John Toth

John Toth was born on December 13, 1955, in Budapest, Hungary, the only child of Toth János and Toth März Gizella. He spent his early years at 72 American Street, where his family lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building, sharing their space with two other families.

On March 6, 1966, John, whose Hungarian name was also János,  walked with his mother and father to a taxi station near their apartment building, and all rode to the East Train Station (Keleti pályaudvar). From there, young John and his mother, Gizella, waved goodbye to his father, János, as they took a train to Vienna, Austria.

 

  John, who was 10 years old at the time, thought he was going to the cultural and national capital of the neighboring western democratic country for a Spring Break visit.

 

The next morning, Gizella told her son that they had just escaped from Hungary, which was at the time occupied by the Soviet Union. The book is based on the escape and their lives in Vienna.

 

John and his mother started a new life in Vienna and learned German while they applied and waited for permission from a western democracy to immigrate and live safely, so they wouldn't have to return to Hungary, where his mother would have faced imprisonment for fleeing.

 

About a year-and-a-half later, they received political asylum from the United States and flew across the Atlantic Ocean to start all over again. John learned English and managed to make it through grade school without losing any years because of the country hopping and language barriers.

 

His love of writing began in high school (from where he graduated seventh in his class in 1974)  and continued in college. John attended the City College of New York, where he became sports editor of the weekly student paper. He also started a weekly newspaper for the college’s veterans organization. John graduated in 1979 with a Bachelor's Degree in Communications.

 

He went on to work for the Daily Tribune in Bay City, Texas, where he was general assignments editor and assistant city editor. He then became a general assignments reporter for the Victoria Advocate, also in Texas, where he met his future wife, Sharon Lee Allen.

 

In 1981, John won the Texas School Teachers Association Friend of Education award for his reporting of education topics in the Victoria area. 

 

In 1982, he accepted a job at the Brazosport Facts in Clute, Texas, as a feature writer, and in 1983, he was hired as a general assignment reporter for the Houston Chronicle to cover the Brazoria County, Texas, area.

 

In 1990, John won the Headliners Foundation’s prestigious Charles E. Green Journalism Award in the Masters Category for Spot Reporting for the coverage of the fire which burned the tanker  Megaborg, off the coast of Galveston.

 

 One of his other accomplishments at the Chronicle was covering the state’s prison system and exposing the gang killings inside the six state prisons in Brazoria County from 1984-85.

 

In 1989, John returned to Budapest to become reacquainted with his aunts and cousins, and wrote several articles for the Chronicle about his experiences.

 

After 12 years at the Chronicle, John resigned, and he and Sharon started The Bulletin, a free weekly general circulation newspaper in Brazoria County. At the time this book was published, The Bulletin was in its 31st year of publication. 

 

John and Sharon also owned a defensive driving school for 22 years and a franchise candle and gift shop for several years at Brazos Mall in Lake Jackson, Texas, but his top priority after resigning from the Chronicle always has been publishing The Bulletin.

 

John has been invited by several area groups to tell his story about he and his mother's escape from Hungary during the peak of communism and starting new lives in the West. He then realized that his three children, John III, Robert / Bobby and Stephanie Gizella, didn’t really know much about what he went through to get to the U.S.A, nor what happened afterwards. 

 

He decided to start this book project, which was delayed many times over the years by family and business matters. At one point in recent years, he quit procrastinating and made a final push, working nights and weekends, to finish the book, which ends with Gizella and John flying to  the U.S.A.

 

John plans to  write  on another book on his early years in the United States.

For more information on John Toth, visit www.FILLER