Join me on a flashback in American history to August 27th, 1967 a post by Endre Barath a Beverly Hills Realtor

Join me on a flashback in American history to August 27th, 1967.

The Barath family landed at New York’s JFK International Airport all thanks to my father, Endre Barath, Sr., writing a letter to then President Lyndon B.  Johnson who granted permission for us to legally live in the United States.  This was a dream come true for my dad as he always wanted to live in the U.S., a free democratic country where you could express your views without being punished by the government. In his mind, the U.S. was the only country where this would be possible in 1967.  While he had made attempts to leave Communist Hungary many times, he would not leave without taking his entire family which consisted of me and my mother.

When he arranged for all of us to go to the Winter Olympics in Austria in 1964, that was the start of making his dream become a reality. He decided he would not return to Hungary, and we managed to find refuge in an immigration camp.  This is where he began the process of trying to get into the United States legally, but the powers to be kept turning him down.  This was largely in part because my father was a powerful engineer in Communist Hungary, a position you could only hold if you were a member of the Communist Party.  Many suggested he emigrate to Canada and cross the border illegally and no one would care.  This was never a consideration for my dad, so he kept trying until he finally exhausted all of his attempts.

 

As a last resort, my father wrote a personal letter to Lyndon Johnson asking for his help.  Interestingly my father received a message back from the American Embassy in Vienna to pack up his family and his belongings as he was being granted the opportunity to legally immigrate to the United States. The window of time was extremely short; this was the now or never moment.  You can imagine how our world was turned upside down,  just as we had started settling into life in Austria, getting comfortable with the German language and the Austrian way of life. My mother was a bit distraught as the job of getting everything packed up and put together fell largely to her, but we did manage to pack it all up and get ready to relocate.  My father was thrilled beyond words, and needless to say when we arrived in the U.S., he quickly realized that a few years of learning English was not enough. He also discovered the challenges of finding a job in the mechanical engineering field. My mother did not speak the English language either and had to learn.

All these years later and I did not understand why the short notice to pack up and come to the U.S. and why on August 27th.  My father of course never questioned it, he was just thrilled that it happened.  So after all these years, I decided to see what else happened in history on August 27th, 1967 and I learned that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s birthday was August 27th and he turned 59 years old on that day in 1967.  I do wish my parents were still alive so I could share this with them. Clearly this was President Johnson’s gift to the Barath Family to invite them to legally enter the United States on his 59th birthday.

 

This made me pause and wonder what do you usually do on your birthday? How do you celebrate and how do you give back?  Food for thought.