The Accidental Horseman
by Paul J. Schaefer

I first met Jozsef in 1959. He was running alongside a cantering white horse, holding onto a surcingle, a wide belt-like strap that encircled the horse behind the front legs. Timing himself to the horse's pace, he vaulted onto the horse's bare back with one simple movement. He didn't look like Hop-a-long Cassidy or Roy Rogers in the movies, jumping on their horses and speeding off ahead of the posse; his vault was more like the controlled and athletic performance of a circus bareback rider or the graceful movement of a leaping dancer. It had been a long journey for Joe, as I learned to call him, from the streets of Budapest to a farm in Dutchess County, just south of Rhinebeck. He could never have guessed, on that October day in 1956 when he witnessed the breakout of the Hungarian Revolution, that it would propel him to the back of a horse over 4,000 miles away.

Fifty years ago, on October 23, 1956, when Communism's choking grip had angered the Hungarian working class that it had promised to elevate, students and workers gathered in the largest square in central Budapest and began trying to topple a statue of Joseph Stalin that symbolized their oppression. Stalin had died and been denounced by the new Russian premier, Nikita Khrushchev. The Hungarian people, as well as some Party leaders, dared to hope that they could follow their own path to a "worker's paradise." Jozsef was in that crowd. At 16 he wasn't involved in politics. But like any teenager, he was drawn to excitement. With a friend his own age, he watched for over two hours as the towering bronze statue refused to budge, even though men standing on its shoulders had attached a loop of steel cables around its neck, with the other end tied to a powerful truck.

Jozsef saw the truck rear up, straining at the end of the cable. The crowd was shouting at the statue as if it were alive, sarcastically advising "little Joseph" to "hold on tight." Finally the crowd cut the statue at the knees with a blow-torch and the truck brought it tumbling down. Just after the moment of triumph, Jozsef heard gunfire. As he and his friend began to run, his companion was grazed in the leg, but not deep enough to bring him down. The two of them dashed into a large building, ran up to the second floor and leapt out of a window that faced away from the square. Jozsef went with his friend to a hospital, then found his way home to his father's apartment, which was not far away. He stayed closer to home the next few days. As the Russian army came in to crush the revolution, he saw bodies littering the streets not far from his apartment. He witnessed Russian soldiers firing on Red Cross workers trying to help the wounded.

Jozsef's mother had died when he was five, and so he had been sent to live on his grandmother's farm until he was eleven. He then went to live with his father, older sister and brother, to finish his formal education in Budapest. At 16 he was employed in the post office. Since leaving the farm home he had loved, he had been forced to learn how to survive on his own on the city streets. His father had a drinking problem, and did not pay him much attention. So on a day in early November when the shooting had almost stopped, Jozsef rashly went out again on his own to see what was going on. Accidentally, he ran into a fellow worker from the post office, and his long journey began.

His co-worker had an idea. Many students and journalists, fearful for their lives, were fleeing to the Austrian border. The two boys had no political reason to go, but Jozsef's friend thought it might be an exciting thing to do. Why not give it a try? Impulsively, Jozsef agreed. Without telling his family, he and his friend purchased train tickets for a Hungarian town near the Austrian border. Once there, they found dozens of people trying to cross over. But as they moved towards the border, troops opened fire. Many were shot and several killed. The two boys ran back to the train station, where a sympathetic stationmaster hid them in his office for several hours until the Russians moved on. Then, the stationmaster put them on another train and told them to get off at a different border town. Here, there were only Hungarian guards. They encouraged the two boys to cross, pointing the way across a deep swamp. Luckily the temperatures were cold enough to have frozen the watery pools, and they slipped into Austria on the ice. As soon as they got over the line, they were picked up by Austrian guards and taken to an old army base.

Jozsef was housed in barracks with thousands of other refugees. Here, he began a long, lonely wait. His friend and co-worker had Austrian relatives who sponsored him, and he left almost immediately. Although Jozsef applied to every country in the West that was taking refugees, no one wanted a 16-year-old with few job skills and without a university education. Here in the Hudson Valley, however, many Americans were agonizing over why our government didn't do anything to help the Hungarians. We had cheered for them when we first heard the news from Budapest, only to feel let down by our country's lack of response to Russian brutality. Many private citizens, and some institutions, responded. Bard College hosted some 300 Hungarian refugee students for orientation and English classes. The U.S.-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service also sprang into action, doing its best to find sponsors for refugees. They sponsored Jozsef in early February, 1957. Despite more delay because he was bumped from flights and always placed last with a name, Vradi, that always came near the end of the alphabet, he finally arrived at Fort Kilmer, New Jersey, in early March, 1957.

From there, Joe was taken to New York City and put on a train for Poughkeepsie by himself. He didn't speak English and didn't know where he was going. In Poughkeepsie he was met by a Lutheran minister who drove him to a farm just south of Rhinebeck. There he was left with a woman who would eventually became a substitute for the mother he had lost at age five. When he first laid eyes on her, however, he thought she was a man.

Deborah Dows was a descendant of the Beekmans and Livingstons. She had grown up at Fox Hollow, the estate her father Tracy Dows had built on the Hudson River. After her parents separated, she spent much of her time in Washington, D.C., where she was a part of the Hudson Valley circle that hovered around Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and the White House. But after a failed marriage, she built a house on land near Fox Hollow that had been in her mother's family since 1697 from a King's grant. In her new house, with attached horse stable, she changed from a socialite to a horsewoman and farmer. Her everyday dress was work pants, shirts and boots from Sears and Roebuck catalogs, and a stocking cap that hid the girlish pink ribbon she always wore in her hair.

Joe was given a room in her house to share with another Hungarian that Mrs. Dows had taken in earlier. The Reverend John DePapp, pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church of Wurtemburg, a native Hungarian himself and passionate about helping his countrymen, had convinced her to give shelter to both of them. She was known for welcoming what she called "waifs and strays" — both human and animal. A local parole officer often placed ex-cons at her farm; she had taken in another local young boy and his mother after her husband had committed suicide, leaving them destitute.

Life at Southlands was communal. Mrs. Dows, the Norwegian cook Marie, Joe and his Hungarian compatriot, drop-in horse-dealers, children about for riding lessons, two bulldogs, a Doberman and a bloodhound all dined together above and below the long, wooden kitchen table. She forced Joe to say knife, fork, spoon over and over again, and taught him the English names of what he was eating. He thought the food was bland; he missed Hungarian spices. But the cook Marie took pity on him and when he had to get up early to prepare horses for a show, she arose at 4:30AM with him and fed him bacon and eggs and spoiled him with desserts.

Early on, Deborah Dows put Joe on a large, solidly built white horse somewhat ironically named Snowflake. He rode without stirrups, the horse controlled by Mrs. Dows, who held a 20-foot line called a lunge, attached to the horse's bridle. He did this almost every day for a month. When she set him free, he sat on the horse with the posture that made him the superb rider I saw a few years later. When not working with horses, he did chores at the barn. He didn't mind. On his grandmother's farm in Hungary, he had learned to love animals, and there were plenty to love at Southlands: over a hundred horses and ponies, a tiny Sicilian Donkey trained to bow by kneeling down on his front legs whenever a spotlight was put on him, a goat named Tabasco who chomped lit cigarettes, long-lashed Jersey cows, Muscovy ducks, geese, assorted exotic chickens and of course, four or five dogs.

But language continued to be a problem. Joe's Hungarian roommate, I'll call him Peter, was three or four years older than Joe, and claimed aristocratic lineage. Peter treated him as if he were his servant, and what might have been an opportunity for friendship with someone who could speak his own tongue ended with Joe needing to defend his rights with his fists. Sometimes Joe worked with the farmer who plowed and seeded the fields and brought in the hay. This man thought it would be fun to teach Joe profanities he didn't understand, and told him he should use them to address Mrs. Dows. She was surprised and angry at first, but soon realized what had happened. Joe, however, was so ashamed that he almost stopped speaking for over a month, afraid of saying something obscene.

Joe's work days were pleasant enough, but the nights were desperately lonely. He wrote letters home that ached with homesickness. In desperation after the evening meal, he would go up to the darkened barn and talk to the sleepy horses in Hungarian. Joe could always make himself understood to animals. His secret was to be speak softly, and watch for a reply. In time, Joe's English improved, his confidence returned, and he began to make friends with some of the riding students who came to Southlands for instruction.

In 1963, Joe married and left the farm. He found it difficult to work in factories and commit himself to non-farm labor that didn't involve animals. He had four children whom he loved deeply, but divorce, re-marriage and another divorce sometimes separated him from them. The problems that plagued his father with alcohol seem to have been inherited. He often came back to work for Mrs. Dows, but neither could find a way to make the arrangement permanent.

When Joe was told that he had terminal cancer in early 2006, he asked if he could come home. Mrs. Dows had died in 1994; but she had given her land to the Southlands Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching children and teenagers like Jozsef about loving animals and the land. Joe took one last ride to the hogback in the Big Cedar Lot, where he picked the spot where he wanted his ashes scattered. He died on October 10, 2006, just 13 days short of the 50th anniversary of the revolution that had sent him to Dutchess County and Southlands Farm.

On February 15, 16, and 17, Bard College sponsored a three-day conference and 50th reunion of the 300 Hungarian student refugees who attended Bard College beginning in December, 1956.