It’s Mother’s Day, 2024, and I’m fondly remembering my dear mother. She was the “loving glue” for our family, but she was so much more. She was the first child born to Hungarian immigrants in 1917. The Old World values of her family became our family’s values and are now mine. She was a loving, intelligent, and strongly faithful Christian woman. She could sew a dress simply by looking at it without a pattern. She was an incredible cook and baker, and Hungarian aromas filled our home throughout the years. She dropped out of school at 12 years old to help support the family of seven, as grandpa’s salary was twenty-five cents a day working on a Bethlehem Steel crane. She finished her high school work and went onto two years of college before she married my dad. She would give you all she had even if she had little to give. She loved making a person smile, but she had an incredible empathy and understanding if you were sad. She had a beautiful soprano voice, and even though she had no formal music training, she conducted church choirs and played the piano beautifully. She was an wonderful asset to my dad’s ministry and helped make his congregations grow through church women’s groups. She fought a brutal battle with cancer before there were any treatments for the disease. She passed at only forty-eight years old, but she gave the world a beautiful love.
She was all these things and much more. She filled my heart with so much love, a love I have never found in any other woman. I miss her so much and wish she could have seen what I turned out to be. She was and will forever be my Mommy. Happy Mother’s Day in heaven!
Anna Hartt
