What a wonderful 40th anniversary party!!

By Andy Meszaros on May 28, 2025 in Announcements

To say we had a wonderful party would be an understatement. Simply put, we had a great turnout, great music by Harmonia, generous donations to our Fund-A-Need campaign, some really fine wines, tasty treats both savory and sweet, but most of all, a lot of good wishes that came our way on Saturday. Our president assembled a very fine Committee which set about organizing the 40th Anniversary event. The Committee dealt with programming, grabbing live music for the day, the new exhibit, the refreshments, the location of chairs and tables, a sound system, publicity, interviews on radio programs, printing of flyers, having the Museum cleaned so that it sparkled in the sunlight on Saturday, and many many more details. In the meantime, the Museum continued to be open as usual. That’s a lot of volunteer hours!

Thanks to our 40th Anniversary Committee members who worked tirelessly on this major event. We are grateful to Fr. Richard Bona for his heartfelt invocation to start our program. We thank Bálint Bakondi from the Hungarian Consulate in Chicago who drove to Cleveland to address our guests on behalf of the Magyar government, and thanks to Jacqueline Kassouf, who greeted our guests on behalf of the Galleria. We welcomed many distinguished guests including Ralph Perk, president of the Nationalities Movement, and many organizational heads who are on our Honorary Board. Members who attended included Dr. Jeanette Grasselli Brown, Dr. John Nádas, Elizabeth Papp Taylor, Ken Kovach, Krisztina Nádas; and organizations such as the Akron Magyar Club was represented by Lajos Verhás, the Hungarian Cultural Center of Northeast Ohio was represented by Mary Jane Molnar, Richard Sarosi represented the William Penn Association, and the Clevelandi Magyarokért Foundation was represented by Loránd Csibi. Thank you to the members of Harmonia for the live music, as well as László Tihanyi and KCsP fellow, Zsófia Vágvölgyi, for the dance that enriched our program.

Thanks to our photographer for all the photos he took that will help us remember this day. Bocskai Radio was also present, videoing much of the celebration. And in helping meet our expectations that we would have some activity in our Gift Shop, we had a Board member manning the cash register.

And there’s no party worth attending if the food and libations are not the best. We had some great magyar wines, some prosecco , and some pálinka donated by a friend of the Museum. The tables containing the sweet and savory food items were loaded and they were a testament to the generous time and energy spent by volunteers who wanted to make sure that no one missed out on these favorite Hungarian treats.

For all of us, newbies and oldies, who have volunteered our time, treasures and talent to this Cleveland Hungarian Museum over the past 40 years, it has been a rewarding experience, founded on solid relationships, folks being drawn in by friends and family. All of us can be gratified by the fact that this Museum in Downtown Cleveland stands as a gem full of cultural and historical exhibits, books and archival material, along with computers that enrich our exhibits- these all help us share out magyar heritage with people from all over the world.

And we have many guest books to prove it!!