Old Delray-My Story-My Roots

I am a 3rd generation Hungarian. My grandparents immigrated separately from Nagyecsed, Hungary to America around 1909. They lived in New Brunswick, NJ for one decade, just long enough to be married and start their family of five children. In the mid 1920's they migrated to Delray and spent for the most part, the rest of their lives there. All four of my immigrant grandparents made Delray their home. My parents were born and raised there. I was born there and lived there until I was seven. So you can see that my roots are firmly planted in the ethnic community of Delray. I have a almost reverent respect and admiration for my Hungarian grandfather who had the courage to leave his homeland and come to America at the same time the Wright brothers were still fooling around at a place called Kitty Hawk but he was the only one of my grandparents to live long enough to watch a man walk on the moon. He never learned how to drive an automobile, but he retired after 30 years of service to the Ford Motor Company, River Rouge plant. That is why I have this passion to help preserve the memory of Delray the way it was. That is why I have created this website about Old Delray to preserve the stories and memories of this once great ethic community. I urge you to contact me and contribute your names, pictures, and any stories you may remember of life as it was in Old Delray. This is the least this grandson can do to help preserve their memory and their way of life. In this way I can honor their courage and tenacity as they forged a new life in this place called, Delray.

Personal History:

All four of my grandparents called this neighbor home for nearly fifty years. My parents were raised here, and married here. I was born and raised here. Until the age of seven this was my playground. Both of my grandparents lived almost within the very shadow of this Delray landmark. A short walk down Carbon to Graham St. brought you to Carbondale, the predominantly Polish settlement. Stroll down any cobblestone street at dinnertime in this Polish neighborhood, and you can’t get away from the smell of cooked cabbage or boiled pork. Go in the opposite direction, cross Dearborn Street, and in a few blocks you come to Sire Street; where my Hungarian grandparents called home. An I-75, Exit 44 ramp pillar now finds support where this house used to be. As a child I can recall memories garnered from living on both Lyon and Keller streets. In 1947 Rev Nagy baptized me in the Hungarian Reform Church. I remember injuring my self, horsing around on the wrought iron picket fence surrounding St. John Cantus Polish Catholic church on my way home from Morley school. In 1947 my parents relocated to Saginaw, so trips to Delray generally were only once a year. All through my adult life I have felt a yearning to return frequently to this area.  I needed once more to walk the streets of my youth, and the origins of my pedigree. Even though three of my grandparents have been gone for forty years, I can feel a communion with their spirits as I walk down these streets once more. The aura of my grand parents, and the legacy of their lives here, will live forever in me. I am attached to Delray by an umbilical cord that defies rationalization.

I don’t live in the past, the past lives in me.

This is also the reason that I volunteered to create another website to help the people of the Birmingham Ethnic Community in Toledo, Ohio to preserve and protect this way of life and to help them celebrate their cultural heritage. I can never again visit my Delray the way it was, but once a year I can close my eyes and pretend. I can bring my great nieces and great nephews here to show them the lifestyle, foods, music, faith, and dress of their immigrant origin. They need to be shown the way it was in order to preserve and pass on the traditions that made them what they are today. Only by preserving the Birmingham story can I ever hope to also preserve the story of Old Delray. This nation once cradled thousands of ethnic communities like Birmingham and Delray. Now their fragile numbers are like candles flickering in the night wind. They are linked by a common umbilical cord to the old country. Ethnic communities do not die a natural death, but rather they are euthanized in the name of progress. Unless we collectively speak with one voice, we will be as footsteps in the sand. Once a year on the third Sunday in August, the people of this ethnic community hold a festival to celebrate their Hungarian cultural heritage. I urge you to celebrate with then and to visit their website at www.BirminghamEthnicFestival.org

The flowerpot of my formative years is strewn with the weeds of urban planning that allowed no room for the artifacts of the rich cultural heritage that found nourishment inside it's boundaries. In the name of progress, the thorn bush of metropolitan expansion had once again suffocated the fertile soil that furnished refuge to a multitude of European immigrants that called Delray home. The repository of my cultural memories has become a bone yard with only a few isolated islands of its former splendor. If I closed my eyes and wished real hard, I could go home again. Birmingham was my Delray as I remembered it sixty-five years ago. At least once a year I can still play in the playground of my youth thanks to the residents of Birmingham who refused to be swallowed up by an urban development project 1n 1975. They drew a line in the street and told the city planners that this was a boundary they could not cross. Their neighborhood was not for sale. They were going to make a stand here to preserve the heritage of their forefathers

All that I am today, And all that I ever will be; I owe to those who came before me. If we don't honor those who came before us, Then why should anyone honor us when we leave this life?