u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else,\u2019 she confessed. In 2014, the City of Passaic unexpectedly gave the museum a month of notice to pack up 25 years of work and put it in storage, where it\u2019s kept partly until today. Founder K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Magyar Sr. has been working ever since to transfer the collection somewhere else where it could be on display again.<\/p>\n

In addition to her intellectual work, Emese\u2019s hands \u2018always had to be busy with something.\u2019 She embroidered, knitted and drew since being in elementary school where this was a requirement at the time. When she was nine years old and had to spend the Easter break in the monastery, she received two eggs from his parents visiting her, carved by her father: one had the Hungarian coat of arms, the other the map of Hungary on it. From that moment, she became a devoted believer and enthusiastic \u2018activist\u2019 of egg painting. In 1971, she learned how to blow out eggs from folk artist Zsuzsanna Kormann (n\u00e9e Kokron) and lace designer and industrial artist Katalin Krist\u00f3-Nagy. They together were passing on their knowledge and experience by teaching the Hungarian scouts, Hungarian schoolchildren, and even foreigners about the secrets of Hungarian egg decorating for years. They had plenty of opportunities to practice and exhibit their work, because Hungarian Americans used to observe the Central European custom of Dousing Day (whereby men and boys visit women and girls, recite poems and then sprinkle them with perfume or water), unimaginable without decorated eggs. This was taken so seriously that girls and women competed with each other with decorating eggs, while boys and men wrote their own poems (which Emese even collected). When they discovered that only Ukrainian decorated eggs were widely known in the U.S., they began to advertise the Hungarian ones by exhibiting at museums, libraries, egg shows, and writing articles about the related customs. Emese even produced a 50-page booklet in English in which she explained the meaning of the ancient Hungarian word \u2018h\u00edmes\u2019, its religious origin and related folk traditions, drew 400 Hungarian egg patterns, and detailed some of the techniques for decorating eggs (e.g. scratched, written, engraved, etched, plant paper and metal applique painted eggs).<\/p>\n

Devoted to Hungarian patterns, she has also painted them on tiles, wood, leather, fabric, and paper. She has also burned pictures and patterns on wood. In the Hungarian school, she has made a sample of every handicraft donating almost all her own creations and embroideries. She has also decorated eggs for sale. Her publications and writings are extremely diverse but are mostly focused on collecting and recording data and stories. Emese has been \u2018collecting\u2019 her ancestors and family stories for 45 years and wrote biographies of her famous relatives. She has created countless compilations, sometimes together with her students for the Hungarian School. In addition, she has put together an endless series of scouting memoirs, events and travelogues that proves her immense work and commitment to actively nurturing and spreading Hungarian culture.<\/p>\n

Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 never miss any masses or events at the St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church, but when asked about her deep faith, Emese just shrugs her shoulders: \u2018Faith is so natural to me that I can\u2019t talk about it.\u2019 Therefore, it was also natural for her and for her husband to serve the local Hungarian church community throughout their lives. \u2018This was \u201cprescribed to me\u201d by God. As Istv\u00e1n S\u00e1ndor used to say, I shared my talents all my life,\u2019 she added. Over the decades, they had to work with many Hungarian parish priests and always got along with them. Before saying goodbye to me, Emese recalls two of her fond memories with Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas pastor, who passed away in 2018. Every year, Emese prepared 8\u201310 scratched eggs for the food blessing, which she gave away as presents afterwards. On his first Easter in Passaic in 2008, Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas also received a decorated egg from her, as did all local pastors before him. \u2018The blessing of food was at noon on Saturday. To my great surprise, the next day, on Easter Sunday, there was a small table in front of the altar, with the resurrected Christ on it as well as my blessed egg. No one has ever honored a decorated egg of mine like he did\u2019, smiled Emese. When Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2017, their son asked the pastor to get them a papal blessing, for which he needed to use all his connections in Hungary and Rome. \u2018He was very anxious that the papal blessing, which caused us a great surprise, would arrive on time. He was such a spirited person. The more I got to know him, the more I loved him, but that\u2019s another story\u2019, concluded Emese.<\/p>\n

Source: hungarianconservative.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: hungarianconservative.com<\/a>
\n<\/em>This is an abridged version of the original <\/em>interview<\/em><\/a>\u00a0first published on\u00a0<\/em>777.hu.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018From the moment I met her, when she invited me to teach at the Hungarian school she ran, Emese was for me one of the best and most enthusiastic of the many selfless workers of the Hungarian nation\u2026She was able to recruit selfless and dedicated teachers to head the classes, to raise the necessary funds from nothing, was teaching herself, organizing, inspiring, serving as a role model for all, and fighting without stopping against the fatigue, pettiness, resignation,\u2019 Hungarian fellow teacher and scout Istv\u00e1n S\u00e1ndor, who passed away in 2019 and whom Emese always remembers with great respect and affection, wrote about her.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Emese Kerkay, n\u00e9e Maczky and her husband L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kerkay were both born in Hungary and have been living in America for over 50 years. They have been cultivators of the rich Hungarian historical and cultural heritage and overall active contributors to the life of the Hungarian community of Passaic, New Jersey, having served at the Hungarian school for over 30 years: Emese as teacher and principal, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 as treasurer. Emese has also been an active scout since the age of six and was a founding member and for 25 years curator of the American Hungarian Museum of Passaic. Regardless of several changes during these decades, she\u2019s been able to preserve, enrich and disseminate the treasures entrusted to or discovered by her, be they children (whom she affectionately used to call \u2018little Hungarians\u2019), knowledge, publications or events. She has also actively contributed to the preservation of Hungarian folk traditions by creating several artefacts herself: she has loved painting and carving eggs, embroidering Hungarian folk patterns, burning pictures on wood, and compiling countless cultural publications.<\/p>\n

After long months of slowly getting to know her, attending a variety of events together and reading some of her publications, she finally trusted me enough to invite me to her home in Garfield, New Jersey, where we chatted among her beautifully decorated eggs, countless photo albums and books.<\/p>\n

\n

[caption id=\"attachment_32720\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"1024\"]\"\" PHOTO: Ildik\u00f3 Antal-Ferencz[\/caption]

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She started our conversation with her usual firmness, warning me that all she\u2019s willing to talk about for publication is the work she had done and no details would be shared about her private life. By that time, I had already had an impression of the magnitude of her accomplishments from the books she\u2019d lent me, but I knew very little about her private life. So I tried to persuade her to open up about the latter as well, since I was very much interested to learn where she got her extremely deep and creative affection of Hungarian identity and cultural heritage, her dedication and incredible work ethic, and last but not least the origins of the tremendous knowledge and experience she has passed on to hundreds of Hungarian families in hundreds of different ways. She wasn\u2019t too talkative, but later I was able to map her private life a bit better from her collections and writings about her family lineage, which helped me put together a much more authentic portrait of her.<\/p>\n

From Noble Ancestors to Stateless \u00c9migr\u00e9s<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Emese\u2019s latest research, following the history of the Kolossv\u00e1ry, Maczky and F\u00e1y families, traces the origins of the ancient Transylvanian \u00d3-Tordai Mikola family back to B\u00e9la IV, King of Hungary in the mid-13th century. She inherited values and talents from her ancestors, including her deep commitment to her Hungarian identity, her love of the Hungarian language and culture as well as her dexterity. She believes that these aspects of character feature all the descendants of her great-grandfather, the Lajos Kossuth-loving postmaster of Heves. Her beloved grandmother was one of her role models, too. She has a treasure of knowledge and data collected about her parents and her siblings who live in four different countries (the U.S., Germany, Canada and Hungary) due to the tragic history of Hungary in the 20th century.<\/p>\n

Emese\u2019s grandmother, Anna Maczky (n\u00e9e Mikola) didn\u2019t have an easy life. Not only did she experience poverty in the storms of Hungarian history after World War I but had to face her children\u2019s tragic fate, too. Her son, Emil disappeared on the Eastern front at the River Don (today\u2019s Russia) in 1943, while her other son Gy\u00f6rgy was beaten to death by the communists in 1945. Her beloved brothers suffered deportation by the Germans, and her husband died suddenly. She was deeply religious, and her strong faith helped her through life. In April 1945, she was evacuated to Germany with her daughter-in-law and first granddaughter, Emese, where she was tormented by a terrible homesickness. She was at rest only when, 16 months later, she moved back to Hungary with her daughter and son-in-law. She was an extraordinary woman, not only for the way she led her life, but also for the many talents she inherited from the Mikola family: she loved God, her country and family, she was fond of arts, especially music and poetry, and she was incredibly skillful and inventive overall. She wrote beautiful letters to her son and grandchildren in Germany. \u2018Her letters reveal the soul of a woman of infinite intelligence and spirituality, who always included some kind of spiritual message in her letters: poems, stories, anecdotes, pictures, photos or postcards\u2019, Emese explained.<\/p>\n

Emese\u2019s father, L\u00e1szl\u00f3, was Anna\u2019s second son and a captain of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie (an elite unit of the Hungarian army) as well as a jurist and accountant, who became an American prisoner of war, and after being released, lived in Germany for the rest of his life. When his first child, Emese, was born, he was serving in Szolnok. In May 1941 he was transferred to D\u00e9s in Transylvania, and in 1943 was assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Budapest. His family survived the bombings of 1944 in the countryside. In December, the Ministry\u2019s Gendarmerie Department was relocated to Szombathely to avoid being trapped in Budapest by the advancing Soviet forces. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 had to leave the country, so he was separated from his family, whom he later met in Austria.<\/p>\n

\u2018During the 24 years of his exile, he served the Hungarian cause in every minute of his free time until his last breath: he worked at several Hungarian organizations, supported all good Hungarian causes, gave lectures, even designed a portable hero\u2019s monument, reorganized the Szent L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Society, produced and published all alone a very successful quarterly magazine (GESTA), which was highly acclaimed by the Hungarian diaspora all around the world, and carried on a worldwide correspondence.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

With the help of his incredible memory, he hand-wrote multiple long ballads by J\u00e1nos Arany by heart, creating the family\u2019s first book in exile. He didn\u2019t tell stories, but rather recited poems to his children, and in the last years of his life he wrote poems himself as well. Emese inherited the love of the beauty of the Hungarian language from him. His early death was the result of homesickness: his heart was literally broken. His wife, Erzs\u00e9bet Kolossv\u00e1ry, survived him by nearly 47 years. In 1990 she moved in with her daughter Enik\u0151 but took care of herself until the age of 96. In her last five years, she was lovingly cared for by her three daughters.<\/p>\n

\u2018God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Emese was born in 1940, and arrived in Germany at the age of four, where she went to elementary school in a German convent in Alt\u00f6tting for four years, and then attended the Hungarian high school in Kastl, Germany for six years.\u00a0\u2018My training for Hungarian life began in December 1940 on the banks of the Tisza. The name I received from my parents is obligatory. I have tried to fulfil this obligation since my youth, both in Germany and here in the United States. We fled when I was only four years old, with a high fever and pneumonia. God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0The 9\u201310-year-old girl had such a strong homesickness that while her parents were preparing to emigrate to Canada, she prayed secretly that they wouldn\u2019t succeed. \u2018My prayers were answered; they gave up their Canadian emigration plans after three failed attempts.\u2019<\/p>\n

Emese did eventually end up in the U.S., where she hadn\u2019t wanted to go either, but where she believes God later led her:\u00a0\u2018If I had come here as a child and hadn\u2019t attended the high school in Germany, for example, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to fulfill my mission here. For me, the most important goal in the last 50 years has been the cultivation and spreading of Hungarian language, history and culture, especially folk art, egg painting and embroidery. For these, I had to be an adult.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Before her marriage in Stuttgart in 1967 to L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kerkay, a 1956 refugee who had been living in the United States since 1958, Emese attended an interpreter school and worked as a translator and correspondent in Switzerland, Portugal and Germany. After their wedding, she came to America as a tourist, and six months later she received her permanent residency permit but never applied for American citizenship. After their wedding, she said goodbye to her father, not knowing that she would never see him again and that he would only know his first grandchild from a photograph.<\/p>\n

From the Hungarian School to the Hungarian Museum<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Upon her arrival in New Jersey, Emese immediately became involved in the vibrant Hungarian community of Passaic, taking on whatever tasks came her way naturally at the (by now) 120-year-old St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church and the Hungarian Weekend School, the Hungarian Scout Troop in Garfield (founded in 1953) and the Hungarian American Museum (founded in 1981, closed in 2014). Garfield still has a particularly strong scouting presence, as G\u00e1bor Bodn\u00e1r lived and worked there, establishing and directing with \u2018anxious love and uncompromising determination\u2019 the headquarters of the Hungarian Scout Association in Exteris (KMCSSZ in Hungarian). Emese, being a scout since the age of six, worked closely with him until his death in 1996.<\/p>\n

Emese first became a Hungarian school teacher and then the principal from 1979 until 2006. The most important dates and events of these close to 30 years, and the nearly 70 years that preceded them in the life of the school, are recorded in the publication\u00a099 Years in Hungarian<\/em>\u00a0written by her. Reading through the adventurous history of the Hungarian school, we learn that on 7 February 1914 the sisters of the Divine Charity Order started their work in Passaic at the request of Rev. Lajos Kov\u00e1cs pastor. Later, \u2018despite all efforts, the second generation began to forget their mother tongue at an alarming rate. Half of the 640 families in the parish neglected their religious life and began to stay away from church\u2019, but the nuns who were invited (back) by pastor Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r took over the management of the school. The issue of Hungarian education faded again after World War II, and by the time the first wave of post-war immigrants arrived in the early 1950s, the Hungarian school in Passaic ceased to exist\u2026 However, after overcoming the initial difficulties, preservation of the Hungarian language, culture and traditions became important also for the \u2018new Hungarians\u2019. Since the post-war immigrants who were mostly highly educated also brought with them the knowledge and love of scouting, the weekend Hungarian school restarted mostly with scout leaders as teachers.<\/p>\n

\n

[caption id=\"attachment_32721\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"658\"]\"\" Emese and her husband L\u00e1szl\u00f3 at the church Christmas lunch in 2022 PHOTO: courtesy of Emese Kerkay[\/caption]

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The new wave of refugees after the revolution and freedom fight of 1956 were first welcomed by the Reformed Hungarian Saturday School. The Catholic school had a more difficult start, but in 1958 Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r managed to (re)open the St. Stephen\u2019s parish\u2019s Hungarian Weekend School, too. In 1965, thanks to Rev. Dr. Antal Dunay, daily Hungarian lessons started after the English classes for more than 100 children. The one-hour daily Hungarian class had excellent results. According to Emese,\u00a0\u2018by successfully overcoming financial and technical difficulties, this school could have been a model for other settlements, but none of the 16 Saturday schools existing at the time could implement Hungarian education daily. Despite the great opportunity, even Hungarians of Passaic had to be regularly encouraged to join\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

A new chapter in the history of Hungarian education started in 1974, when the reformed Rev. Zolt\u00e1n Kir\u00e1ly founded the Weekend Hungarian School with his wife Zsuzsanna. In 1976, the Reformed and Catholic parishes jointly reorganized the Hungarian School, in which L\u00e1szl\u00f3 became the treasurer and Emese a teacher. Since then, there has been Hungarian education continuously on each Saturday between 9 am and 1 pm, from kindergarten to school for 12\u201314-year-old students (back in Emese\u2019s time, even up to 18 years when there was a demand for it). Originally, there was an English class for non-Hungarian speaking students, but it wasn\u2019t successful, so it ceased to operate in 1988.<\/p>\n

\u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Therefore, during the last 20 years of Emese\u2019s administration, a prerequisite for schooling was speaking Hungarian. She was regularly criticized for this decision, but she has always believed that\u00a0\u2018results can only be achieved with children where the family wants the same. We can only build on a strong foundation. Decades of experience have shown us that we cannot teach Hungarian to children 3\u20134 hours a week who haven\u2019t been taught at home. If we would switch to English for them, the purpose of the Hungarian school would cease to exist, and we might as well close our doors.\u2019<\/em>\u00a0Great emphasis was placed on the acquisition of the basics, like Hungarian speech, writing, reading, composition, grammar, history, literature, geography and ethnography, traditions, singing, and activities that were sometimes supplemented by crafts and even runic writing.\u00a0\u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary. Since I always taught the older classes, I focused my attention on making my students proud of their heritage, stand up for Hungarians, defend our nation when attacked, correct misconceptions about Hungarians, the Hungarian language and our ancestors when they hear about them at school. They should write on Hungarian topics when they are allowed to do so, and they should present our history, culture, art and traditions to the world.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Emese was a leading example in doing so: when Principal Zsuzsanna Kir\u00e1ly resigned in January 1979, she took over the management of the school. Officially parish priest Rev. B\u00e9la T\u00f6r\u00f6k pastor was the principal until 1990, but Emese did all the school-related administration until the summer of 2006. In addition to her administrative tasks and her work as principal, she also taught regularly. In fact, for eight years she cleaned the school herself, then for two years with her daughter\u2019s help; only after that did she involve the teachers and the parents, but half the time she was still left with this \u2018noble task\u2019 until someone finally took it over from her.<\/p>\n

Teaching traditions have always been important in Hungarian schools in general, thus folk singing has constantly been taught everywhere; in Passaic it\u2019s been an integral part of the curriculum from the very first moment, based on the inexhaustible treasure trove of Hungarian folk songs. Folk games, sayings, readings and storytelling were always part of the kindergarten curriculum, while older children learned many folk customs, wedding songs, folk ballads. Folk dancing was not left out of the curriculum either, if there was a suitable instructor; for nine years, Emese\u2019s and L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s two children took the lead. The students were taught handicrafts (often by Emese herself), and at year-end there was an exhibition of their creations which were often used as gifts. Later a drawing competition was introduced, and an exhibition was also held at the end of the school year. Almost every year a nativity play, as well as caroling were performed at the Christmas celebrations. The students\u2019 favorite activities were usually painting eggs and acting.<\/p>\n

\u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a curator of the American Hungarian Museum, Emese organized exhibitions, wrote several brochures and publications about e.g. Easter, Christmas, embroidery, lace-making, Hungarian costumes, folk instruments, Trianon, 1956, and the Holy Crown. The exhibitions and programs included various contemporary artists\u2019 work, such as painter Jen\u0151 Doby, engraver J\u00f3zsef Domj\u00e1n, pianist L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Fornwald, photographer B\u00e9la K\u00e1sa, woodcarver Gy\u00f6rgy P\u00e1ndi. She also regularly held lectures, presentations and courses on Hungarian embroidery, folk costumes, and egg decoration, mainly for English-speaking audiences. Hungarian history always provided the framework for these sessions. \u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else,\u2019 she confessed. In 2014, the City of Passaic unexpectedly gave the museum a month of notice to pack up 25 years of work and put it in storage, where it\u2019s kept partly until today. Founder K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Magyar Sr. has been working ever since to transfer the collection somewhere else where it could be on display again.<\/p>\n

In addition to her intellectual work, Emese\u2019s hands \u2018always had to be busy with something.\u2019 She embroidered, knitted and drew since being in elementary school where this was a requirement at the time. When she was nine years old and had to spend the Easter break in the monastery, she received two eggs from his parents visiting her, carved by her father: one had the Hungarian coat of arms, the other the map of Hungary on it. From that moment, she became a devoted believer and enthusiastic \u2018activist\u2019 of egg painting. In 1971, she learned how to blow out eggs from folk artist Zsuzsanna Kormann (n\u00e9e Kokron) and lace designer and industrial artist Katalin Krist\u00f3-Nagy. They together were passing on their knowledge and experience by teaching the Hungarian scouts, Hungarian schoolchildren, and even foreigners about the secrets of Hungarian egg decorating for years. They had plenty of opportunities to practice and exhibit their work, because Hungarian Americans used to observe the Central European custom of Dousing Day (whereby men and boys visit women and girls, recite poems and then sprinkle them with perfume or water), unimaginable without decorated eggs. This was taken so seriously that girls and women competed with each other with decorating eggs, while boys and men wrote their own poems (which Emese even collected). When they discovered that only Ukrainian decorated eggs were widely known in the U.S., they began to advertise the Hungarian ones by exhibiting at museums, libraries, egg shows, and writing articles about the related customs. Emese even produced a 50-page booklet in English in which she explained the meaning of the ancient Hungarian word \u2018h\u00edmes\u2019, its religious origin and related folk traditions, drew 400 Hungarian egg patterns, and detailed some of the techniques for decorating eggs (e.g. scratched, written, engraved, etched, plant paper and metal applique painted eggs).<\/p>\n

Devoted to Hungarian patterns, she has also painted them on tiles, wood, leather, fabric, and paper. She has also burned pictures and patterns on wood. In the Hungarian school, she has made a sample of every handicraft donating almost all her own creations and embroideries. She has also decorated eggs for sale. Her publications and writings are extremely diverse but are mostly focused on collecting and recording data and stories. Emese has been \u2018collecting\u2019 her ancestors and family stories for 45 years and wrote biographies of her famous relatives. She has created countless compilations, sometimes together with her students for the Hungarian School. In addition, she has put together an endless series of scouting memoirs, events and travelogues that proves her immense work and commitment to actively nurturing and spreading Hungarian culture.<\/p>\n

Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 never miss any masses or events at the St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church, but when asked about her deep faith, Emese just shrugs her shoulders: \u2018Faith is so natural to me that I can\u2019t talk about it.\u2019 Therefore, it was also natural for her and for her husband to serve the local Hungarian church community throughout their lives. \u2018This was \u201cprescribed to me\u201d by God. As Istv\u00e1n S\u00e1ndor used to say, I shared my talents all my life,\u2019 she added. Over the decades, they had to work with many Hungarian parish priests and always got along with them. Before saying goodbye to me, Emese recalls two of her fond memories with Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas pastor, who passed away in 2018. Every year, Emese prepared 8\u201310 scratched eggs for the food blessing, which she gave away as presents afterwards. On his first Easter in Passaic in 2008, Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas also received a decorated egg from her, as did all local pastors before him. \u2018The blessing of food was at noon on Saturday. To my great surprise, the next day, on Easter Sunday, there was a small table in front of the altar, with the resurrected Christ on it as well as my blessed egg. No one has ever honored a decorated egg of mine like he did\u2019, smiled Emese. When Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2017, their son asked the pastor to get them a papal blessing, for which he needed to use all his connections in Hungary and Rome. \u2018He was very anxious that the papal blessing, which caused us a great surprise, would arrive on time. He was such a spirited person. The more I got to know him, the more I loved him, but that\u2019s another story\u2019, concluded Emese.<\/p>\n

Source: hungarianconservative.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":1083310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1097739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-local-events-and-news"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018My goal is making Hungarian culture known\u2019 \u2014 A Conversation with Emese Kerkay – Bocskai R\u00e1di\u00f3<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/en\/my-goal-is-making-hungarian-culture-known-a-conversation-with-emese-kerkay\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018My goal is making Hungarian culture known\u2019 \u2014 A Conversation with Emese Kerkay – Bocskai R\u00e1di\u00f3\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source: hungarianconservative.com This is an abridged version of the original interview\u00a0first published on\u00a0777.hu. \u2018From the moment I met her, when she invited me to teach at the Hungarian school she ran, Emese was for me one of the best and most enthusiastic of the many selfless workers of the Hungarian nation\u2026She was able to recruit selfless and dedicated teachers to head the classes, to raise the necessary funds from nothing, was teaching herself, organizing, inspiring, serving as a role model for all, and fighting without stopping against the fatigue, pettiness, resignation,\u2019 Hungarian fellow teacher and scout Istv\u00e1n S\u00e1ndor, who passed away in 2019 and whom Emese always remembers with great respect and affection, wrote about her. *** Emese Kerkay, n\u00e9e Maczky and her husband L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kerkay were both born in Hungary and have been living in America for over 50 years. They have been cultivators of the rich Hungarian historical and cultural heritage and overall active contributors to the life of the Hungarian community of Passaic, New Jersey, having served at the Hungarian school for over 30 years: Emese as teacher and principal, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 as treasurer. Emese has also been an active scout since the age of six and was a founding member and for 25 years curator of the American Hungarian Museum of Passaic. Regardless of several changes during these decades, she\u2019s been able to preserve, enrich and disseminate the treasures entrusted to or discovered by her, be they children (whom she affectionately used to call \u2018little Hungarians\u2019), knowledge, publications or events. She has also actively contributed to the preservation of Hungarian folk traditions by creating several artefacts herself: she has loved painting and carving eggs, embroidering Hungarian folk patterns, burning pictures on wood, and compiling countless cultural publications. After long months of slowly getting to know her, attending a variety of events together and reading some of her publications, she finally trusted me enough to invite me to her home in Garfield, New Jersey, where we chatted among her beautifully decorated eggs, countless photo albums and books. She started our conversation with her usual firmness, warning me that all she\u2019s willing to talk about for publication is the work she had done and no details would be shared about her private life. By that time, I had already had an impression of the magnitude of her accomplishments from the books she\u2019d lent me, but I knew very little about her private life. So I tried to persuade her to open up about the latter as well, since I was very much interested to learn where she got her extremely deep and creative affection of Hungarian identity and cultural heritage, her dedication and incredible work ethic, and last but not least the origins of the tremendous knowledge and experience she has passed on to hundreds of Hungarian families in hundreds of different ways. She wasn\u2019t too talkative, but later I was able to map her private life a bit better from her collections and writings about her family lineage, which helped me put together a much more authentic portrait of her. From Noble Ancestors to Stateless \u00c9migr\u00e9s Emese\u2019s latest research, following the history of the Kolossv\u00e1ry, Maczky and F\u00e1y families, traces the origins of the ancient Transylvanian \u00d3-Tordai Mikola family back to B\u00e9la IV, King of Hungary in the mid-13th century. She inherited values and talents from her ancestors, including her deep commitment to her Hungarian identity, her love of the Hungarian language and culture as well as her dexterity. She believes that these aspects of character feature all the descendants of her great-grandfather, the Lajos Kossuth-loving postmaster of Heves. Her beloved grandmother was one of her role models, too. She has a treasure of knowledge and data collected about her parents and her siblings who live in four different countries (the U.S., Germany, Canada and Hungary) due to the tragic history of Hungary in the 20th century. Emese\u2019s grandmother, Anna Maczky (n\u00e9e Mikola) didn\u2019t have an easy life. Not only did she experience poverty in the storms of Hungarian history after World War I but had to face her children\u2019s tragic fate, too. Her son, Emil disappeared on the Eastern front at the River Don (today\u2019s Russia) in 1943, while her other son Gy\u00f6rgy was beaten to death by the communists in 1945. Her beloved brothers suffered deportation by the Germans, and her husband died suddenly. She was deeply religious, and her strong faith helped her through life. In April 1945, she was evacuated to Germany with her daughter-in-law and first granddaughter, Emese, where she was tormented by a terrible homesickness. She was at rest only when, 16 months later, she moved back to Hungary with her daughter and son-in-law. She was an extraordinary woman, not only for the way she led her life, but also for the many talents she inherited from the Mikola family: she loved God, her country and family, she was fond of arts, especially music and poetry, and she was incredibly skillful and inventive overall. She wrote beautiful letters to her son and grandchildren in Germany. \u2018Her letters reveal the soul of a woman of infinite intelligence and spirituality, who always included some kind of spiritual message in her letters: poems, stories, anecdotes, pictures, photos or postcards\u2019, Emese explained. Emese\u2019s father, L\u00e1szl\u00f3, was Anna\u2019s second son and a captain of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie (an elite unit of the Hungarian army) as well as a jurist and accountant, who became an American prisoner of war, and after being released, lived in Germany for the rest of his life. When his first child, Emese, was born, he was serving in Szolnok. In May 1941 he was transferred to D\u00e9s in Transylvania, and in 1943 was assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Budapest. His family survived the bombings of 1944 in the countryside. In December, the Ministry\u2019s Gendarmerie Department was relocated to Szombathely to avoid being trapped in Budapest by the advancing Soviet forces. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 had to leave the country, so he was separated from his family, whom he later met in Austria. \u2018During the 24 years of his exile, he served the Hungarian cause in every minute of his free time until his last breath: he worked at several Hungarian organizations, supported all good Hungarian causes, gave lectures, even designed a portable hero\u2019s monument, reorganized the Szent L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Society, produced and published all alone a very successful quarterly magazine (GESTA), which was highly acclaimed by the Hungarian diaspora all around the world, and carried on a worldwide correspondence.\u2019 With the help of his incredible memory, he hand-wrote multiple long ballads by J\u00e1nos Arany by heart, creating the family\u2019s first book in exile. He didn\u2019t tell stories, but rather recited poems to his children, and in the last years of his life he wrote poems himself as well. Emese inherited the love of the beauty of the Hungarian language from him. His early death was the result of homesickness: his heart was literally broken. His wife, Erzs\u00e9bet Kolossv\u00e1ry, survived him by nearly 47 years. In 1990 she moved in with her daughter Enik\u0151 but took care of herself until the age of 96. In her last five years, she was lovingly cared for by her three daughters. \u2018God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans\u2019 Emese was born in 1940, and arrived in Germany at the age of four, where she went to elementary school in a German convent in Alt\u00f6tting for four years, and then attended the Hungarian high school in Kastl, Germany for six years.\u00a0\u2018My training for Hungarian life began in December 1940 on the banks of the Tisza. The name I received from my parents is obligatory. I have tried to fulfil this obligation since my youth, both in Germany and here in the United States. We fled when I was only four years old, with a high fever and pneumonia. God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans.\u2019\u00a0The 9\u201310-year-old girl had such a strong homesickness that while her parents were preparing to emigrate to Canada, she prayed secretly that they wouldn\u2019t succeed. \u2018My prayers were answered; they gave up their Canadian emigration plans after three failed attempts.\u2019 Emese did eventually end up in the U.S., where she hadn\u2019t wanted to go either, but where she believes God later led her:\u00a0\u2018If I had come here as a child and hadn\u2019t attended the high school in Germany, for example, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to fulfill my mission here. For me, the most important goal in the last 50 years has been the cultivation and spreading of Hungarian language, history and culture, especially folk art, egg painting and embroidery. For these, I had to be an adult.\u2019 Before her marriage in Stuttgart in 1967 to L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kerkay, a 1956 refugee who had been living in the United States since 1958, Emese attended an interpreter school and worked as a translator and correspondent in Switzerland, Portugal and Germany. After their wedding, she came to America as a tourist, and six months later she received her permanent residency permit but never applied for American citizenship. After their wedding, she said goodbye to her father, not knowing that she would never see him again and that he would only know his first grandchild from a photograph. From the Hungarian School to the Hungarian Museum Upon her arrival in New Jersey, Emese immediately became involved in the vibrant Hungarian community of Passaic, taking on whatever tasks came her way naturally at the (by now) 120-year-old St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church and the Hungarian Weekend School, the Hungarian Scout Troop in Garfield (founded in 1953) and the Hungarian American Museum (founded in 1981, closed in 2014). Garfield still has a particularly strong scouting presence, as G\u00e1bor Bodn\u00e1r lived and worked there, establishing and directing with \u2018anxious love and uncompromising determination\u2019 the headquarters of the Hungarian Scout Association in Exteris (KMCSSZ in Hungarian). Emese, being a scout since the age of six, worked closely with him until his death in 1996. Emese first became a Hungarian school teacher and then the principal from 1979 until 2006. The most important dates and events of these close to 30 years, and the nearly 70 years that preceded them in the life of the school, are recorded in the publication\u00a099 Years in Hungarian\u00a0written by her. Reading through the adventurous history of the Hungarian school, we learn that on 7 February 1914 the sisters of the Divine Charity Order started their work in Passaic at the request of Rev. Lajos Kov\u00e1cs pastor. Later, \u2018despite all efforts, the second generation began to forget their mother tongue at an alarming rate. Half of the 640 families in the parish neglected their religious life and began to stay away from church\u2019, but the nuns who were invited (back) by pastor Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r took over the management of the school. The issue of Hungarian education faded again after World War II, and by the time the first wave of post-war immigrants arrived in the early 1950s, the Hungarian school in Passaic ceased to exist\u2026 However, after overcoming the initial difficulties, preservation of the Hungarian language, culture and traditions became important also for the \u2018new Hungarians\u2019. Since the post-war immigrants who were mostly highly educated also brought with them the knowledge and love of scouting, the weekend Hungarian school restarted mostly with scout leaders as teachers. The new wave of refugees after the revolution and freedom fight of 1956 were first welcomed by the Reformed Hungarian Saturday School. The Catholic school had a more difficult start, but in 1958 Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r managed to (re)open the St. Stephen\u2019s parish\u2019s Hungarian Weekend School, too. In 1965, thanks to Rev. Dr. Antal Dunay, daily Hungarian lessons started after the English classes for more than 100 children. The one-hour daily Hungarian class had excellent results. According to Emese,\u00a0\u2018by successfully overcoming financial and technical difficulties, this school could have been a model for other settlements, but none of the 16 Saturday schools existing at the time could implement Hungarian education daily. Despite the great opportunity, even Hungarians of Passaic had to be regularly encouraged to join\u2026\u2019 A new chapter in the history of Hungarian education started in 1974, when the reformed Rev. Zolt\u00e1n Kir\u00e1ly founded the Weekend Hungarian School with his wife Zsuzsanna. In 1976, the Reformed and Catholic parishes jointly reorganized the Hungarian School, in which L\u00e1szl\u00f3 became the treasurer and Emese a teacher. Since then, there has been Hungarian education continuously on each Saturday between 9 am and 1 pm, from kindergarten to school for 12\u201314-year-old students (back in Emese\u2019s time, even up to 18 years when there was a demand for it). Originally, there was an English class for non-Hungarian speaking students, but it wasn\u2019t successful, so it ceased to operate in 1988. \u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary\u2019 Therefore, during the last 20 years of Emese\u2019s administration, a prerequisite for schooling was speaking Hungarian. She was regularly criticized for this decision, but she has always believed that\u00a0\u2018results can only be achieved with children where the family wants the same. We can only build on a strong foundation. Decades of experience have shown us that we cannot teach Hungarian to children 3\u20134 hours a week who haven\u2019t been taught at home. If we would switch to English for them, the purpose of the Hungarian school would cease to exist, and we might as well close our doors.\u2019\u00a0Great emphasis was placed on the acquisition of the basics, like Hungarian speech, writing, reading, composition, grammar, history, literature, geography and ethnography, traditions, singing, and activities that were sometimes supplemented by crafts and even runic writing.\u00a0\u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary. Since I always taught the older classes, I focused my attention on making my students proud of their heritage, stand up for Hungarians, defend our nation when attacked, correct misconceptions about Hungarians, the Hungarian language and our ancestors when they hear about them at school. They should write on Hungarian topics when they are allowed to do so, and they should present our history, culture, art and traditions to the world.\u2019 Emese was a leading example in doing so: when Principal Zsuzsanna Kir\u00e1ly resigned in January 1979, she took over the management of the school. Officially parish priest Rev. B\u00e9la T\u00f6r\u00f6k pastor was the principal until 1990, but Emese did all the school-related administration until the summer of 2006. In addition to her administrative tasks and her work as principal, she also taught regularly. In fact, for eight years she cleaned the school herself, then for two years with her daughter\u2019s help; only after that did she involve the teachers and the parents, but half the time she was still left with this \u2018noble task\u2019 until someone finally took it over from her. Teaching traditions have always been important in Hungarian schools in general, thus folk singing has constantly been taught everywhere; in Passaic it\u2019s been an integral part of the curriculum from the very first moment, based on the inexhaustible treasure trove of Hungarian folk songs. Folk games, sayings, readings and storytelling were always part of the kindergarten curriculum, while older children learned many folk customs, wedding songs, folk ballads. Folk dancing was not left out of the curriculum either, if there was a suitable instructor; for nine years, Emese\u2019s and L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s two children took the lead. The students were taught handicrafts (often by Emese herself), and at year-end there was an exhibition of their creations which were often used as gifts. Later a drawing competition was introduced, and an exhibition was also held at the end of the school year. Almost every year a nativity play, as well as caroling were performed at the Christmas celebrations. The students\u2019 favorite activities were usually painting eggs and acting. \u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else\u2019 As a curator of the American Hungarian Museum, Emese organized exhibitions, wrote several brochures and publications about e.g. Easter, Christmas, embroidery, lace-making, Hungarian costumes, folk instruments, Trianon, 1956, and the Holy Crown. The exhibitions and programs included various contemporary artists\u2019 work, such as painter Jen\u0151 Doby, engraver J\u00f3zsef Domj\u00e1n, pianist L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Fornwald, photographer B\u00e9la K\u00e1sa, woodcarver Gy\u00f6rgy P\u00e1ndi. She also regularly held lectures, presentations and courses on Hungarian embroidery, folk costumes, and egg decoration, mainly for English-speaking audiences. Hungarian history always provided the framework for these sessions. \u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else,\u2019 she confessed. In 2014, the City of Passaic unexpectedly gave the museum a month of notice to pack up 25 years of work and put it in storage, where it\u2019s kept partly until today. Founder K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Magyar Sr. has been working ever since to transfer the collection somewhere else where it could be on display again. In addition to her intellectual work, Emese\u2019s hands \u2018always had to be busy with something.\u2019 She embroidered, knitted and drew since being in elementary school where this was a requirement at the time. When she was nine years old and had to spend the Easter break in the monastery, she received two eggs from his parents visiting her, carved by her father: one had the Hungarian coat of arms, the other the map of Hungary on it. From that moment, she became a devoted believer and enthusiastic \u2018activist\u2019 of egg painting. In 1971, she learned how to blow out eggs from folk artist Zsuzsanna Kormann (n\u00e9e Kokron) and lace designer and industrial artist Katalin Krist\u00f3-Nagy. They together were passing on their knowledge and experience by teaching the Hungarian scouts, Hungarian schoolchildren, and even foreigners about the secrets of Hungarian egg decorating for years. They had plenty of opportunities to practice and exhibit their work, because Hungarian Americans used to observe the Central European custom of Dousing Day (whereby men and boys visit women and girls, recite poems and then sprinkle them with perfume or water), unimaginable without decorated eggs. This was taken so seriously that girls and women competed with each other with decorating eggs, while boys and men wrote their own poems (which Emese even collected). When they discovered that only Ukrainian decorated eggs were widely known in the U.S., they began to advertise the Hungarian ones by exhibiting at museums, libraries, egg shows, and writing articles about the related customs. Emese even produced a 50-page booklet in English in which she explained the meaning of the ancient Hungarian word \u2018h\u00edmes\u2019, its religious origin and related folk traditions, drew 400 Hungarian egg patterns, and detailed some of the techniques for decorating eggs (e.g. scratched, written, engraved, etched, plant paper and metal applique painted eggs). Devoted to Hungarian patterns, she has also painted them on tiles, wood, leather, fabric, and paper. She has also burned pictures and patterns on wood. In the Hungarian school, she has made a sample of every handicraft donating almost all her own creations and embroideries. She has also decorated eggs for sale. Her publications and writings are extremely diverse but are mostly focused on collecting and recording data and stories. Emese has been \u2018collecting\u2019 her ancestors and family stories for 45 years and wrote biographies of her famous relatives. She has created countless compilations, sometimes together with her students for the Hungarian School. In addition, she has put together an endless series of scouting memoirs, events and travelogues that proves her immense work and commitment to actively nurturing and spreading Hungarian culture. Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 never miss any masses or events at the St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church, but when asked about her deep faith, Emese just shrugs her shoulders: \u2018Faith is so natural to me that I can\u2019t talk about it.\u2019 Therefore, it was also natural for her and for her husband to serve the local Hungarian church community throughout their lives. \u2018This was \u201cprescribed to me\u201d by God. As Istv\u00e1n S\u00e1ndor used to say, I shared my talents all my life,\u2019 she added. Over the decades, they had to work with many Hungarian parish priests and always got along with them. Before saying goodbye to me, Emese recalls two of her fond memories with Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas pastor, who passed away in 2018. Every year, Emese prepared 8\u201310 scratched eggs for the food blessing, which she gave away as presents afterwards. On his first Easter in Passaic in 2008, Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas also received a decorated egg from her, as did all local pastors before him. \u2018The blessing of food was at noon on Saturday. To my great surprise, the next day, on Easter Sunday, there was a small table in front of the altar, with the resurrected Christ on it as well as my blessed egg. No one has ever honored a decorated egg of mine like he did\u2019, smiled Emese. When Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2017, their son asked the pastor to get them a papal blessing, for which he needed to use all his connections in Hungary and Rome. \u2018He was very anxious that the papal blessing, which caused us a great surprise, would arrive on time. He was such a spirited person. The more I got to know him, the more I loved him, but that\u2019s another story\u2019, concluded Emese. Source: hungarianconservative.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/en\/my-goal-is-making-hungarian-culture-known-a-conversation-with-emese-kerkay\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Bocskai R\u00e1di\u00f3\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BocskaiRadio\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-03-12T00:42:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-09-30T22:27:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Emese_otthon_2023.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2239\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1164\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Antal-Ferencz Ildik\u00f3\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta 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They have been cultivators of the rich Hungarian historical and cultural heritage and overall active contributors to the life of the Hungarian community of Passaic, New Jersey, having served at the Hungarian school for over 30 years: Emese as teacher and principal, L\u00e1szl\u00f3 as treasurer. Emese has also been an active scout since the age of six and was a founding member and for 25 years curator of the American Hungarian Museum of Passaic. Regardless of several changes during these decades, she\u2019s been able to preserve, enrich and disseminate the treasures entrusted to or discovered by her, be they children (whom she affectionately used to call \u2018little Hungarians\u2019), knowledge, publications or events. She has also actively contributed to the preservation of Hungarian folk traditions by creating several artefacts herself: she has loved painting and carving eggs, embroidering Hungarian folk patterns, burning pictures on wood, and compiling countless cultural publications. After long months of slowly getting to know her, attending a variety of events together and reading some of her publications, she finally trusted me enough to invite me to her home in Garfield, New Jersey, where we chatted among her beautifully decorated eggs, countless photo albums and books. She started our conversation with her usual firmness, warning me that all she\u2019s willing to talk about for publication is the work she had done and no details would be shared about her private life. By that time, I had already had an impression of the magnitude of her accomplishments from the books she\u2019d lent me, but I knew very little about her private life. So I tried to persuade her to open up about the latter as well, since I was very much interested to learn where she got her extremely deep and creative affection of Hungarian identity and cultural heritage, her dedication and incredible work ethic, and last but not least the origins of the tremendous knowledge and experience she has passed on to hundreds of Hungarian families in hundreds of different ways. She wasn\u2019t too talkative, but later I was able to map her private life a bit better from her collections and writings about her family lineage, which helped me put together a much more authentic portrait of her. From Noble Ancestors to Stateless \u00c9migr\u00e9s Emese\u2019s latest research, following the history of the Kolossv\u00e1ry, Maczky and F\u00e1y families, traces the origins of the ancient Transylvanian \u00d3-Tordai Mikola family back to B\u00e9la IV, King of Hungary in the mid-13th century. She inherited values and talents from her ancestors, including her deep commitment to her Hungarian identity, her love of the Hungarian language and culture as well as her dexterity. She believes that these aspects of character feature all the descendants of her great-grandfather, the Lajos Kossuth-loving postmaster of Heves. Her beloved grandmother was one of her role models, too. She has a treasure of knowledge and data collected about her parents and her siblings who live in four different countries (the U.S., Germany, Canada and Hungary) due to the tragic history of Hungary in the 20th century. Emese\u2019s grandmother, Anna Maczky (n\u00e9e Mikola) didn\u2019t have an easy life. Not only did she experience poverty in the storms of Hungarian history after World War I but had to face her children\u2019s tragic fate, too. Her son, Emil disappeared on the Eastern front at the River Don (today\u2019s Russia) in 1943, while her other son Gy\u00f6rgy was beaten to death by the communists in 1945. Her beloved brothers suffered deportation by the Germans, and her husband died suddenly. She was deeply religious, and her strong faith helped her through life. In April 1945, she was evacuated to Germany with her daughter-in-law and first granddaughter, Emese, where she was tormented by a terrible homesickness. She was at rest only when, 16 months later, she moved back to Hungary with her daughter and son-in-law. She was an extraordinary woman, not only for the way she led her life, but also for the many talents she inherited from the Mikola family: she loved God, her country and family, she was fond of arts, especially music and poetry, and she was incredibly skillful and inventive overall. She wrote beautiful letters to her son and grandchildren in Germany. \u2018Her letters reveal the soul of a woman of infinite intelligence and spirituality, who always included some kind of spiritual message in her letters: poems, stories, anecdotes, pictures, photos or postcards\u2019, Emese explained. Emese\u2019s father, L\u00e1szl\u00f3, was Anna\u2019s second son and a captain of the Hungarian Royal Gendarmerie (an elite unit of the Hungarian army) as well as a jurist and accountant, who became an American prisoner of war, and after being released, lived in Germany for the rest of his life. When his first child, Emese, was born, he was serving in Szolnok. In May 1941 he was transferred to D\u00e9s in Transylvania, and in 1943 was assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Budapest. His family survived the bombings of 1944 in the countryside. In December, the Ministry\u2019s Gendarmerie Department was relocated to Szombathely to avoid being trapped in Budapest by the advancing Soviet forces. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 had to leave the country, so he was separated from his family, whom he later met in Austria. \u2018During the 24 years of his exile, he served the Hungarian cause in every minute of his free time until his last breath: he worked at several Hungarian organizations, supported all good Hungarian causes, gave lectures, even designed a portable hero\u2019s monument, reorganized the Szent L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Society, produced and published all alone a very successful quarterly magazine (GESTA), which was highly acclaimed by the Hungarian diaspora all around the world, and carried on a worldwide correspondence.\u2019 With the help of his incredible memory, he hand-wrote multiple long ballads by J\u00e1nos Arany by heart, creating the family\u2019s first book in exile. He didn\u2019t tell stories, but rather recited poems to his children, and in the last years of his life he wrote poems himself as well. Emese inherited the love of the beauty of the Hungarian language from him. His early death was the result of homesickness: his heart was literally broken. His wife, Erzs\u00e9bet Kolossv\u00e1ry, survived him by nearly 47 years. In 1990 she moved in with her daughter Enik\u0151 but took care of herself until the age of 96. In her last five years, she was lovingly cared for by her three daughters. \u2018God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans\u2019 Emese was born in 1940, and arrived in Germany at the age of four, where she went to elementary school in a German convent in Alt\u00f6tting for four years, and then attended the Hungarian high school in Kastl, Germany for six years.\u00a0\u2018My training for Hungarian life began in December 1940 on the banks of the Tisza. The name I received from my parents is obligatory. I have tried to fulfil this obligation since my youth, both in Germany and here in the United States. We fled when I was only four years old, with a high fever and pneumonia. God kept me, he had plans for me, and gave me parents and later children who helped me carry out those plans.\u2019\u00a0The 9\u201310-year-old girl had such a strong homesickness that while her parents were preparing to emigrate to Canada, she prayed secretly that they wouldn\u2019t succeed. \u2018My prayers were answered; they gave up their Canadian emigration plans after three failed attempts.\u2019 Emese did eventually end up in the U.S., where she hadn\u2019t wanted to go either, but where she believes God later led her:\u00a0\u2018If I had come here as a child and hadn\u2019t attended the high school in Germany, for example, I wouldn\u2019t have been able to fulfill my mission here. For me, the most important goal in the last 50 years has been the cultivation and spreading of Hungarian language, history and culture, especially folk art, egg painting and embroidery. For these, I had to be an adult.\u2019 Before her marriage in Stuttgart in 1967 to L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Kerkay, a 1956 refugee who had been living in the United States since 1958, Emese attended an interpreter school and worked as a translator and correspondent in Switzerland, Portugal and Germany. After their wedding, she came to America as a tourist, and six months later she received her permanent residency permit but never applied for American citizenship. After their wedding, she said goodbye to her father, not knowing that she would never see him again and that he would only know his first grandchild from a photograph. From the Hungarian School to the Hungarian Museum Upon her arrival in New Jersey, Emese immediately became involved in the vibrant Hungarian community of Passaic, taking on whatever tasks came her way naturally at the (by now) 120-year-old St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church and the Hungarian Weekend School, the Hungarian Scout Troop in Garfield (founded in 1953) and the Hungarian American Museum (founded in 1981, closed in 2014). Garfield still has a particularly strong scouting presence, as G\u00e1bor Bodn\u00e1r lived and worked there, establishing and directing with \u2018anxious love and uncompromising determination\u2019 the headquarters of the Hungarian Scout Association in Exteris (KMCSSZ in Hungarian). Emese, being a scout since the age of six, worked closely with him until his death in 1996. Emese first became a Hungarian school teacher and then the principal from 1979 until 2006. The most important dates and events of these close to 30 years, and the nearly 70 years that preceded them in the life of the school, are recorded in the publication\u00a099 Years in Hungarian\u00a0written by her. Reading through the adventurous history of the Hungarian school, we learn that on 7 February 1914 the sisters of the Divine Charity Order started their work in Passaic at the request of Rev. Lajos Kov\u00e1cs pastor. Later, \u2018despite all efforts, the second generation began to forget their mother tongue at an alarming rate. Half of the 640 families in the parish neglected their religious life and began to stay away from church\u2019, but the nuns who were invited (back) by pastor Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r took over the management of the school. The issue of Hungarian education faded again after World War II, and by the time the first wave of post-war immigrants arrived in the early 1950s, the Hungarian school in Passaic ceased to exist\u2026 However, after overcoming the initial difficulties, preservation of the Hungarian language, culture and traditions became important also for the \u2018new Hungarians\u2019. Since the post-war immigrants who were mostly highly educated also brought with them the knowledge and love of scouting, the weekend Hungarian school restarted mostly with scout leaders as teachers. The new wave of refugees after the revolution and freedom fight of 1956 were first welcomed by the Reformed Hungarian Saturday School. The Catholic school had a more difficult start, but in 1958 Rev. J\u00e1nos G\u00e1sp\u00e1r managed to (re)open the St. Stephen\u2019s parish\u2019s Hungarian Weekend School, too. In 1965, thanks to Rev. Dr. Antal Dunay, daily Hungarian lessons started after the English classes for more than 100 children. The one-hour daily Hungarian class had excellent results. According to Emese,\u00a0\u2018by successfully overcoming financial and technical difficulties, this school could have been a model for other settlements, but none of the 16 Saturday schools existing at the time could implement Hungarian education daily. Despite the great opportunity, even Hungarians of Passaic had to be regularly encouraged to join\u2026\u2019 A new chapter in the history of Hungarian education started in 1974, when the reformed Rev. Zolt\u00e1n Kir\u00e1ly founded the Weekend Hungarian School with his wife Zsuzsanna. In 1976, the Reformed and Catholic parishes jointly reorganized the Hungarian School, in which L\u00e1szl\u00f3 became the treasurer and Emese a teacher. Since then, there has been Hungarian education continuously on each Saturday between 9 am and 1 pm, from kindergarten to school for 12\u201314-year-old students (back in Emese\u2019s time, even up to 18 years when there was a demand for it). Originally, there was an English class for non-Hungarian speaking students, but it wasn\u2019t successful, so it ceased to operate in 1988. \u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary\u2019 Therefore, during the last 20 years of Emese\u2019s administration, a prerequisite for schooling was speaking Hungarian. She was regularly criticized for this decision, but she has always believed that\u00a0\u2018results can only be achieved with children where the family wants the same. We can only build on a strong foundation. Decades of experience have shown us that we cannot teach Hungarian to children 3\u20134 hours a week who haven\u2019t been taught at home. If we would switch to English for them, the purpose of the Hungarian school would cease to exist, and we might as well close our doors.\u2019\u00a0Great emphasis was placed on the acquisition of the basics, like Hungarian speech, writing, reading, composition, grammar, history, literature, geography and ethnography, traditions, singing, and activities that were sometimes supplemented by crafts and even runic writing.\u00a0\u2018I consider it most important to deepen the love for Hungary. Since I always taught the older classes, I focused my attention on making my students proud of their heritage, stand up for Hungarians, defend our nation when attacked, correct misconceptions about Hungarians, the Hungarian language and our ancestors when they hear about them at school. They should write on Hungarian topics when they are allowed to do so, and they should present our history, culture, art and traditions to the world.\u2019 Emese was a leading example in doing so: when Principal Zsuzsanna Kir\u00e1ly resigned in January 1979, she took over the management of the school. Officially parish priest Rev. B\u00e9la T\u00f6r\u00f6k pastor was the principal until 1990, but Emese did all the school-related administration until the summer of 2006. In addition to her administrative tasks and her work as principal, she also taught regularly. In fact, for eight years she cleaned the school herself, then for two years with her daughter\u2019s help; only after that did she involve the teachers and the parents, but half the time she was still left with this \u2018noble task\u2019 until someone finally took it over from her. Teaching traditions have always been important in Hungarian schools in general, thus folk singing has constantly been taught everywhere; in Passaic it\u2019s been an integral part of the curriculum from the very first moment, based on the inexhaustible treasure trove of Hungarian folk songs. Folk games, sayings, readings and storytelling were always part of the kindergarten curriculum, while older children learned many folk customs, wedding songs, folk ballads. Folk dancing was not left out of the curriculum either, if there was a suitable instructor; for nine years, Emese\u2019s and L\u00e1szl\u00f3\u2019s two children took the lead. The students were taught handicrafts (often by Emese herself), and at year-end there was an exhibition of their creations which were often used as gifts. Later a drawing competition was introduced, and an exhibition was also held at the end of the school year. Almost every year a nativity play, as well as caroling were performed at the Christmas celebrations. The students\u2019 favorite activities were usually painting eggs and acting. \u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else\u2019 As a curator of the American Hungarian Museum, Emese organized exhibitions, wrote several brochures and publications about e.g. Easter, Christmas, embroidery, lace-making, Hungarian costumes, folk instruments, Trianon, 1956, and the Holy Crown. The exhibitions and programs included various contemporary artists\u2019 work, such as painter Jen\u0151 Doby, engraver J\u00f3zsef Domj\u00e1n, pianist L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Fornwald, photographer B\u00e9la K\u00e1sa, woodcarver Gy\u00f6rgy P\u00e1ndi. She also regularly held lectures, presentations and courses on Hungarian embroidery, folk costumes, and egg decoration, mainly for English-speaking audiences. Hungarian history always provided the framework for these sessions. \u2018The guiding thread of my life is to spread Hungarian culture as widely as possible, and I prioritized that goal over everything else,\u2019 she confessed. In 2014, the City of Passaic unexpectedly gave the museum a month of notice to pack up 25 years of work and put it in storage, where it\u2019s kept partly until today. Founder K\u00e1lm\u00e1n Magyar Sr. has been working ever since to transfer the collection somewhere else where it could be on display again. In addition to her intellectual work, Emese\u2019s hands \u2018always had to be busy with something.\u2019 She embroidered, knitted and drew since being in elementary school where this was a requirement at the time. When she was nine years old and had to spend the Easter break in the monastery, she received two eggs from his parents visiting her, carved by her father: one had the Hungarian coat of arms, the other the map of Hungary on it. From that moment, she became a devoted believer and enthusiastic \u2018activist\u2019 of egg painting. In 1971, she learned how to blow out eggs from folk artist Zsuzsanna Kormann (n\u00e9e Kokron) and lace designer and industrial artist Katalin Krist\u00f3-Nagy. They together were passing on their knowledge and experience by teaching the Hungarian scouts, Hungarian schoolchildren, and even foreigners about the secrets of Hungarian egg decorating for years. They had plenty of opportunities to practice and exhibit their work, because Hungarian Americans used to observe the Central European custom of Dousing Day (whereby men and boys visit women and girls, recite poems and then sprinkle them with perfume or water), unimaginable without decorated eggs. This was taken so seriously that girls and women competed with each other with decorating eggs, while boys and men wrote their own poems (which Emese even collected). When they discovered that only Ukrainian decorated eggs were widely known in the U.S., they began to advertise the Hungarian ones by exhibiting at museums, libraries, egg shows, and writing articles about the related customs. Emese even produced a 50-page booklet in English in which she explained the meaning of the ancient Hungarian word \u2018h\u00edmes\u2019, its religious origin and related folk traditions, drew 400 Hungarian egg patterns, and detailed some of the techniques for decorating eggs (e.g. scratched, written, engraved, etched, plant paper and metal applique painted eggs). Devoted to Hungarian patterns, she has also painted them on tiles, wood, leather, fabric, and paper. She has also burned pictures and patterns on wood. In the Hungarian school, she has made a sample of every handicraft donating almost all her own creations and embroideries. She has also decorated eggs for sale. Her publications and writings are extremely diverse but are mostly focused on collecting and recording data and stories. Emese has been \u2018collecting\u2019 her ancestors and family stories for 45 years and wrote biographies of her famous relatives. She has created countless compilations, sometimes together with her students for the Hungarian School. In addition, she has put together an endless series of scouting memoirs, events and travelogues that proves her immense work and commitment to actively nurturing and spreading Hungarian culture. Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 never miss any masses or events at the St. Stephen\u2019s R.C. Magyar Church, but when asked about her deep faith, Emese just shrugs her shoulders: \u2018Faith is so natural to me that I can\u2019t talk about it.\u2019 Therefore, it was also natural for her and for her husband to serve the local Hungarian church community throughout their lives. \u2018This was \u201cprescribed to me\u201d by God. As Istv\u00e1n S\u00e1ndor used to say, I shared my talents all my life,\u2019 she added. Over the decades, they had to work with many Hungarian parish priests and always got along with them. Before saying goodbye to me, Emese recalls two of her fond memories with Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas pastor, who passed away in 2018. Every year, Emese prepared 8\u201310 scratched eggs for the food blessing, which she gave away as presents afterwards. On his first Easter in Passaic in 2008, Rev. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Vas also received a decorated egg from her, as did all local pastors before him. \u2018The blessing of food was at noon on Saturday. To my great surprise, the next day, on Easter Sunday, there was a small table in front of the altar, with the resurrected Christ on it as well as my blessed egg. No one has ever honored a decorated egg of mine like he did\u2019, smiled Emese. When Emese and L\u00e1szl\u00f3 celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2017, their son asked the pastor to get them a papal blessing, for which he needed to use all his connections in Hungary and Rome. \u2018He was very anxious that the papal blessing, which caused us a great surprise, would arrive on time. He was such a spirited person. The more I got to know him, the more I loved him, but that\u2019s another story\u2019, concluded Emese. Source: hungarianconservative.com","og_url":"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/en\/my-goal-is-making-hungarian-culture-known-a-conversation-with-emese-kerkay\/","og_site_name":"Bocskai R\u00e1di\u00f3","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BocskaiRadio","article_published_time":"2023-03-12T00:42:04+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-09-30T22:27:04+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2239,"height":1164,"url":"https:\/\/www.bocskairadio.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/Emese_otthon_2023.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Antal-Ferencz 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