Dad: I Love You

In my early memories of my father, he softly appears in partial recollections of places and activities but I can’t see his face. My father, Joseph, passed away seven weeks ago and would have turned 94-years-old this week.

From the age of four, I recall our garage being added to my parent’s home and it is shortly thereafter that I have a vague recollection of my father standing in our garage talking to me. He was probably telling me not to place my hands on the table saw when the power was on. From then on I would spend hours watching him build cabinetry for our home or for family friends or watch him crush grapes to make wine.

My father grew up in a small Hungarian town south-west of Budapest. It was half German and half Hungarian, as was my mother’s town. He lived in a wine growing region which produced Riesling wines for markets in Budapest and Vienna. The vineyards grew up the side of the highest mountain in western Hungary and on top were the ruins of a Turkish fortress that harkened back to the 150 year occupation of Hungary by Ottoman Turks. Listening to him recount stories in the garage, I envied him and his friends, for as little boy, it doesn’t get any better than having a ruined fortress on top of a mountain to play in.  

Father’s Grade 3 class 1927 – 28. He is the last boy on the right side of the middle row.

One of those small vineyards was tended by his father, Anton, and had a small shed on it where they would sit and eat lunch together along with his maternal grandfather, Franz, whom he dearly loved. His mother, Terezia was a seamstress, while Anton, for the most part, was a tenant farmer having lost his land to his older brothers while he was away fighting during the First World War with the Austro-Hungarian Army. So money was tight and luxuries did not exist. But my father loved life and the time spent with his grandfather Franz made up for the lack of material possessions.

During that time in Hungary rural children were schooled to Grade 6 on a full time basis, while Grades 7 – 9 were only part-time. Not being from a landowning family my father began his apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker at the age of twelve. When he turned 20, it was December 1939 and the Second World War had just broken out a few months earlier. He was drafted into the Royal Hungarian Army for a three-year stint.

During the spring of 1941 my father saw his first action in what is now northern Serbia. Caught in a fire fight he was shot through the upper thigh of his right leg. By 1942 he was in the Soviet Union with the Hungarian 2nd Army which held the line just north of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in world history, where the 2nd Army lost 135,000 men out of 211,000. He would spend most of 1943 in Kiev. He was then given 1944 off and worked as a game warden in Hungary. But by January 1945 he was re-drafted and sent to fight in Czechoslovakia where he fought until May when the war ended and he was taken prisoner by the Soviets.

In his East German miner’s uniform between 1947 – 51. With his background as a carpenter he built wooden supports for the shafts and tunnels of uranium mines. When my parents escaped to the British zone of occupation within western Germany Father provided the British military with the locations of East German uranium mines which the Soviets were using to develop their nuclear weapons.

Sent to a Soviet labour camp in Siberia, my father was one of two dozen men out of 1,200 who survived. When released in 1947 he made his way to East Germany, via Hungary, where he met and married my mother. He was assigned a job working in a uranium mine and even though it paid well and came with extra perks, my parents decided they had had enough of communism and managed to escape to West Germany. In West Germany they were transported to Bremerhaven where they lived in a refugee camp for nine months before taking passage on a ship to Quebec City arriving in Canada in August 1951.

The good life in Canada. This photo was taken during the early 1960s at our Georgian Bay cottage that Father built by himself over weekends and his annual two week summer vacations.

Moving to Toronto, my parents made a good life for their family. My father became a diehard Maple Leafs fan and a proud Canadian. They bought three properties on Georgian Bay where he built homes on two of them. Working hard, they did well. He went into semi-retirement at the age of 58 and spent the next 21 winters in Florida where they were able to acquire two condos. Not bad for a cabinetmaker with a Grade 9 education and self-taught English as his fourth language.

I loved my father as he loved me. Several years ago a friend told me that what he regretted most was not having told his father he loved him before he died. I made it a habit to tell my father I loved him every time I saw him. I’d hug him and kiss the right side of his forehead.

The summer of 1992, a proud, loving grandfather with his then six-month-old grandson and I.

The last time I saw my father he was being given morphine and was semi-conscious at best. He wasn’t responding to questions or speaking at that point but would keep moving in and out of consciousness. But before leaving his hospital room for the last time I hugged his head and started crying while telling him repeatedly I loved him. I’m sure he heard me and understood what I was saying. For a moment he seemed to respond to my voice and long hug and I could feel his body relax. I let go and said goodbye to my gentle, loving father for the last time.

Photo Credits

Photos Are All Rights Reserved – Joseph Frey

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