My grandparents on my mother’s side were Martin and Margaret Soos, both full blooded Hungarians. As I understand their story, Martin met Margaret in Trenton, New Jersey at some point after Martin came to America from Ugod, Hungary.

The Soos story as I know it was handed down to me through my older brother Lou and my grandfather’s brother, Joe Soos. Here’s how this story goes…

One day in Hungary, Martin and his teenage friends were pelting Russian tanks with rocks. I don’t know why the Russian tanks were in Hungary or what year this would have been, but apparently him and friends often rebelled against this Russian occupation by doing this. On this particular day of throwing rocks, the Russian soldiers caught them and Martin was put in some type of makeshift prison.

I don’t know how long that Martin Soos was held in this Russian prison but apparently it was long enough that while he was there he learned some English from another prisoner. Then one day, Martin escaped and made his way to the Croatian Coast where he secretly stowed away on a merchant ship.

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on its way to a port in New Jersey, Martin Soos made himself known and was quickly put to work by the crew. When the merchant shipped finally docked at its port in New Jersey, the crew were looking for someone who could speak English who could go into town to purchase cigarettes for them. The only one on board who spoke English was Martin Soos.

The story goes that the crew collected what was about $78 and they sent Martin Soos off the ship to purchase and bring back cigarettes. However, Martin Soos never returned to the ship and instead searched for a Hungarian neighborhood, which he found and where he began his new life in America.

I don’t know much from that point on except that he got a job as a machine mechanic and he began dating and eventually married a Hungarian lady named Margaret and they became my mother’s parents.

Shortly before my mother’s death, my brother and I asked my mother about this story, but she refused to deny it or affirm it. Her only response to us was, “Papa was not a thief.” My mother held a very high idolized view of her father, to the point where I often questioned her memory. My mother said, “Papa could walk outside the house and hold his hand up in the air and birds would land on his fingers and chirp their beautiful music.”

Listening to my mother, I remember thinking that she may have confused her dad for St. Francis, when she started speaking about how even the animals loved him. Sadly, my grandfather died of emphysema in the early 1970’s before I had turned 10 years of age.

My mother did share a story about her dad that was likely actual, that took place when she was a small child of 8 or 9 years old. She said she remembers hearing her mom and dad in heated conversations late at night, about him needing to become an American citizen. My mother said she carried around a fear that the police would come and take him away for being an illegal immigrant.

At some point, Martin Soos became an American citizen and the family moved to Toledo, Ohio. I believe that move from New Jersey to Ohio had to do with recruiting workers for the glass manufacturing plants in Toledo that supplied the city’s neighbor to the north, Detroit and its automotive businesses.

A final bit of the Soos story that I want to share is how my parents met. Actually, it’s not a big thing, but the story behind it is what’s amusing to me. My mother and father met at a wedding where they were both guests. Nothing unusual, they exchanged names and numbers and my dad took her out on dates and they eventually had their own wedding with each other.

What’s amusing to me is what my mother once told me. She said that her dad was very serious about her only dating Hungarian boys. My mother said she did not like dating Hungarian boys because Hungarians are typically not tall and mother said she liked high-heel shoes and she could not wear them when she went on a date with a Hungarian boy.

My dad was 6’3″ tall from a Slovakian family and my mom said she liked dating him because she could wear high-heel shoes. She also said that her father warmed up to her dating a Slovakian boy because he was a machine mechanic at one of the glass factories just like her dad.

That’s the Soos story as I know it. I’m sure there is more to it than I know, perhaps my cousins from that side of the family have more pieces to this puzzle, but it is still fascinating to me.