General Notes

Nickname:<NICK> Stevie or Steve
Cause of Death:<CAUS> Cancer
My grandfather told me a few stories about his life in Hungary, the boat trip over here, and his first few years in New York.  These are some of them; told to the best of my memory:

Grandpa Radoczy used to tell me stories, or we would watch baseball - the Yankees, while he rubbed (tickled, as I called it) my back.  He told me alittle about his hometown - Hidesnemetti - "city of bridges", as many of the towns/cities were named for landmarks.  Tornysnemetti means "city of churches orsteeples".  He told me of Russian (I assume) soldiers that he encountered daily because Hungary was occupied at that time (early 1900's).  He and other children and women had to cross a 'border' of some sort to fetch milk.  They carriedthe buckets on either end of a pole that would rest across their shoulders, and that itself was quite a chore to carry.  He recalled it to be a pretty good distance that they had to go to get the milk, as well.  I was pretty young when he would tell me these stories, maybe between the ages of 7 and 11 years old.  The thing that impressed me, or frightened me really, about this one is the soldiers.  When they would come back across the border (or maybe city limit?) these soldiers would harass them sometimes.  Most of the time really, but always they would put their hands (certainly not clean) into the buckets of milk and feel around to make sure that the women and children were not smuggling weapons into the town.  He would tell me, "I wasn't any older than you are now, Brenda."He couldn't have been, since he and his mother came over when he was only nine years old.

I remember my grandfather as a little intimidating, oddly enough since he was not a big man.  He really was rather small - only 5'8" and 140 lbs.  But he was stern...usually.  His stories showed a different side of him, though. 

He told me of his house in Hungary.  I can't remember much about itaside from the fact that it had an attic type area with a thatched roof and they used to keep vegtables and dry food up in it.  He said that one night everyone woke up to a horrible racket from the 'attic'.  I'm not positive who 'everyone' is because I think that his father had already come to the states, so my assumption is that he and his mother (Anne was not born yet) were living with herbrother and his family.  Anyway, they all woke up and looked up, at the ceiling...the noise sounded like something rolling around with the food.  His uncle climbed a ladder to the attic ,with a candle-I guess, and discovered two weaselsplaying around, rolling around, and just having a blast.  Well, I imagine thatmy grandfather's sternness is a trait common to Hungarians because my great-uncle somehow grabbed both weasels and killed them.  I don't know how, and I probably didn't want to.  He skinned them the next day, and I'm pretty sure that they ate them.  He also tanned the hides and made my grandpa some boots that he desperately needed.  He said he was very proud of the boots, especially since hehad a story to go with them, but as a little time went by, he decided that he needed a whip more than the boots.  So he cut his boots into strips and fashioned a whip from them.  His uncle saw him barefooted, or stocking socked, and asked him where his boots were.  My grandpa, who was probably only five or six, hadn't quite thought about the consequenses of making his really great whip out of his painstakingly made boots.  When his uncle discovered the fate of the boots, he used that whip on my grandfather's backside quite zealously.

I suppose that my grandpa didn't miss his uncle too much when he left to come to the States.  His father, as I have said, was already in America.  I think I was told he left first because he would have had to fight if he hadn't come.  I know for sure that conditions in Hungary were such that he had planned to get the whole family out anyway.