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Visitors from Toledo, Ohio
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Toledo (Ohio) and Szeged became sister cities in 1990.
The Vasváry Collection has had a number of visitors from Toledo since
that year. Lastly, in November, on a visit to Hungary, John Ahern, University
of Toledo professor emeritus, and his wife, and Elizabeth Balint, Deputy
Director of Toledo Sister Cities International spent one day in Szeged.
On Monday, November 3, after a sightseeing they paid a visit to the Somogyi
Library, accompanied by few members of the Society of Friends of Toledo
and Szeged. The Society was founded in 1995 in Szeged. The main purpose
of their visit was to donate books to the Vasváry Collection, which were
published about Toledo's Hungarian community. Toledo has a sizable ethnic
Hungarian population and community. John Ahern deals with the history
of Hungarian Americans in Toledo. His interest is begun while volunteering
in the Hungarian community in the 1980s. He donated among others Roots
in Birmingham (edited by John Ahern et al., University of Toledo Urban
Affairs Center, 1997), Joó Marianna translated it into Hungarian and she
donated a copy (for the time being unpublished) to the Vasváry
Collection; Hungarian American Toledo: Life and Times in Toledo's Birmingham
Neighborhood (edited by John Ahern and Thomas E. Barden, University of
Toledo Urban Affairs Center, 2002).
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The book contains stories, photographs and an analyses of Toledo's Hungarian community. Cited the preface of the book: "includes works by scholars and writers who have studied the Birmingham neighborhood from various perspectives: architectural, folkloristic, theatrical, historical, sociological, and photographic." "Each and every one of us is born into a small and particular world. Hungarian American Toledo is about one such world - the Hungarian ethnic neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio. Named for the great industrial center in the English midlands, Toledo's Birmingham neighborhood began to develop in the 1890s with the steel, copper, and shipbuilding industries that thrived on the east bank of the Maumee River." Included in the volume descriptions of several traditions, which have been preserved by Hungarian community such as a folk play the "Betlehemes játék" Christmas play. Some other further chapters in the book are: Church and Community, Architectures in Birmingham, Recipes and Ethnic Identity. During the visit the guests were interested in the Károly Somogyi Memorial Library and the materials of the Vasváry Collection. We would like to express our thanks for the donations. |
