Twelve-year-old Rezso from Austria-Hungary became Rudolph with the scratch of an immigration officer’s pen at Weehawken, New Jersey in January, 1905. His little brother Bela became Albert, and his beautiful older sister Eugenia became Jenny. Welcome to America!
Everybody called him Rudy, even his children and grandchildren, for almost 90 years. Except, of course, his wife’s relatives, who called him Billy. But I get ahead of my story.
Rudy’s parents sold almost all they owned to move to the new world. Rudy recalled the voyage as an uncomfortable adventure: his first train ride, north to Germany, with stone-face soldiers coming aboard to haul off young men seeking to escape forced conscription; of using a flush toilet for the first time, and sailing rough seas for twelve days in bitter cold.
Friends who had preceded them from Europe took them in to their cramped apartment in snow-bound Niagara Falls, New York. Rudy’s mother, Rosa, cried herself to sleep. His father, Sigmund, lost his smile and grew quiet. Niagara Falls was nothing like beautiful Totesd, a hamlet surrounded by verdant pastures on the Banat Highway where Rosa and Sigmund had operated a roadside inn. At Totesd there was singing and dancing , good food and good cheer, and a covered outdoor bowling alley to pass the time.
Rudy, Albert and Jenny struggled to learn English at a public school. They learned well. In later years Rudy became a proficient writer of informative, humorous newsletters for his beloved Kenmore Lions Club and Buffalo Eye Bank & Research Society, affiliated with the University of Buffalo’s Medical School.
In the 1930s, with the United States in the midst of a devastating depression and all of Europe fearing war, letter’s from Rosa’s sister ceased. In their grief for the unknown fate of relatives, Rudy’s parents never again debated their decision to come to America.
Rudy named himself Billy to make himself more American to a beautiful Irish girl, Margaret Carney from nearby Lewiston, a picturesque village on the Niagara River below the famous falls. Rudy had discovered his artistic talents and was designing window displays and lettering signs for a drugstore chain. Margaret worked as a secretary. The photo taken on their wedding day in 1914 shows a pretty girl with a tiny waist, dark hair and big eyes smiling happily next to a really handsome guy with hair. Rudy didn’t keep the hair for long.
The name Billy stuck with the Irish side of the house. Rudy’s four sons accepted the fact that on Sunday’s with the Clark, Maloney and Carney clan their father was Billy, and on alternate Sundays with the Spitzer, Sauber, Singer and Simon families he was Rudy. It worked out just fine for a lifetime. He was addressed by both names with equal affection.
Rudy was fun to be with. He did funny things accidentally. He loved golf and swung from the left. When a local municipal course was opened, Rudy was elected president. His honor was to drive the first ball from the first tee, then retire to the clubhouse for refreshments with the mayor and fellow members. Rudy hit a long drive and started down the fairway, never looking back, leaving the mayor, his pals and a local reporter speechless as he took his second shot toward the green.
During the Great Depression, Rudy had no money to buy Christmas presents for his sons, so he built things with his hands: a huge fort with drawbridge, a Ping Pong table, and a 21-foot bowling alley in the basement with a return rack for leaded croquet balls used to knock down duck pins. The basement became a neighborhood social hall. The backyard was a neighborhood playground. A blade of grass never had a chance. Rudy built a big swing, and a slide wide enough and steep enough to sled down in the winter when snow was packed solid for weeks around Buffalo.
Rudy could kick a football 50 yards, left-footed, and beat almost anyone at Ping Pong. He bowled lefty, with a wicked hook. He was a smiling competitor who rarely lost his temper, but liked to win and could be stubborn. But his good cheer was overwhelming. Rudy worked through illness, sometimes sitting up half the night bent over a steaming pail of water with a blanket over his head to curb his asthma, then go off to work early in the morning. Snap shots show him painting vertical letters on a 200-foot smokestack, and dangling off the stern of a freighter, lettering the ship’s name. His sons never heard him complain, and he spent time with doctors reluctantly.
During World War II he worked in a defense plant and hated it. But was grateful for the job and knew he was contributing to the war’s end. Three of his sons were in military service. To surprise them, he build a recreation room in the basement. A pool table was the main attraction, with a cushioned Pin Pong table that fit over the top.
Hi passions were his family, golf, bowling, shooting pool, the Lions Club, eye research and sight restoration, and having fun. He wrote funny newsletters, right-handed, He made people laugh. He made them happy. It was such a natural talent that it wasn’t until Rudy was well into his 80s that his sons fully appreciated the precious gift he had bestowed all his life.
After Margaret died, he visited his sons as often as possible. When he packed to go home his grandchildren would beg him to stay. “If I stay they’ll want me to go,” he would laugh, “Better that I go while they want me to stay.”
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Carlton E. Spitzer
(I want to tell you more about Rudy, my father. So I’ll do a second column in a day or so.)
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