Mrs. Kardos and her husband Dan rented the store as Dan Kardos
Groceries in 1926 which later became Mike Juhasz’s Groceries.
Toledo City Paper
May 8-14, 2003
by Micah B. Rubin
Sitting in his foyer on a plush, green floral couch, John Ahern’s eyes brighten as he describes the story of Toledo’s Birmingham neighborhood. Muted daylight streams into the room from huge windows overlooking the rushing Maumee. Ahern’s curly, ashen hair contrasts the baby-blue dress shirt and cranberry sweater draped over his shoulders.
Ahern, a University of Toledo professor emeritus, says his work on "Hungarian American Toledo" was a labor of love. "We tried to make people realize the Hungarian community is an incredible treasure."
Edited with Dr. Thomas Barden, associate dean of humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences at UT, "Hungarian American Toledo" is an ethnography of Toledo’s Birmingham neighborhood — located near Tony Packo’s on the East Side — and its Hungarian residents.
Mrs. Kardos and her husband Dan rented the store as Dan Kardos
Groceries in 1926 which later became Mike Juhasz’s Groceries.
Barden says his interest "in the various genres of folklore in Toledo’s ethnic communities" sparked his interest in Toledo’s Hungarian community 10 years ago.
Ahern, whose specialty is children’s literature, says his interest in Hungaran history began while volunteering in the Hungarian community in 1986.
With subjects ranging from architecture to the Betlehemes játék Christmas play, "Hungarian American Toledo" contains stories, photographs and scholarly analyses of Toledo’s Hungarian community. "We gathered the work of local scholars and community members," Ahern says.
The book begins with a brief history of Hungary and the establishment of Toledo’s Hungarian community. Approximately 200 workers and their families arrived in Toledo in 1890, transferred from Cleveland by the National Malleable Castings Co. They settled on Front Street and quickly blossomed into a tightly knit community, Ahern says.
"The heart of the Hungarian community was the church," Ahern says. "Churches had a dual role: Teaching pride in their community and being Hungarian, and teaching the skills for success in America."
According to Ahern, Hung-arian immigrants struggled to preserve their traditions while adapting to life in the United States. They balanced their love for Hungary with dedication to the U.S. "Hungary was their mother. The United States their wife."
One tradition the Hungarian community preserved is the performance of an ancient Hungarian folk play, the Betlehemes játék Christmas play, Ahern says. It is "acted out at midnight Mass. Shepherds come in and confront an unbeliever. There’d be some shaggy dog humor, and then the old man or the pagan would become converted," Ahern says.
The full text of the play is included in the book.
"Hungarian American Toledo" devotes a chapter to "Recipes and Ethnic Identity," written by UT associate professor Dr. Lynne Hamer. "I went and interviewed people about their experiences in learning to cook and bake at home in the community," she has said.
A story written by state representative and Birmingham native Peter Ujvagi, "A 56er’s Story," illustrates the challenges Hungarian families faced when leaving communist Hungary. The story describes his family’s dangerous, night-time escape from Hungary in the bitter heart of winter and their eventual arrival in Toledo:
At this Birmingham bar,
fish dinners were served and beer was 10 cents a glass.
"We almost froze on the border that night. We kept walking and walking. At one point we broke through some ice on a creek we were trying to cross … Finally we came to a farmhouse. My mother thought we young kids were going to freeze to death, so she said, "I don’t care what’s going to happen. I don’t care if they arrest us and put us in jail, we’ve got to stop."
The Birmingham narrative continues with a photo essay of the neighborhood. Photographs of restaurants, holiday celebrations and buildings dating back to the early 1900s document daily life in Birmingham. "Today, many of the buildings have been torn down or are in a state of disrepair," Ahern says.
The architecture in Birmingham has a strong Hungarian flavor, Ahern says. "Hungarian architects in Toledo incorporated many ideas of Hungarian architecture into their buildings." The book highlights Hungarian styles such as the double-round arch, the Hungarian royal coat of arms, and the Hungarian cross that adorn many buildings in the Birmingham neighborhood.
Barden says Toledo’s Hungarian community in the Birmingham neighborhood has historically welcomed all ethnic groups. "Over the years, it’s been a place where people who didn’t look or talk quite the same as WASPs were welcome," Barden says.
Although neither Barden nor Ahern are Hungarian, they say they feel strongly connected to the community. "It’s such a wonderful, friendly group of people. They made us honorary Hungarians," Barden says.
Micah B. Rubin is a TCP intern.
Excerpts from "Hungarian American Toledo":
A rebirth of pride
From the Introduction: The gradual fading of ethnic consciousness in Birmingham came to a sudden end in 1956 when the Hungar-ians openly rebelled against Soviet occupation and repression. Hungarian-Americans, who twice in the 20th century had been characterized as relatives of the enemy, overnight became relatives of the fearless freedom fighters who had defied the Communists and fought for democracy against overwhelming odds.
In Birmingham, self-effacement was replaced by obvious pride. The community pulled together to support the refugees who escaped and made their way to Toledo after the Soviet Union crushed their revolution. The year had a distinct revitalizing effect on Birming-ham, even though relatively few Hungar-ian 56ers settled there.
Community cooperation grew as the newcomers were greeted and efforts were made to settle them in homes and jobs. About 300 individuals came to Toledo; approximately one-fourth settled in Birmingham. The infusion provided new leaders for the community since a majority of the refugees were well-educated engineers, business people and professionals.
This transfusion came at an important moment in the neighborhood’s history as its economic base was beginning to fail. One after another, the major riverfront industries had closed down. Many of Birmingham’s residents were already at retirement age; others were laid off involuntarily as Unitcast, Craig Shipyard and other major employers closed their doors.
Hungarian weddings
From Chapter Three: "The church is part of your life," said Nancy Packo Horvath, "… you don’t even think of the church as being separate from your life." For Louis Sundi, "life revolved around the church," and Pauline LaCacio called the church, "the heart of the community."
Faith, language and ethnic identity are interwoven to form one of the best representations of Old World community transplanted into an American setting.
Weddings, in particular, included signs of ethnic traditions. The Birmingham Cultural Center displays an enlarged copy of a photograph taken at the 1920 Bodak-Weizer wedding and maintains files of others. The groomsmen, who appear in front of the seated wedding couple, carry canes with ribbons attached, and more often as not, they and other wedding party members hold beer bottles or steins.
In pre-1920 photographs, each member of the wedding party wears a ribbon. This custom followed an Old World tradition. According to Juliana Ludanyi, the best man carried a staff decorated with ribbons and flowers. The ribbon symbolized the personal invitation from a wedding party member.
Other wedding rituals practiced in early Birmingham had Old World beginnings. In Hungary, a wedding party proceeded to the church together. During the reception someone collected money for the privilege of dancing with the bride.
Mary Bence recalled, "my mother told me that … the whole wedding would walk to church." Barbara Torok remembered Mrs. Kovasanski, who worked most wedding receptions, "was a real character. She’d wrap her hand in a towel and say, ‘How about a little donation for the cook who scalded her hand?’ … It was funny, but it was a tradition."
Betlehemes játék folk play
The St. Stephen’s Abauj Betlehemes troop.
From Chapter Eight: Few Toledoans are aware that an ancient Hungarian folk play is performed every Christmas season in the streets and houses of the Birmingham neighborhood on the city’s East Side. After living and teaching in Toledo for a number of years, I learned of its existence from a student in theater history class who appeared singularly unimpressed by the mysteriousness of the British folk plays I was discussing.
"Oh, we have all that over on the East Side every year," he told me. "In Birmingham, the Hungarians do it. It’s a Bethlehem shepherds play, but it’s got all that boogie man stuff in it too." Thus I encountered the Betlehemes játék, a folk Christmas play familiar in every part of Hungary and in the Hungarian communities of Romania, Slovakia and the former Yugoslavia.
Local Birmingham tradition says that the Bethlehem play has been presented yearly since the arrival of the Hungarians in the 1890s, and under informal parish sponsorship from the time St. Stephen’s Catholic Church was founded in 1898. The scripts, as well as performance elements, provided virtually indisputable internal evidence of an unbroken oral tradition reaching directly back to Hungary.