Farewell to 2014

A few days are left before the end of 2014 – let’s put together the family anniversaries of this year.

145 years ago on December 27, 1869 my grandfather Sándor Striker (1869-1955) was born in Vágújhely, then a town in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. He became a textile technician and industrialist the co-owner of the Telcs and Striker Textile Factory, and married

110 years ago Laura Pollacsek (1882-1959), who was born and brought up in Budapest, became a historian as one of the first female students at the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the Budapest University. She was called by her bibliographer „the Hungarian Pocahontas” for her research and publications resulting in  saving the name of Captain John Smith, an English soldier fighting the Turks in Hungary and Transylvania under Prince Sigismundus Báthory, before successfully establishing Jamestown, Virginia. Laura Polanyi-Striker died

55 years ago as a mother of three and a grandmother of eight, including myself.

50 years ago her younger brother Karl Polanyi (1882-1964) economist and adult educator died in Pickering, Canada. He took his law degree at the Budapest and Kolozsvár Universities, but became a journalist and economist, publishing his seminal work, The Great Transformation

70 years ago, in 1944.

85 years old this year and fully active – John C. Polanyi (1929- ) professor of the University of Toronto and Nobel-prize winner in Chemistry in 1986, the son of Michael Polanyi – the youngest brother of my grandmother – a chemist and philosopher, the author of Personal Knowledge.

70 years old this year: John Zeisel, born on July 15, 1944, sociologist and the chairman of Hearthstone Alzheimer Care, the son of my aunt Eva-Striker Zeisel ceramic designer and Hans Zeisel professor of law, statistics and sociology.

70 years old this year, Mrs. Mikós Arapovics, born on October 15, 1944 in Losonc, Czechoslovakia, the mother of my wife Maria Arapovics.

65 five years ago, on December 27, 1949 my sister Anna (Panni) Striker (1949-2007) was born in Budapest. She got her MAs in Chemistry and Biology at the Faculty of Science of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She was a teacher of chemistry and biology for 30 years, an active environmentalist and folk dancer.

35 years ago I got my first two MAs in Literature and in Adult Education and Cultural Management at the Faculty of Liberal Arts of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and then

30 years ago I got my MA in Philosophy at the same University.

15 years old this year: our son Balázs Striker, born on July 15, 1999 in London, U.K.,  receiving the George Hevesy Prize as the winner of the nationwide chemistry student competition of Hungary in 2014, becoming third in the physics competition as well.

These are the family anniversaries and events I could keep track of, sorry for not mentioning all.