“All come to look for America. All come to look for America.”
— “American Tune,” Simon & Garfunkel
In 1922, as the Ottoman Empire collapsed, there was a terrible fire of mysterious origin in the Greek and Armenian section of the Turkish city of Izmir. Thousands died. The Ballanis family, members of the large Greek community, moved to a refugee camp in Greece.
Life did not get better, and then things got worse in the worldwide depression that followed. Two of the Ballanis men left the camp to become cooks on an international freighter. They jumped ship in Panama and opened a small restaurant. A younger member of the family, Emmanuel, joined them several years later.
Meanwhile, in the refugee camp, Emmanuel’s mother arranged a marriage for her absent son. The bride moved to Panama.
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Emmanuel and his wife had a daughter, Anastasia. She was educated in American schools in the Panama Canal Zone.
When she graduated from high school in 1969, she came to this country for college. She attended St. Louis University and earned a degree in physical therapy.
Anastasia — or Stacy, as she was called — married Louis Potsou, a gregarious salesman and a huge basketball fan. He organized a youth team, the Busch Garden Gators.
***
Reka Kozak was born in the Hungarian city of Debrecen. Her father, Szalacsy Racz Imre, was a professor who wrote poetry and historical novels at a time and place where history was a matter of political controversy. In fact, Imre had fled his native Romania before settling in Hungary. He was soon on the outs with the communist political establishment.
He was on the side of the protesters who took to the streets in 1956. The Soviets sent tanks to squash the uprising. Imre had a heart attack and was unable to get emergency care because of the chaos in the streets. He died.
Reka graduated from the University of Debrecen in 1964 and married the same year. She came to this country with her husband in 1965. Her husband chose St. Louis because he figured the Mississippi River would provide plenty of opportunity for water sports, which he loved. Reka spoke Hungarian, German, Italian, Russian and Latin, but no English other than “hello” and “goodbye.”
She learned the language by volunteering at the local library and then earned a degree in library science. She got a job at the Washington University Medical School library.
One of her sons liked basketball and joined the Busch Garden Gators in 1984. Soon Reka and Stacy were close friends. They shared a love of literature, opera and ballet. Also, they liked wine.
***
Eva Enoch was born in the Transylvania region of Romania. She was teaching languages arts in a high school when she met and married an American who was teaching English. They had a son, and in 2000, when their son turned 5, they decided to come to this country.
Eva’s husband was from rural Arkansas. There were few opportunities there so they decided to come to St. Louis. Eva spoke French, Latin, Romanian, Hungarian and some Russian.
She was working at Barnes-Jewish Hospital as a French interpreter for West African refugees when she met Reka in 2005.
***
Francesca Carrara Brown was born in the northeastern part of Italy. She married an officer in the U.S. Air Force and they traveled the world, mostly in the Middle East, before he left active duty and got a job as a civilian at the Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base.
Francesca was working at Barnes-Jewish and studying for her nursing degree when she called her mother from the hall outside the library one day in 2007.
Reka heard her talking.
“I love Italian,” Reka told me. “It’s my favorite language.”
They became instant friends.
Before long, the four women were having dinner at Reka’s house every Thursday night.
***
Krystyna Eisler Wasiak was born in Poland near the German border and the Baltic Sea. She studied economics, but her post-high school options were limited because her father was Jewish. She married her high school boyfriend, and he became a doctor. They came to this country in 1985.
Her husband worked in AIDS research until he got his medical license. He passed his boards on his seventh try.
He had an office in Columbia, Illinois. He died of a heart attack in 2011. Krystyna continued working as an office manager.
Six years ago, she was in a yoga class when she noticed a classmate crying. What was wrong? she asked. One of my dogs died, the classmate said. It was Francesca.
“What kind of dog?” asked Krystyna.
“A dachshund,” said Francesca.
Krystyna had a dachshund, too.
They became friends, and Francesca asked Reka if she could bring her friend to the weekly dinners.
“I love Polish people,” said Reka.
I stopped by one of their dinners a couple of weeks ago. The menu was pork roast Hungarian-style, red cabbage, parsley potatoes and cherry-peach crostata for dessert. Plus, Hungarian wine.
The crostata was from Francesca, and there’s sad news there. She and her husband are moving to Tucson, Arizona.
In addition to food and drink, there is spirited conversation. Despite all the languages spoken, the women converse together in English, the one language they all share. Sometimes the talk turns to politics.
“We don’t agree all the time, but we still like each other,” Reka said, and everybody nodded in agreement.