Carl Kovac, Class of 1952, passed away in July, 2004. He was born in Pittsburgh and
attended Crafton High School. After graduating from CHS, Carl served in the United States Marines from 1953-1956, during the
Korean Conflict. He was a journalist in Cleveland (at the Cleveland Plain Dealer for many years) and Budapest, for his final
10 years.
An article in The Budapest Sun said:
"The heart-breaking tones of Amazing Grace, played on a Scottish
bagpipe, as US Marines, carrying the American flag and Marines colors, escorted a hearse carrying Carl Kovac's ashes when
family and friends gathered to remember the journalist at the Fiumé út cemetery.
"In a touching last good-bye a number
of former colleagues, including Steve Sarrocco, a former journalist for Budapest Week and The Budapest Sun, Stephen A O'Connor,
publisher of the BBJ, Tamás S Kiss of The Budapest Sun and
Adam LeBor, Adamant columnist for The Sun, spoke of a much admired reporter.
"In his time in Budapest (he arrived
in 1994) Kovac, who was 69 when he diedat home after a brave battle against cancer, wrote for just about all the English-language
publications. He was also the British Medical Journal's Hungary correspondent and regularly contributed to a number of US
magazines.
"Kovac's widow Ágota said that Carl was always happiest in the company
of other "hacks". She plans to fulfill his final wish and scatter his ashes from an airplane at the Cleveland Air Show in
September this year.
"For years Kovac, a keen flier who served as a United States Marine from 1953-1956 during the Korean war, covered the
airshow while working for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
"Following the ceremony, friends retired to Iguana to raise
a glass in Carl's memory."
Another article stated,
"Carl Kovac was a warrior. He was a warrior for his country
while serving as a United States Marine from 1953-1956 during the Korean Conflict. He was a warrior for society in his lifelong
profession as a journalist.
"He always passionately argued for the very best of journalism, journalism which asked the hard questions and let readers
know what something really meant to them or how it fit in the bigger picture. The petty, indulgent or trivial which sometimes
creeps into newsprint disgusted him. He was also a warrior for the intellect. He had a wonderful sharp probing mind intrigued
by almost any subject in search of knowing more and understanding what made things tick.
"Carl was a guy who could be counted
on to make anyone within shouting distance laugh after a few moments. From when he first came to Budapest in 1994, we knew
him as both a friend and a colleague. He was the kind who kept his friends and those who knew him always glad to be with
him. He was the kind that when a country has children of his sort, the world becomes a better place because of who they are. But this warrior
has left the struggle behind this weekend and passed on. He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered."
Yet another story said,
"He had a wonderful sharp probing
mind intrigued by almost any subject in search of knowing more and understanding what made things tick. Carl was a guy who
could be counted on to make anyone within shouting distance laugh after a few moments. From when he first came to Budapest
in 1994, we knew him as both a friend and a colleague. He was the kind who kept his friends, and those who knew him were always glad to
be with him. He was the kind that when a country has children of his sort, the world becomes a better place because of who
they are. But this warrior has left the struggle behind this weekend and passed on. He will be sorely missed and fondly remembered."
And another said,
"A little under a year ago -
in the July 31 issue, in fact - I wrote a memorial to a former colleague, Márton Bürger, who had died at the tragically young
age of 32. Now, 12 months on, I find myself doing a similar thing for Carl Kovac, sometime employee and freelancer of this
parish. Carl would have been 70 in November, but that doesn't make his passing any easier.
"Ours was, on the face of it, a strange friendship. He was old enough to be my father, indeed was only a couple of
years younger than my Dad. He was an American US Marine with a passion for flying. I'm an English reporter who has flown nothing more exciting than a desk.
But we shared one great love, and that was journalism.
"Carl hated authority (he had many run-ins with editors down the years, though fortunately never me, he must have mellowed
by then) and pomposity.
"But he loved people and the stories they had to tell.
"Walk down a street and you see a hole in the ground," he used to say, "There are a group of people standing around
the hole looking down. And there's one fellow in the hole trying to find out what's going on. That's the journalist."
"He mistrusted "writers" and despaired of wanna-be journalists interested only in the identity of the most famous person
he had ever interviewed, with no apparent curiosity about the world around them.
"Carl was endlessly curious about
pretty much everything.
"He had the most amazing store of anecdotes, almost all of which are unprintable. Nursed through his fight against
cancer by his loving wife Ágota, he was telling them to the end.
"A keen flier, he said there was no such thing as a "bad" landing: anything that got the aircraft down in one piece
and the passengers unharmed was "safe" and that was good enough.
"Math in flying is easy," he told me. "A pilot just needs to remember to land as many times as he takes-off."
"And now he is on his last flight.
"Godspeed
Carl. We wish you fair winds, and a happy landing."
In December 2000 Carl, after a bit of persuasion, wrote
a personal remembrance of Christmas for The Budapest Sun.
It, probably better than any fine words anyone else can come up with, encapsulates the man. It is reproduced in full
below.
"Every year about this time I get to thinking and wondering about a woman from a long
time ago. Her name was Helen and although I never did meet her, she gave me the greatest Christmas present I've ever received,
a gift in the deep night. My only contact with her was over the telephone early one December morning some 30-odd
years ago while working for a newspaper, a large-circulation afternoon daily, in another town, in another country.
"I was alone on the
overnight shift, monitoring the police radio and booking wire copy for the day shift, when the phone, ordinarily silent during
those hours, rang.
"Please," said a feminine voice, "I have to talk to someone. You see, I'm about to
kill myself and my children." Some drunken bimbo stricken with the Yuletide lonelies? A crank call? Maybe. But her statement
was just a bit too matter-of-fact; her voice just a bit too calm.
"Look, ma'am," I said,
"I'm really very busy. But if you'll give me your name and phone number, I'll call you in 30 minutes. Promise me you won't
do anything until I call. I WILL call you." She said she'd give me half an hour.
"There was a reason for putting her off. If she was serious and I couldn't get back
to her, I'd have the police trace the number and go to her home.
"After the 30 minutes had crawled by, I dialed the number she
had given me. After what seemed like 100 rings, she
answered. She said her husband, a career non-commissioned officer at a nearby Army base, had taken off with another woman,
leaving her with five children and little money.
"She said she had no relatives to turn to and the Army
couldn't do anything, at least not right away. And Christmas was coming and she couldn't afford to buy the kids gifts, or even pay the rent.
"Her world had suddenly
crumbled, she said, and she was alone and afraid. About the only thing left to do, she believed, was to turn on the kitchen
gas range, blow
out the flame, and crawl into bed to die with her sleeping children.
"She said she was, in fact, about to do just that when she thought of calling the
paper. She said she didn't know where else to turn.
"We began talking about her troubles, my troubles - I was having a few at the time
- and the troubles of people less fortunate than either of us. And we talked about children, and Christmas, and reasons for
living.
"We did this for about three hours. The sun was beginning to trickle through the news room windows and I still
had things to do before the day staff arrived.
"I asked her if she would just go to bed, think things
over when she awoke and call me later in the morning. She said she would.
"That call came several hours later and I was glad I had waited for it. "Everything is going to be all right," Helen
said. "Thank you."
"A few days later, I received a Christmas card and a letter from her. "I'm not afraid anymore," she wrote. "When I
dialed the number of the paper, I was really desperately reaching out for someone in this world as one last hope to stop me
from the terrible tragedy I felt was the only way out for me and the children. You, a complete stranger, were concerned and
cared what happened to us... you restored my faith in human beings."
"I've kept that card and letter through
the years, pulling it out whenever I begin to feel useless and unaccomplished. To me, what she said is what Christmas
is all about. So thank you, Helen, wherever you are. And Merry Christmas."
Carl's funeral ceremony, with a U.S. Marine Color Guard, was held Wednesday, July 21, 2004, at 2pm at the Fuime Utca
cemetery. Carl's ashes will be scattered from an aircraft during the Cleveland Air Show this September, 2004.
We extend our deepest sympathy to
his Hungarian widow Ágota Hajnal and to his four children in America.
