By Thea Jarvis

From the top drawer of his desk in the principal’s office of Cedar Grove High School in DeKalb County, Gyuri Nemeth pulls an aging Saint Joseph Missal. Handing the book to a visitor, he points to an inscription on the inside page: “With every blessing and prayer that God will be good to you and to your suffering people in Hungary. Richard Cardinal Cushing, Archbishop of Boston.”

Dr. Nemeth remembers well the meeting with Boston’s beloved archbishop that led to the inscription. The craggy-faced cardinal heard Nemeth, then about 18, address participants of a youth leadership institute at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“Become something very special,” the cardinal had told the young immigrant after his talk. Gyuri Nemeth not only took his advice, but chose the venerable prelate as an example to follow.

“We all want the choice assignments,” Nemeth points out, but Cardinal Cushing never did. He repeatedly requested mission territory that would have taken him far from the security of his New England post. Cushing’s total willingness to serve puts him at the top of Gyuri Nemeth’s list of heroes.

“We need to go places where we can, in fact, make a difference,” Dr. Nemeth insists. His eyes sparkle and he rubs his hands together earnestly. Almost always, when he speaks, he is smiling. And his smile, his dedication, his willingness to serve where he is most needed, has made a significant difference in the lives of young people in metro Atlanta.

Most of Gyuri Nemeth’s own youth was spent in Turkey. The son of a Hungarian embassy employee, he was nearly five when his family began life outside their Hungarian homeland. In the late forties, when the Iron Curtain began dropping in eastern Europe, many of the embassy staff were recalled to Hungary. Nemeth’s father had no recourse but to return home in 1948, leaving his wife and three children behind in Turkey. He was never heard from again.

The family continued to resist pressure from embassy officials to return to Hungary. Gyuri and his siblings attended Turkish schools since embassy-supported classrooms were full of anti-West propaganda and Turkey was a staunch Communist foe at the time.

“Listen to your teachers,” Nemeth’s mother urged when official Hungarian diatribes waxed stronger than usual and the children became confused. At Christmas, when embassy youngsters received gifts of the season, the Nemeth children were excluded. “We didn’t cooperate,” Dr. Nemeth explains, marveling at his mother’s strength.

In Hungary, meanwhile, “The Iron Curtain was dropping solidly, totally. It was around that time that Cardinal Mindszenty was jailed,” Nemeth recalls. Embassy staff pressured the Nemeths to return to Hungary, but Mrs. Nemeth appealed to Turkish police who allowed the family sanctuary at a friend’s home. The Nemeths became the first political refugees from an Iron Curtain country to seek asylum in Turkey. They hid for seven months, living in a room the size of Nemeth’s principal’s office. “We were all petrified – scared would be an understatement,” Dr. Nemeth suggests. At 10, young Gyuri was old enough to understand what was happening and young enough to be frightened: discovery, death, kidnapping were daily threats.

Eventually, “the bubble burst,” in Nemeth’s words. More and more Hungarians began seeking political refuge abroad and the Hungarian government had too many problems on the home front to bother with a refugee roundup. Gyuri, his sister and brother went back to their Turkish schools and resumed a normal life. In 1956, the family decided to emigrate to the United States.

“We wanted to come to the U.S. because we thought everyone was wealthy and rich,” Dr. Nemeth laughs. They had watched U.S. military personnel “living like kings” while stationed in Turkey, spending strong American dollars on the best hotels, taxis and restaurants. The Nemeths took a train to Istanbul, than a boat to Greece. In Athens, they boarded a chartered prop full of refugees and were on their way to New York.

“It was a long and difficult process – much questioning and paperwork,” Dr. Nemeth remembers sitting on the plane, waiting to see New York City. When the plan broke through the clouds, his only view was of the ocean. He was 17 years old and frightened.

“Hey, that’s small,” he exclaimed as he viewed the Empire State Building wedged between mountain monoliths of steel and concrete. He was struck by the mad crush of people going nowhere and the fact that Americans seems to be working as hard or harder as their European counterparts.

“There weren’t any gold-plated sidewalks,” and Nemeth began to worry about survival in the new land that held so much promise for immigrants like himself.

The Nemeths made their way to Framingham, Massachusetts where they stayed in the family home of Dr. Nemeth’s future stepfather, a U.S. Navy serviceman who had been stationed in Turkey. In Framingham, Nemeth “watched television for hours and hours,” learning English as he did so, and enrolled at Framingham High School. Although older than his classmates – Turkish schools admitted students at age seven, somewhat later than American schools – he was comfortable because of the numbers of Korean veterans who had returned to complete their education.

Gyuri Nemeth was academically adept and active in student organizations and athletics, vice president of his class and the student body, a representative to Boys’ State and leadership institutes. “I really appreciated the opportunity to do all the things that the United States had to offer,” he explains modestly. At 19, he graduated, and looks back on his American high school years as “an extremely positive experience.”

Dr. Nemeth enrolled at Boston College as a chemistry major after graduation, but left to join the Green Berets. It was in part the “old country tradition” that led him to enlist, he feels, and partly because, “By then, I was enjoying the U.S. so much I felt it my duty and obligation to return to the country something of what it gave me.”

His nearly three-year tour with the Special Forces was spent almost exclusively at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, giving him an introduction to the southern U.S. Re-entering civilian life, he resumed undergraduate work at the University of Delaware and met his wife, Sue, during this second year. Dr. Nemeth stayed at Delaware to complete his master’s degree in educational administration and in 1968 returned to Framingham High School as a social studies teacher.

But Gyuri Nemeth was destined to be a Southerner, if not by birth, then by occupation. He was invited to join the Georgia State University staff in Atlanta as assistant dean and instructor in the School of Education and stayed for four years. When Leon Lessinger, the father of “accountability in education,” became dean of the College of Education at the University of South Carolina in 1973, Nemeth followed him as assistant dean and assistant professor of educational administration. He remained at USC for seven years, earning his Ph.D. from Georgia State while there.

“Public schools need to be accountable to the public,” was the Lessinger credo, Nemeth remembers. It is the foundation of his work in education today.

Following the philosophy of accountability, Dr. Nemeth ultimately bucked the tide and became that rarest of contemporary commodities: the downwardly mobile educator. Problems arose in the teaching of education, he realized, because the staff had been away from teaching for too long. In 1980, he left USC and moved back to Georgia with his wife and two children, Christy and Billy. He chose the public high school as the arena in which he would use his gifts.

Looking back on the decision he made just six years ago, Dr. Nemeth has no regrets. “It is fun. Life is good. It all depends on what you choose to see,” he says. A charming European accent softens his impeccable English and his gracious good humor is unshakable. “It is like a rose – a beautiful flower. It’s a decision you make to see the petals or the thorns.” At Tucker High School, Nemeth’s first assignment in DeKalb County, students remember him as one who consistently saw the petals.

“He wanted to know people,” said Nancy Murphy, a second year student at Georgia State who knew Dr. Nemeth during his four years as assistant principal at Tucker. “He was very caring and interested in what the kids were doing and what they thought – he remembered people’s names!”

Nancy’s parents, Dick and Lois Murphy of Corpus Christi Church in Stone Mountain, agreed that “the kids all loved him.”

“He was always at student affairs, no matter what it was. That’s the biggest thing I remember about him,” said Dick Murphy. “He brought his family with him too.”

Jon Strasser, a Tucker graduate enrolled at North Georgia College in Dahlonega, judged Dr. Nemeth one of the school’s finest administrators. “He was extremely fair in his dealings with students. If they had a problem about school, they could go to him first. He always heard the kids’ side first before he heard anybody else’s.”

Dr. Nemeth’s recipe for reaching high school students is simple: “Forget time and care about the youngster. There are no shortcuts,” he advises. To this end, he attends nearly 75 percent of all student activities, “not because I am required to but because it’s just as significant for me to see that eighth grade girl basketball player as it is to see the star pitcher on the baseball team. The next day, when you see them in the hall and say, ‘I saw you do this,’ they realize someone other than their families cared enough to come.” Crediting his own accomplishments to his mother’s love and loyalty, he is quick to share such positive reinforcement with others.

From Tucker, Nemeth moved on to Cedar Grove High, where for two years he has been “totally involved in the whole school,” according to assistant principal Mary Ann Schrecengoast. “Whatever happened in the school he took personally. If it was good, he didn’t take credit. If it was bad, he said the buck stops here. He’s taught me a lot. And I’ve been doing this for 19 years!”

Dr. Nemeth’s secretary at Cedar Grove said simply, “He’s done such a good job here they’re moving him to Walker High School,” just a few miles down the road this fall.

Questioned about his impact on Cedar Grove, Dr. Nemeth estimates there were four “altercations” per day during his first week at the high school. “In the last 10 months, we’ve averaged three or four total.”

Sue Ellen Bray, assistant director of research and evaluation for the DeKalb County school system, who worked with Gyuri Nemeth at Tucker High, remembered the contagious “joy of life” he brought to his job. “He felt the action was in the schools with the kids. He was willing to change direction because status didn’t mean anything as long as he was contributing.”

Ms. Bray knows Nemeth as a “devoted family man” whose home loyalties spill over into this work.

“He had a drive that people who have been born here are often lazy about: a drive to succeed. This doesn’t come from a sense of greed, but from a feeling that he owed a debt to his profession and this country.”

It is a hot day in early summer and Gyuri Nemeth is preparing to leave one school and move on to another. His demeanor is deceptively simple, gentle but sure. Any advice for those who, like himself, work with young people at home or in the schools? He is quick to reply. It is clear he has already implemented the answer for himself.

“One: remember that kids are wiser than you think. Two: they are more able than you think. And three,” Nemeth smiles broadly, “by yourself and be open. They can take it.”

They Came To Serve

By Gretchen Keiser

When Tam Van Bui stood with his two children in his arms at an airstrip outside Saigon, he was waiting for a promised rescue, but he heard only bombs and saw only threats. He wept, believing that he had brought his family not to safety, but to complete destruction.

“When we were at the airport, the bombing so bad the American airplane couldn’t land, Tam had cried for the first time in his life,” said his wife Anh Le. “He thought he was bringing the children to a better life.”

She spoke from the security and safety of a new home and life in Atlanta, but she remembered vividly the blackness of that moment only 11 years ago.

Because of bombs and panic and hostility on the ground, hovering aircraft couldn’t land to rescue those seeking escape as Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese, said Tam, who had come to the area on about one hour’s notice with his wife, his mother and his daughter and son, two and one year old. Threatened, fleeing with no possessions, Tam who had been an officer in the South Vietnamese Navy, and Anh Le, who had worked at the American Embassy, were among those in great danger and seeking asylum as the Americans left. Finally, a ring of Marines formed around the crowd of evacuees and helicopter after helicopter swooped down to pull people off the ground to ships in the American 7^th Fleet off the coast. As ordered, Tam turned in his military uniform on the ship and stood empty-handed on the threshold of a completely uncertain new life.

Dislocation, separated families, depression, sickness and uncertainty were a part of the doorway to America for Vietnamese refugees who were taken in 1975 to Subic Bay in the Philippines and then to Guam to wait. But Tam, who had trained as a pharmacist before being drafted into the military, and Anh Le, a nurse who spoke English, began to work immediately with their fellow refugees in the camps.

“I see the miserable situation everyone in,” said Tam. “I think if I’m just sitting in the camp, just waiting, it is worse. If I volunteer to do something meaningful, it is better.”

The refugees were “in the dark” wondering “what is going on to my parents, my sister, my brother, my neighborhood” back in the war zones in Vietnam. “Will we stay in the camp forever? Will they send us back to Vietnam?”

“A lot of people have mental problems. Maybe the wife doesn’t know where her husband is. Maybe both escape from the country, but in different camps – this kind of thing,” Tam said.

With his mother to watch over the children, both Tam and Anh Le volunteered to work in public health in the camp in Guam and then to come to a refugee camp in the United States to work. The route led to friendship with an Atlanta doctor from the Centers for Disease Control working in a Florida refugee camp. He sponsored the family and two others with medical backgrounds and they were the first Vietnamese families to come to Atlanta in 1975.

They were paving a road that many were to walk behind them as the first stream of Vietnamese refugees turned into the wave of fleeing families in 1979 and the early 1980s as the desperation drove the “boat people” to abandon their lives in Vietnam and perilously risk a new one elsewhere.

The family who had waited on the airstrip seeing only destruction ahead now came to the Atlanta airport nightly to welcome families to Atlanta and to reassure others with a Vietnamese presence, with their language and, perhaps, Vietnamese food, as they passed through Atlanta to relocation in another American city.

Tam and Anh Le, who have carved out a distinguished new life of work, accomplishment and service in Atlanta, do not speak of their relationships with fellow Vietnamese in those terms, but only in terms of a kinship that was forged out of difficulty, loneliness and drastic change.

Yet they acknowledge that from the beginning in Atlanta they were called upon to serve as other Vietnamese arrived. Assisted by Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church at Emory University themselves and by Villa International, both Tam and Anh Le were working after their first day in the city – Tam handing out towels and checking credentials at an Emory gymnasium and Anh Le as a medical secretary at Egleston Hospital. “As soon as I get here, I find job, located my apartment and go back to school,” said Tam. Quickly called upon to translate for other Vietnamese families who arrived and to aid in the transition from one culture to another, they sought to strengthen one another and communicate hope.

“We were like a pioneer group in Atlanta,” Anh Le recalled. “Then Vietnamese start to arrive…We both speak English and American culture was not strange for me. I help them spiritual, trying to find jobs for them.” It was not the financial difficulties that were most painful, they said, but the emotional ones.

“Everybody was suffer from people left behind,” Anh Le said. “We had to stick together, gathering news.”

The first, of a fledgling Vietnamese Catholic community, Tam and Anh Le and a few other Catholic families were strengthened by the arrival in 1976 of a Vietnamese priest, Father Francis Pham Van Phuong. Traditional gatherings, such as Christmas Eve Mass, and the celebration of Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, became occasions for gathering people together who needed support. The work of trying to find jobs and trying to help the community became a formal one for the family in 1979 when Father Jacob Bollmer, director of Catholic Social Services, sought out Anh Le to work for the department taking care of refugees, especially those coming from Vietnam. However, Tam was the one to respond to the call, welcoming this “chance to help the people in this capacity.” A possible career in chemistry, for which he had been studying at Georgia State University for several years, was set aside as he became director of the burgeoning Refugee Program at Catholic Social Services.

Beginning in 1979 and continuing through 1984, Tam estimates that some 8,000 Vietnamese refugees came into Georgia, approximately 70 percent of them through the U.S. Catholic Conference at the national level and through Catholic Social Services in Atlanta.

Pressed to talk about that intense influx of people in need, Tam and Anh Le concede that one of them was at the airport almost every night as families arrived or passed through Atlanta to another city. “We both slept at the airport so many times,” said Anh Le. “Sometimes I was so tired, I fell asleep in my car. I don’t know how I got there.

One night 137 people arrived in Atlanta on one day’s notice, Tam said. Day’s Inn of College Park knocked half off their rates to provide a first night shelter for those coming, while Tam, the other members of the refugee staff and the Vietnamese community scrambled to pull together clothing, housing possibilities and food. Calls have come from the emergency room staff at Grady Hospital in the middle of the night as they sought to help a Vietnamese family involved in an accident, but unable to understand the forms and paperwork, Tam said. One night it was the Atlanta police, faced with a newly arrived family, including a pregnant wife and a little child, who had been forced out of their apartment at midnight. Tam went to get them and to find them a night’s shelter before the difficulties of a broken-down sponsorship arrangement could be unraveled in the morning.

Throughout, Tam said, he has counseled his people with the same guidance that he and his wife have tried to embody. “Most of the refugees, when I met them at the airport, I talk with them,” Tam said. “Do you see the man pick up the garbage. This is an American. No way you can get a better job than that. Americans work for the living and we must work for the living.”

With that credo and living in great frugality, he and Anh Le have purchased their own home in Atlanta and have also bought future homes for their two children, now flourishing students at Shamrock High School and Laurel Ridge Elementary School in Atlanta. It is a hedge for the children against having to endure the utter deprivation that their parents have known, Anh Le explains.

However, Tam also looks upon the struggle in his own life and his strong Catholic faith as the source of strength that enabled him and Anh Le to turn to helping others even before they had a foothold in American life.

Born in Langshon in North Vietnam near the Chinese border, Tam lost his father as a child. Taken away by men as the family left Mass one Sunday, his father, an active Catholic, fell victim to the Communists who were taking over North Vietnam at the time, Tam believes. Later his mother made the decision to take the children and escape to a new life in South Vietnam. Walking at night, over mountains and through jungles, catching fish to survive, the family of mother and two children, with Tam’s blind grandmother tied between them to guide her, arrived in the city of Hanoi. From a refugee camp there, they resettled in South Vietnam.

When he first came to Atlanta, although all the families were poor, Tam said he did not worry about the money. “Money is good, you need it,” he said, “but not real important. The opportunity, the freedom, I think this is real important.”

Deep within he had the memory of his mother’s example in 1954. “She lost everything and started over in the South.” Thinking of that, Tam knew, “We can make it if we start over again.”

In 1980 he and Anh Le became U.S. citizens. Certain that Communists were in control of South Vietnam and that he would not return, Tam said, “I live here, I work here, I benefit from this country. I make decision to choose this country to be my country.” And, he said proudly, “I already exercise my voting right several times.”

Vietnamese families still suffer from the transition to a drastically different new culture.

The older ones fear that the strength of the family will break down in America and that they may be sent to nursing homes, an unheard of tragedy in Vietnam where elders are exalted by the entire family, Anh Le said. And parents, who in Vietnam, would have their children living at home until marriage, grieve deeply over the separation that begins in the teenage years and often culminates in the child moving away to work or attend college.

These pressures make the community hold fast to traditions and celebrations that can ease the pain. The Christmas Eve and Tet celebrations have become large and strong, in the community of 5,000 Vietnamese.

While Tam and Anh Le live in Immaculate Heart of Mary parish and worship there, the family also goes each Saturday night to the Vietnamese Mass at St. John the Evangelist parish in Hapeville to be with the community.

Eleven years ago Anh Le admits the family did not expect to survive. Now she is expecting their third child and, in addition to security they enjoy, they have been able to bring Tam’s sister and her family and Anh Le’s mother and brothers and sister to the United States. It is impossible to know how many thousands of refugees, both from Vietnam and from Cambodia, Laos, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa and other countries, Tam has helped to come into a new way of life in Atlanta.

“I think maybe this is the work the Lord wanted me to do,” Tam admits. His own strong faith was bolstered by that of his mother, he says, who taught him, “Everything, you pray God.”

“I believe in God. He take care of everything,” he says. “The Lord will help you. You need to help yourself. People will assist you. You can make it.”

Seeing the American door closing to refugees from some countries, and being restricted to limited numbers for others, Tam said he feels for them because “I know they are needy people. These are people who need help.”

As one who came through that doorway and has already served his new homeland, more than many do in a lifetime, he asks: “We would like an open door for anyone they don’t have the freedom or the human rights and they would like to come here.”

They Came To Serve

By Monsignor Noel C. Burtenshaw

France gave Miss Liberty to the United States in 1886 – one hundred years ago.

Nineteen years before that event in 1867, France gave another precious gift to the State of Georgia.

This is part of that story.

John Augustin Verot was named the third Bishop of Savannah in 1861. His territory extended from the Tennessee state line to Key West. At no time during the 10 years he served did he ever have more than 20 priests to cover that huge territory.

Bishop Verot saw the needs of his diocese. They were many. The Civil War ended in 1865. There was rebuilding to be done in education and social services. Both communities, black and white, had needs that only a community of religious could provide. He wondered where he could get such a community.

He thought of his own little town in France. He remembered the wonderful work of the Sisters of St. Joseph in that city of Le Puy. These women of Le Puy had been serving the needs of the poor of France for 200 years. Their fame had spread far and wide.

Verot returned to France and asked the sisters to send help to his diocese. Many volunteered to come. Eight were sent.

And so in 1866 the eight new immigrants arrived, like millions of others, in the new land called the United States of America. However, these French ladies came not to find a new life for themselves. They came to give their skills and their service to others already here and in need.

The sisters, first of all, came to St. Augustine, Florida. One year later, three of the original eight came to Savannah. They were immediately joined by another French nun from Le Puy – Mother Helen Gidon. Mother Helen became the superior. The work of the Sisters of St. Joseph began in Georgia.

That same year, two American women joined the sisters in Savannah so their first efforts for the people were greatly esteemed. Right away others saw their work and wanted to be a part of it.

Mother Helen and her community settled into a little house on Perry and Floyd Streets in Savannah. The sisters from France found life to be most difficult. They endured great hardship. There was little financial support. The humid conditions in the South were difficult after the cooler climate of France. The diet was also difficult for them. But they began their work for others in this city which was coming alive after the terrible war.

The sisters were given the Barry Orphanage for boys to run. They opened a day school for boys and girls. They founded a day school for black children, a center for adult education, and a community center to teach the newly freed black adults basic skills: reading, writing, sewing and household management. Their work became known all over Savannah.

These women who, for the most part, came from another country, were soon relied upon and accepted by all the citizens of Savannah. During that time they were not called by their original title, Sisters of St. Joseph. Rather they were given their immigrant title, the French Sisters.

In 1869, just two years after their arrival, Mother Helen died. So famous was this lady, so widespread was her charitable reputation that the entire city of Savannah wanted to publicly mourn her passing. She was waked first in St. Patrick’s Church and then taken to the Cathedral for another service.

Mother Helen was buried in Savannah but later moved to Washington, Georgia where her grave marker can be seen today. Note that there was never a question of these immigrant-ministers returning to their land of birth, neither in life for vacation or to see family, nor in death to rest with their sisters. They had come to serve and to stay. They never returned.

A new chapter was now begun. The sisters were moved to larger quarters as their work demanded. New candidates joined them and in 1875 the sisters were asked to become a diocesan community. They elected their first Mother General – one of the original band, Sister Clemence Fraichon – and became the St. Joseph Sisters of Georgia. So, believe it or not, Georgia had its own religious community.

In 1876, again the sisters moved. This time they went to Washington, Georgia, which today is part of the Archdiocese of Atlanta. The French sisters continued their work for orphans and education in that city. Schools for boys and girls were founded and their work for adult poor in their homes continued.

The Village of St. Joseph in northwest Atlanta is the successor of the orphanage founded in Washington. In 1967 the old institution was closed and the new was opened.

In 1910, 43 years after their arrival in Savannah, the last of the immigrant sisters died in Washington. Mother Clemence, it is said, always prayed that her final confession could be made in her native French. A visiting French Jesuit was present as the last of the Le Puy pioneers died.

The graves of the sisters can be seen today in St. Patrick’s cemetery in Washington, Georgia. Other American sisters are buried with them. They were immigrants to this land. But they were servant immigrants, making freedom possible for others by their generous sacrifices.