Sophie szabo

Sophie Szabó was born Zsofia Mária Papp 1934 January 5th.  She was born in Nagyvárad, Hungary, which is today Oradea, Romania.  During World War II her father was injured and turned up in a military hospital in Budapest.  Her mother moved the family, taking only what they could carry to join him.  She grew up in the suburb of Budafok.  Upon graduation from high school, she went to work for the postal service, although in name only.  Her job was to play on the national handball team.  This permitted her to travel throughout Europe and enjoy the trappings of a job without actually working.

In 1956 revolutionary upheaval gripped Hungary as protestors fought and forced back the Soviet troops.  Unfortunately, reinforced troops took Budapest and Hungary back on November 4th.  As a result, her mother instructed her to leave the country.  Being the youngest and unattached, her mother felt she could best survive emigrating.  After a failed attempt in late November or early December, she boarded a truck that took her to the western border of Hungary.  She originally wanted to stay in Austria, however, the refugee services had no place to put her in Austria, so she was sent to England.  She remained in a refugee camp in Styal, England for two years.  During her stay, she met her first husband, married, and gave birth to her only child, István Sándor, in Manchester, England.

In 1958 she and her son boarded the HMS Britannic to sail to the United States to join her husband’s family in New York City.  Her husband stayed behind due to a tuberculosis scare, but followed the following year.  Once the family was together, they moved to Lakewood, Ohio to join her sister-in-law and her family.  She eventually got a job as a shipping clerk for a woman’s clothes manufacturer.

Needing to commute across town, she had to learn to drive and in the process met her second husband, István Szabó.  She stayed with him until his death in 1999.  She then moved to Colorado to be with her son, but mostly with her three grandchildren.  She spent a lot to give the family the best life possible, paying for cruises and other trips abroad.  In 2008, her son coordinated a cruise to take the family back to England on a transAtlantic cruise on a Cunard ship (like the Britannic) to visit the former refugee camp she left 50 years earlier.  In addition there were a number of trips to return to her homeland and her birthplace, where she remembered exactly where her family had lived and where they had a little acreage in the hills above the city.

She is survived by her son, István (Steve) Prileszky, his wife Suzanne, three grandchildren, Steven and his wife Jennifer, Celeste, and Éva, and three great grandchildren, Isabel, Adam, and Theodore.

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