Ilona Benham Interview Transcript

[00:00:00] Julia Langley: Hello, my name is Julia Langley, and I’m here today with my grandmother, Ilona Benham, who immigrated from Hungary. I’m pleased to be with her.

[00:00:12] Julia Langley: When did you come to America, and when were you born?

[00:00:15] Ilona Benham: I was born in 1943 in Lepa, Hungary, which now belongs actually to Slovakia, Hungary is a country that was divided several times after the First World War and the Second World War. I was born there. Lepa is now part of Slovakia. My father decided towards the end of the Second World War that we should immigrate and escape from Hungary. The reason being, he was a teacher, and thus he could see that the Soviets, the Russians, were going to take over Hungary, and they were not in favor of intellectuals or teachers because they wanted their socialistic system to take over. My father knew that he could not live in that situation. So he and my mother plotted a way for us to escape from Hungary before the Iron Curtain came down. [00:01:16] Ilona Benham: The Iron Curtain meaning a curtain that divided the East democracy from the Western democracy and from the Eastern Russians. My mother and an aunt literally took a train, a wagon, and went by foot to reach the Austrian border where the plan was to meet my father. I was only two and eight months old at the time. This might seem like I was a baby, and in many ways, of course, I was, but I had learned to speak early on and was taught how to greet people if I should run across Russians, and how to greet them in Russian. I said good morning gentlemen, and gentlemen they were not, but that was how I was told if we ran across any Russians that I would have to walk up to them and say that. We, took different modes of transportation so no one could follow us, and we reached almost the Austrian border early in the dawn. I remember this, as a child that young, scary things will certainly imprint on their minds. We were walking and all of a sudden what looked like a bush, actually turned out to be an army blanket on the ground popped up and underneath that blanket, which was not a bush were four Russian soldiers. The reason that I remember it so vividly and you might say, oh, how can you remember anything from that point in your life? [00:02:58] Ilona Benham: I remember because they were scary looking. It was almost like Halloween when you look at a pumpkin and it’s a scary pumpkin. These guys had teeth missing. They looked scary and I was forced to walk up and say, good morning, gentlemen, to them, which of course I did being a good little Hungarian girl that was disciplined. [00:03:23] Ilona Benham: And they asked my mother in German, since we didn’t really speak Russian, where we were going. And my mother said, we were going to the border to meet my father, and we were bringing him back to Hungary to this ” land of paradise”. And it was kind of convincing because I was a little girl. [00:03:47] Ilona Benham: I had my little potty with me. We had just a small, suitcase or sack, with clothes for me for one day. I wasn’t potty trained, so it was obvious that we weren’t going to stay for long. But mother still didn’t believe that they believed our story. And as they said goodbye and come back by the end of the day, my mother thought for sure they would shoot my great aunt and her in the back, but they didn’t. [00:04:18] Ilona Benham: So we were fortunate enough to meet my father, this was all planned ahead of time, at this certain spot where he sent men to meet us. We boarded a wagon, or a truck rather. And it took us into Austria. Austria at the time was divided, this was in 1946 when the war was over, even though my house in Slovakia was bombed several months earlier because the allied troops did not know the war was over. [00:04:53] Ilona Benham: So mother and I literally fled the bombing into shelter. with our house being bombed and we were fortunate enough to escape that. Another reason to leave as soon as we could. But in any event, we were now on the border of Austria and, we were taken by my father’s, troops. You have to remember that the Hungarians were on the side of the Nazis, not because they believed at all what the Nazis believed. But based on what happened after World War II, the division. It appeared to some of the miscalculated Hungarian leadership that if Germany won Hungary, Hungary would get back the territories that were taken from them back after World War I and World War II. So Hungary was a great, large space that included parts of what we would call Czechoslovakia or Slovakia now and parts of Germany and Austria, but it became the size of what is Indiana. [00:05:57] Ilona Benham: So it lost two thirds of its population to other countries. So we were hoping, we the Hungarians, were hoping that after the end of the war that some of these territories would be given back to Hungary. However, obviously as we know, the Nazis lost and Hungary did not get back its territory. In any event, my father decided regardless of how Hungary was going to go, that his intellectual, awareness, and education was not going to make him a prime suspect or candidate for following the Marxist regime. [00:06:34] Ilona Benham: He couldn’t follow them himself, so he decided leaving Hungary and going to America to the land of opportunity would give him and his family a freedom that he so craved and believed in. And if you think about it, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot, anybody who gives up their homeland, their family, their homeland for centuries., and their families to come to a place unknown, they really must dread the thought of staying in the land that they knew. He really felt that the potential for happiness and success was greater by leaving everything he knew and loved to try for something greater and better. And I think that took a lot of strength. [00:07:28] Ilona Benham: Still to this day I can’t believe he did it, but we did. And so, we came and met my father who took us to Ficklerbrook, which is this lovely little place in the Alps. And we stayed for several years in a house that looked like absolutely nothing from the outside. It turned out to have been the headquarters for the GI military, the GI leaders. And because it looked like nothing, it wasn’t obvious to the Nazis. But the inside was really actually quite lovely. All the rooms were paneled, and there was a real bathroom, and I had my own little bedroom next to the waterfall, which was right there by the house. And every night I got to fall asleep to the soothing sound of the waterfall. [00:08:19] Ilona Benham: You can imagine, as a little girl, I was there until I was about five or six, this was really a peaceful existence. Except my daddy kept going back and forth to Vienna and to Salzburg, because the only way that he could figure out making any money for us to live on was to buy from the Austrian soldiers, things like chocolate and stockings. in exchange for products from the Austrians. That particular enterprise was called the Black Market, and you weren’t really supposed to be doing it, but people supported anything they could get from Austria to take home or to eat, like fresh eggs and milk and so forth. [00:09:10] Ilona Benham: And, of course, anything that the Americans had that the Austrians had not had was also welcomed. It was a great enterprise, except, finally, somebody caught my father being a black marketer and he was put in jail for a week or two. I remember as a little girl, we would visit Daddy in jail and it wasn’t a horrible crime. [00:09:34] Ilona Benham: People were doing it right and left. So he was only there for a couple of weeks enough to tell him not to do that again. But then he slowly was able to make connections with the Americans so that we could get in line and get papers to ask for asylum in America. And during that period, of course we lived, as I said, in this lovely little area called Vöcklabruck, which is near Linz, Austria. [00:10:05] Ilona Benham: And, then we went and lived in a holding camp, so to speak for refugees. And this holding camp was, again, G. I. barracks that the soldiers, the G. I. ‘s, stayed in during the war. And now, of course, they had all gone back home to America. So these barracks, individual little rooms, were given to us refugees, and we lived there while we waited for our papers to allow us to come to America. [00:10:34] Ilona Benham: And that took a while, of course, but during that time we ate at the soup kitchen. See about the soup kitchens, if you’ve ever watched the show MASH, you know what soup kitchens look like. And then the most positive thing as a child that I remember is getting packages from America from the Red Cross. [00:10:55] Ilona Benham: And of course, I didn’t have any toys. We had nothing, really, if you think about it. How could we carry anything when we’re escaping? So these little packages that always had soap and a toothbrush, and maybe a little toy a Kleenex, just little basic things. It was always a real joy, and one of my real joys. This is a fun escapee story there was a little tiny plastic bird, and you put water in it, and you blew on the tail of that little bird. [00:11:27] Ilona Benham: I have one to show you, Julia. It made wonderful little noises like a bird and it was my only toy. I did have one other toy which was interesting because we really didn’t have toys. And it was a little enamel pan that you would imagine making lasagna in, let’s say. [00:11:44] Ilona Benham: And it was white enamel with a blue surrounding. And we would, I would put rocks or flowers in it and tie a string on one of the handles and pulled that along as a pull toy. I had no idea that there was anything more sophisticated than that in the world, but I was very happy with that, and now I just wish I had that little enamel pan. Those were my toys. The other thing we did to keep ourselves occupied was we would take clover, the kind of clover we can see in America that has the big pink flower, And we would braid that clover and we would make braids and we would use that as string or we would put it on our heads. We found natural things in our environment to use as toys and so I never really felt like I was lacking a whole lot until I saw what other children had when we came to America. Then I thought my goodness, those are really great toys. [00:12:44] Ilona Benham: We never had that growing up. Just to review, the reason we escaped Hungary was we didn’t want to be ruled by the Russians, the Bolsheviks, who had a socialistic way of government. My father knew he could not sustain that, nor did he want to. [00:13:00] Ilona Benham: He hated socialism. It never works. People like free enterprise and the minute you gave Hungarians the chance to do work for themselves, they thrived and they did really well, but the minute you had to work for the government, they just did the least amount of work that they had to do. [00:13:18] Ilona Benham: There’s so much more politically that we could go into, but to tell you then what happened was we finally were allowed to come to America and that was at the end of 1949. I was 7, I was almost 7 years old. And we were then literally stuck on trucks, open trucks, and taken to Bremenhafen, Germany, where we were going to board a big American, battleship that was made to accommodate all the refugees that were coming to America. [00:13:56] Ilona Benham: In the process of waiting to get on that boat, we were taken from the barracks, the GI barracks, to a place near Bremenhofen, and the only place to stay was in a basement. I remember as a little girl having to walk up to the basement window and then step down into the basement. They had beds there and bunk beds that I had to share with these nasty little boys, and all I knew at that point in time was I wanted to get out of there. We ultimately got out of there and got on an open truck that took us to the ship. However, I had come down with a really bad case of bronchitis and my father was so worried that he quickly ran into the nearest village, before we got on the boat, to find some medicine for me and maybe to buy some fresh fruit. [00:14:58] Ilona Benham: And what I remember vividly was that the truck was ready to leave and it started to roll, and my father wasn’t back. And I’m sitting in the truck, just praying that Daddy made it back before we left. I remember looking at him, seeing him in the far distance, running, running, running, running. [00:15:19] Ilona Benham: Fortunately he caught up with us and he brought us fresh grapes. And that awful stuff I had to drink, castor oil, to make me feel better. I’ll never forget it. I’ve never had castor oil since. But anyway, these are the stories you remember as a little refugee because we didn’t have options. [00:15:38] Ilona Benham: We didn’t have a lot to choose from. So now we’re on the boat and the battleship had been freshly painted. And it looked good, but the smell of the fresh paint, once we got on the high seas, made everyone sick. And they got nauseous, and my mother got deathly ill, and the sad news was that they separated the men from the women. [00:16:03] Ilona Benham: And so Daddy couldn’t help us, and I was there trying to help Mother, but in the meantime, I had a two-year-old sister. She was born in Austria, and I had to take care of her and change her diapers. Let me tell you, as a little girl of six or seven, I had to grow up really fast. We managed to get through the seasickness. [00:16:24] Ilona Benham: I learned about mail and how mail went from Europe to America. We stopped at the White Cliffs of Dover. The White Cliffs of Dover is in the English Channel. So once you come down the Baltic Sea into the English Channel, you see England and there were these beautiful White Cliffs and the ship stopped and Daddy took me to the railing of the ship and said, “You see that little boat out there? [00:16:49] Ilona Benham: That boat is bringing bags of mail from Europe and they’re going to pick it up on our ship and we’re going to take that to America.” And that’s how mail, not air mail, but regular mail got from Europe, different countries in Europe to America through these ships that came. Things have really changed since the 1940s. [00:17:10] Ilona Benham: We arrived in America to Ellis Island. Interestingly, this was 1949, at the end of 1949, and we were, I think, one of the last groups of refugees that came through Ellis Island. It was a big deal. We saw the statue of Liberty, which was like the Statue of Liberty holding her arm up with a torch of freedom. [00:17:34] Ilona Benham: I mean everyone cried, everyone sang God Bless America, those of us who kind of at least knew the tune, we hummed it and we were so happy to know that we had arrived on the shores of America. Which symbolized to us the land of the free where we had choices. Where we could make the best of our lives, depending on us and the effort we put into it. [00:17:58] Ilona Benham: When we got to Ellis Island, of course we had to go through a whole system of questions and tests have TB tests to see if we had this or that. Until we were cleared of being unhealthy we couldn’t go anywhere. It was at that point in time when we didn’t speak English. But we did speak German, and this German man said to my mother, “Well, why don’t you change your daughter Ilona’s name to Helen? It’s more American than Ilona. It’s going to be hard. for her.” And I remember that question. I remember my mother looking down at me and looking up at the man, the guard who asked us that question, and her answer was, “I don’t think so.” So, I stayed Ilona and I didn’t have my name changed to Helen. Although later on in life I wish it had been changed because no one ever pronounced my name correctly. It was so odd, everybody asked me a zillion questions and all I really wanted to be was called Susie or Debbie. It took years and years for me to feel confident enough to be able to say to people, ” I’m sorry, my name is actually pronounced Ilona.” I met a doctor who was Hungarian and he pronounced my name Ilona, which is really how it’s pronounced. And I burst into tears. I realized it’s really a pretty sounding name. It’s so lovely. If only people knew how to pronounce it. But my mother was Ilona. And as it turns out, I have two granddaughters who are also Ilona. The name somehow appeals to them today more than it certainly appealed to me in 1949. [00:19:43] Julia Langley: Ok Thank you Can you describe your parents. What was your family like? Do you have any siblings and did they ever live in Hungary? [00:19:52] Ilona Benham: Mother and Daddy were Hungarian. I was born in Hungary. My second sister was born in Austria, so she was two when we came to America and my baby sister was born in America. [00:20:07] Ilona Benham: My father always said he came to America because he knew he would end up with a son in America, but he didn’t. Son in laws, yes, but not a son.

[00:20:15] Julia Langley: How long did you live in Hungary?

[00:20:17] Ilona Benham: Well, so I only lived in Hungary until I was two and a half, almost three years old. And then, of course, in Austria until I was six almost seven when we came to America. And we arrived just around Thanksgiving of 1949. The Korean War was going on in America. [00:20:40] Ilona Benham: So when I went to school, I got to send Red Cross packages to kids in Korea like I had received in Austria. There’s something wonderful about, I remember that so vividly, how important that was for me to put crayons and paper and stuff into those little bread crust packages.

[00:21:01] Julia Langley: How long did you live in Austria? Where did you live? That sounds like it must have been a scary time. Do you remember how you felt during this time?

[00:21:11] Ilona Benham: Well it wasn’t really scary. We lived in the Alps, as I mentioned earlier. And my father went off with his bicycle to do the black market stuff. My mother had just had a baby, so we were situated there. [00:21:29] Ilona Benham: What I remember about it was really actually quite pleasant. We lived by this waterfall or creek, and we would go for walks in the woods. Daddy would always somehow be able to come back, I found this out later, with chewing gum. And my mother, when we would walk through the woods, would say, “Oh, Ilona, look, look over there on that stump, that tree stump.” Lo and behold, a stick of juicy fruit gum would be on the stump. And she would say, ‘Oh my goodness, the fairies must have left that for you.” So there was always a sort of magical. part that my mother tried to instill in me and then later my sisters so that we didn’t feel the war and we didn’t feel the effects of the war . Except we knew we were refugees, we weren’t in our own home, we were only there temporarily. We didn’t have a lot of things, but we didn’t feel like anyone was going to gun us down anymore because we were on the American part of Austria. So that part was safe growing up in Austria.

[00:22:35] Julia Langley: How did you and your family acquire a visa? Did it take long to get?

[00:22:39] Ilona Benham: It didn’t take long. They had to make sure we didn’t have tuberculosis, which was very prevalent at the time. And I think we were delayed a little bit because they thought maybe my mother had it, but she didn’t. [00:22:51] Ilona Benham: So I, I wish I could tell you exactly, but maybe it took a year, or a year and a half.

[00:22:56] Julia Langley: Okay. Were there any culture shocks or barriers you all had to face when you came to America and can you describe your childhood as much as you can remember?

[00:23:07] Ilona Benham: Yeah, so the cultural shocks. I remember being on the train from New York City to Ripon, Wisconsin, which is where we were sponsored to go to, and it was November and my mother looked out the window and said, ” Oh, this is such an ugly country.” And my father said, “Oh, but darling, it’s November. ” She said, “but there are no window boxes with flowers. ” And daddy said, “but yes, it’s November and it’s cold.” And she was so distressed that everything looks so bleak and gray and ugly. [00:23:40] Ilona Benham: And of course, as we all know, if you have ever ridden a train, it doesn’t go through the best parts of town. So that part was a shock to my mother. My father was a little more resilient in that regard. So we ended up going to a farm, which is where we lived, for a year. And the people of the Methodist Church who sponsored us were kind to us and very nice. [00:24:03] Ilona Benham: But the difficulty for a child was that everybody looked at us as though we were flying purple people eaters. In other words, even though we had white skin and didn’t look all that different from them, they heard my parents speak and they would point to us and say, “Oh, there goes the DPs.” Well, anytime you’re singled out to be different, it’s uncomfortable. [00:24:28] Ilona Benham: And DPs, by the way, stood for displaced persons. So instead of being called Asian or Black Americans, we were called DPs. So we were labeled too. And being a displaced person didn’t sound all that bad. Nice, in my book, but in any event, people were generally nice, it’s just that they always would point at us as being odd and different, and of course we dressed a little differently. [00:24:55] Ilona Benham: Mother would put bows in my hair as she did in Austria, and I remember this little boy coming up to me in second grade and saying, “Are you a princess? “And I remember being so annoyed at his question. I mean I understood it. Why would I be a princess? I thought to myself. Well, it was apparently the bow in my hair. [00:25:14] Ilona Benham: But our adjustment, was not easy at first. We lived on the farm for a year where Daddy did physical labor, which he didn’t mind doing. It’s just that he wasn’t used to it as a teacher. He lost a lot of weight and the doctor told him, “Mr. Marton, if you are going to see these little girls of yours grow up, you’re going to have to do something else.” [00:25:33] Ilona Benham: So Daddy went back to have his master’s degree recognized at Rippon College. so that he could teach. In the meantime, they shoveled snow, took storm windows or screen windows down and put storm windows up, cleaned doctors offices. They did a lot of labor to make money so that we could eat. In the meantime, they read books and every opportunity they had to go to a movie, they would go to learn English. [00:26:08] Ilona Benham: I don’t know how many times they saw Gone with the Wind, but I can tell you a few. So, what they did to adjust to America was they did the work that they found. Without, speaking English, it was difficult to find anything else but shoveling snow and taking down storm windows. It wasn’t glamorous, but they didn’t care. [00:26:31] Ilona Benham: They were so happy to be here and to have work. And so the adjustment, we regarded it as normal adjustment to a new country where we had to learn the language first, And so education and learning became a really important goal for all of us.

[00:26:51] Julia Langley: Speaking about language, did you and your family ever have any difficulties with languages when you came to America? And how many languages can you speak?

[00:27:01] Ilona Benham: Okay, so the difficulty was my father spoke a lot of languages. Most Europeans do. He spoke Russian and Italian and Slovak and Hungarian. He didn’t speak English, but a little, but not really. So he spoke about four or five languages. Mother spoke fluent German and Hungarian. [00:27:21] Ilona Benham: And I spoke fluent German and Hungarian when we came to America. Cause when you’re young, you learn languages quickly. Learning English was harder. You might think English is easy ’cause you speak it every day, but it’s not that easy. I remember spelling tests and words like thorough and thought either or, some of those difficult words. [00:27:43] Ilona Benham: And I’m thinking, how did they come up with this combination of letters? Where in Hungarian, every letter had a sound and you would pronounce the word phonetically. And in English, how do you spell thorough or through? You know, I mean, you’d think T H R U would be nice, but that’s not really the right way to spell through. [00:28:09] Ilona Benham: And I remember on a spelling test, I had to spell bologna. How do you spell bologna, unless you really know how to spell it? So I sounded it out, B O L O G N A, B O L And so that I would get hundreds on my spelling test because I memorized everything phonetically in Hungarian, and then I would write it in English. [00:28:34] Ilona Benham: So they couldn’t understand that because I could hardly speak. I could hardly speak, but I sure did well on my spelling test. I don’t think it was until the fifth grade that I really spoke English. And of course, I was very shy because I wasn’t quite sure whether I was speaking it correctly, but I think I missed a lot of grammar and basic things that Americans learn in those early years. I don’t think that I learned them very well and I’ve been making up for it ever since.

[00:29:09] Julia Langley: Did you ever feel like an outsider? If so, that must have been difficult. How did you handle that and adjust to it?

[00:29:15] Ilona Benham: Well, yeah, I did feel like an outsider. But I don’t believe that I was un friendly. I was raised in a warm, loving environment. [00:29:30] Ilona Benham: So after we came to America, I didn’t have a lot of fear. So I think I adjusted by making friends, and I did. I made a lot of friends, and I would call them We would come to our house and we would cook Hungarian food for them and my mother was great at homemade donuts. That won everybody over. And so we also loved music and we always had music going on. [00:29:58] Ilona Benham: So our adjustment to America was continuing our Hungarian traditions, our Hungarian cooking and food and listening to the music that we grew up with. My father had a beautiful tenor voice and he and mother sang a lot together and I played the piano and accompanied them. So as a family, we had a lot of projects that kept us close and helped us to adjust to our environment. [00:30:30] Ilona Benham: The other thing that we did a lot of was we were invited to church. How should I say it? Church meetings where people would have a Saturday class and we would be the speakers and Daddy would sing. My mother would bake something and talk about Hungary, and I would play the piano for Daddy, plus I played the piano. [00:30:52] Ilona Benham: So we, what we did was we shared our culture at a number of invitations for churches or other places where people wanted to hear about refugees and people that are new in the area. And back in 1950s, there weren’t that many refugees where we lived in Ripon, Wisconsin and so we were kind of a novelty. We stood out and people were interested. We got some bad talk too but I don’t remember the bad so much as I remember the good.

[00:31:27] Julia Langley: What things were a big adjustment to get used to when you moved to America?

[00:31:31] Ilona Benham: I Think I told you, the food. Okay, yeah well, the food was, good. Can I tell you a funny story? So our Thanksgiving or our Christmas meal, we were invited by these lovely people and the neighbors in the farm areas all came and they had a great big turkey and a great big ham. And in comes this platter with a gelatin looking structure on it that sort of jiggled and squiggled and it had maybe we thought whipping cream . It turned out it was like mayonnaise or something. Anyway, it comes in and my father, he sees that the gelatin thing has like fruit in it and he looked at my mother and said, “Do Americans eat dessert with the main meal?” Of course, he had no idea that Jell O was like a salad and people ate it, you know, part of it. The big adjustment for Daddy was the bread. And Mother always made homemade bread because Daddy said that the American Wonder Bread was like eating cotton. It stuck to the roof of your mouth and it was ghastly. [00:32:38] Ilona Benham: So the bread was a big adjustment. But the other things as time went on, Hungarians found each other and they would get together and make sausage together and, you know get a pig and do all the things that they did back in Hungary to keep food in from the fall to the winter, through the winter. [00:33:07] Ilona Benham: We made adjustments and fortunately, because we were in the land of the free, we were able to do that without anyone policing our activities and people were happy we were happy. [00:33:21] Ilona Benham: Talking about your childhood and your family growing up, do you remember seeing your parents struggle with anything? [00:33:26] Ilona Benham: Yes, money. Money was a huge struggle. You know, money is a huge struggle for everybody, even now in 2024, and it certainly was no different back in the fifties. But my father worked really hard and my mother worked and I became the babysitter. But they worked hard. They were frugal. They took advantage of every opportunity that America gave us. And so the struggle was never having enough money, never actually, Daddy never ended up teaching because he realized that the discipline that he was used to with students was not going to work in America. And we told him “Daddy, you just get so upset, you just want to rap on somebody’s head, or hit their hand with a ruler and you can’t do that in America.” [00:34:28] Ilona Benham: And so he did interview for a job in Pennsylvania and they offered him a job, but we talked him out of it. We thought he’s just not going to be happy raising American children with the kind of discipline that they’re raised with at home. They’re much more permissive here in America than they were in Europe. [00:34:50] Ilona Benham: So he ended up going into sales and he did fine. But it was always, finances were always a struggle. But, I have to add this. We always had enough money to drive to Chicago to see an opera or to see a concert. So culture was very important and they would save their money to introduce us to that.

[00:35:15] Julia Langley: What was your experience going through school? Where were you educated? Did you go to college? Sorry, these are a few questions, but they all kind of go together. What was your major? How did you feel as an immigrant at that university? Did you ever feel like an outsider, or did you feel like you fit in with everyone?

[00:35:35] Ilona Benham: Okay, those are good questions. Actually, if I didn’t, if I felt like I didn’t fit in with everybody, it was probably my own problem. I think maybe going through a rush in the sorority system, I felt that I couldn’t fit in because one, I couldn’t afford it, and I didn’t have the kind of background that a lot of those sorority girls did, so that was not happy for me. [00:36:00] Ilona Benham: I would have loved to have, in my mind’s eye, I would have loved to have been in a sorority, but I couldn’t afford it, and I probably would not have financially been able to fit in with. what other sorority girls did at the University of Wisconsin. However, I through high school, I mean I did a lot. I was on the debate team, I was on the forensics team, I was part of the Mayball Court. [00:36:27] Ilona Benham: I was accepted, I had my own radio show, I was president of the German Club. In other words, I became a leader. And nothing stopped me. I mean, I could do anything I wanted and I did. And I was actually even chosen, much to my surprise, by the Governor for the Children, Governor’s Committee on Children and Youth. [00:36:49] Ilona Benham: And our job and my partner’s job was to work with a small committee on showing the state of Wisconsin all the good things that young people my age did. We had a television program called The Other 98 and that was just incredible for me to do like a march of dimes drive and to do things in the community that showed the community that there were a lot of young people that were worthwhile, that cared about their environment and their community. So I had opportunities. I always sort of stood out because of, apparently I still have an accent they say, but I always stood out and I always said I could never get away with being a shoplifter because they always saw me. [00:37:36] Ilona Benham: I guess I was too tall. So at the University of Wisconsin, I majored in, I started in political science thinking I wanted to be, I wanted to work at an embassy, let’s say, because I’m speaking three languages. I thought I could do that. I love politics. However, after a year or two in political science, I was up against a lot of guys from New York State, and I realized that I was fighting them all the time. [00:38:05] Ilona Benham: Their views and my views were not the same. And I remember going home to saying to my father, “you know, Daddy. I don’t want to go through my life fighting men all the time. I think I’m changing my major..” And I, I’ve always been creative, so I decided to go into radio and television production, which is basically, what are you majoring in?

[00:38:24] Julia Langley: Communications

[00:38:26] Ilona Benham: it’s part of the communications school. And I loved it. I had a ball. And I learned my final project for my senior year project was to not only video but use the cameras, use the cameras up on the stage where you’re, you know, back where you call the shots. I used the cameras and I did Swan Lake and I did the very last scene of Swan Lake where she’s dying and so I had to work on the lighting and the music and coordinate all that and it was really exhilarating. [00:39:04] Ilona Benham: So my major was radio and television production. I was offered, several jobs in that field, and then I moved to Washington, D. C. and I realized that I couldn’t afford, because of the pay, I could not afford to be at WETA and some of those other jobs. [00:39:24] Ilona Benham: It was always all about money. You know, not having anything to back up, back me up on, I always had to relinquish some of my goals and do something else to make more money. Did I answer your question?

[00:39:35] Julia Langley: Yes, you did. Thank you. Were you involved in any sports, church programs, or political groups growing up? If so, how is that being from another country?

[00:39:46] Ilona Benham: Yeah, it was very easy for me. I became an American citizen when I was 12 in Ripon, Wisconsin, which is known as the Republican headquarters of the Republican party. So I became a young Republican and in college I joined the young Republicans and, was actually honored. [00:40:10] Ilona Benham: I won’t even tell you who, but I was honored on having breakfast with one of the presidential candidates son. They thought I would make a great breakfast partner for him. However, it wasn’t that great. Anyway, I was involved in that, political things. I was involved in the theater. What else did you ask me? Music? I was always involved in sports, church programs, political groups, MSF, the Methodist Church Fellowship. I was in high school, part of that. I went to Methodist Church Camp. I wasn’t really a Methodist, but because they sponsored me, we were loyal to the Methodists, but we did go to different churches. [00:40:52] Ilona Benham: Sports. I ran track in high school. I was on the swim team. I was not a great swimmer, but I was on the swim team. But most of all I did forensics debate. I was on the debate team and I was on extemporaneous speaking, which is a four minute deal. You go to a contest, you’re given a subject, you have an hour to prepare, and then you have to extemporaneously, without notes, talk for four minutes. [00:41:19] Ilona Benham: And then you’re judged on how you present the topic. So it was interesting, and I did fine. Which is probably why I’m rattling on and on.

[00:41:31] Julia Langley: What jobs did you have, if any, growing up and then after college?

[00:41:35] Ilona Benham: Okay, so the job I had during high school was working for the root beer stand. What is the root beer called? That old fashioned root beer. And they had stands like we have McDonald’s. I can’t think of it now, but anyway, I worked there in the summers, and one of my college or high school teachers owned it. What is it that we put vanilla ice cream in, anyway? That’s what I worked there in the summers. [00:42:02] Ilona Benham: I babysat, as an extra job. Then, in college, I had three jobs. I worked for the administration building, I worked as a cocktail waitress on weekends, and I also cleaned.

[00:42:14] Julia Langley: Are you talking about A& W?

[00:42:16] Ilona Benham: A& W yes.! Thank you! A& W and then, so back to college, I had three jobs, and the last job was cleaning an apartment for an executive from a company in California and I also ironed her husband’s shirts because she thought I did a great job. So I had three jobs in college to get through college because, you know, money was short. What else did you ask me about? After college, of course, I worked in Washington, D. C. for, a construction, large construction company and, as secretary to the vice president of the company. [00:42:54] Ilona Benham: And then I of course, I had children. And then after that, I worked for, two institutions in downtown Washington, D. C., the ATMI, American Textile Manufacturers Institute, and another institute for oil. And then, really, I finally settled at working for Xerox Corporation. Which was a really great job. [00:43:17] Ilona Benham: I went through the school, the training, and then I sold Xerox computers and copiers and so forth, and then I married your grand father.

[00:43:28] Julia Langley: So I know you said you have children. What is your family like now? Where do you currently live? Did you speak Hungarian with your children and do you still speak Hungarian sometimes?

[00:43:41] Ilona Benham: Those are good questions. I am fluent in Hungarian. and I became actually more fluent and better in my vocabulary talking to my stepmother, Lydia who didn’t speak English very well. So with her I spoke Hungarian all the time, and my Hungarian actually, grew up, so to speak. In other words, my childish vocabulary became more mature because of my conversations with her about literature and art and so forth. [00:44:11] Ilona Benham: So I do speak Hungarian fluently and it feels wonderful. I spoke it for the first time in years just last week and honestly I don’t mean to sound sappy, but I did get teary. So I speak Hungarian. My German, I dream in German. I don’t think my German’s that great, but I think a month in Germany, it would come back fluently. [00:44:31] Ilona Benham: So I feel confident in that. What was the other part of the question?

[00:44:34] Julia Langley: Do you have any children? What’s your children, your family, like now? Where do you currently live?

[00:44:39] Ilona Benham: Okay, so I live in Boyce Virginia at the Briar’s Farm, and I have birthed three children, but I have five children. I know you’re supposed to say stepchildren, but I don’t like the step word, so they’re my other children who have a different mother than me, and then my birth three children who are exactly the same age except for a couple months difference. [00:45:04] Ilona Benham: And then I have a son, Matthew, and he lives on our farm and he’s an organic farmer. And from all of the five of those children, I have seven grandchildren. And we live on a wonderful farm with organic farming growing right around us. We see the Blue Ridge Mountains in the morning and the Appalachian Mountains at night. [00:45:28] Ilona Benham: And if somebody would have said back, you know, what, 70 years ago, that my life would be as charmed as it is now, I would never have believed it. But I must also add that there is a real foreboding in my soul with what’s going on in Ukraine and in the Middle East. And so, as grateful as I am, I’m also scared. That might be an interesting way to end it.

[00:46:00] Julia Langley: How long was it after you left Hungary that you went back and visited for the first time? How was it going back? How often have you gone back to visit and do you have any family still in Hungary?

[00:46:13] Ilona Benham: Okay. So those are all interesting questions. The first time I went back it was after the Iron Curtain came down and I went back. I was married to Julia’s grandfather, and I went back with my mother and father to visit a relative, some of whom I had not ever met.

[00:46:35] Julia Langley: How old were you at that time?

[00:46:36] Ilona Benham: I was in, I was early thirties. So I left my children. here with my husband and I went back with my family.

[00:46:46] Julia Langley: How was it?

[00:46:47] Ilona Benham: It was horrible. Everywhere we went, we had to register at the post office to say we’re there. They followed us like detectives wherever we went. And when we were at the train station, they opened my suitcase and took all my clothing out and held it up and laughed at whatever they found. [00:47:08] Ilona Benham: It was humiliating, and these were all the Russians, the Marxists, who now occupied Hungary. It was frightful, and I was so upset, and my father kept holding my hand and pulling me back and saying, don’t react, but I really wanted to go and react, because I was young and in my thirties, and I wanted to. [00:47:26] Ilona Benham: It was a horrible experience showering, just everything going back to Hungary was miserable. The showers, the bathrooms, everything was terrible. It’s right after the Second World War, I mean nothing, they had no money, they had nothing. So that was not a good experience but at least I’m glad I went and since then those relatives have passed and we have lost contact. [00:47:48] Ilona Benham: I have one really good friend and her family left in Budapest today, but that’s it. That’s my only contact. And, then I went back, again with your Grandfather. Then that was once, I think we’ve been back at least five or six times. [00:48:05] Ilona Benham: The most recent time we went back was about six years ago. And it was a wonderful experience. And then once we spent an entire month going all around Hungary, To the plains of Hungary where all the oxen and the sheep and the cows and the pheasants and everything, the breadbasket of Hungary. We went back there, we went to some of the little villages to see, you know, like going to Williamsburg would be for us in America. [00:48:37] Ilona Benham: It was a wonderful trip and of course it helped a great deal that I still spoke Hungarian. But it was interesting, even then, because I was an American speaking Hungarian. They were really nice to me, but once they thought I was from Austria, when they saw the car with the license plate, and they thought I was Austrian, they weren’t so nice. [00:48:58] Ilona Benham: So I got a little sense that they weren’t that fond of the Austrians. The Austrians always had more money, and they came in and sort of acted like big shots apparently in Hungary. But I have loved seeing the architecture and the design. And after the 1956 revolution and then as the years progressed since then, to see the exquisite architecture coming to life again and all the bullet holes and the destruction slowly disappearing. [00:49:29] Ilona Benham: Because Budapest is just an incredibly beautiful city, where there are a lot of famous musicians And, you know, it just, it’s kind of like the Paris of the middle Europe.

[00:49:45] Julia Langley: What is something Hungary has that the U. S. does not have?

[00:49:49] Ilona Benham: Soil, different kind of soil. I remember coming to America and my mother complaining about the apricots don’t taste like apricots, and the peaches aren’t as sweet. And apparently every fruit that we ever had, she lamented that it didn’t taste the same as in Hungary. It was so interesting. But then as you get older, you realize the soil is different. And so, because of nutrients in soil, things turn out differently. But, that was a big disappointment. Hungary still has that, and cheeses, and you know, a lot of homemade foods.

[00:50:27] Julia Langley: Have you incorporated any Hungarian culture into your life? Are there any Hungarian traditions or cooking that you’ve incorporated into you and your children’s lives?

[00:50:38] Ilona Benham: Absolutely. We have, yes, our Christmas, we celebrate Christmas Eve, when the Christ child brings gifts from the angels. They bring gifts from the Christ child and they’re placed under the tree that we don’t see, so we never see the tree or the presents until we hear a little tinkle of a bell and we’re allowed to go in to see when the angels have finished their work. [00:51:00] Ilona Benham: And we have traditional Hungarian raput kapusta and Chi Paprika, which is chicken paprika, a zillion foods that we have really kept up with. Pop py seed roll s. I’m what, 81 years old and we still cherish our Hungarian cuisine, although we very much adapted to everything. American. Actually, my favorite food is a cheeseburger and a pizza. But, we do carry the traditions of food. My children continue to cook it in the same way. But, you know, we’ve lived here forever, so we’ve adapted to our cuisine here, and of course, we love Mexican, and we love Vietnamese, and Chinese, and so we’ve mixed our foods with everything else that’s around us, but yes, we’ve kept our tradition. [00:51:49] Ilona Benham: We celebrate St. Nicholas Day, which is the eve of the 5th of December. We put out our clean shoes, so St. Nicholas will put something good like an orange or candy in our shoes, if we were good children. And so I still do that with us grown ups, too. They always get something from St. Nicholas. So that we continue because Christmas Eve, as I said. Christmas Day, of course, we do stockings like Americans do. And I really think that’s about all that we, as far as traditions, that we focus on. We do stockings. Thanksgiving is not celebrated in Europe, but we do Thanksgiving and we give thanks. So, yeah, I think we’ve adapted to our life here in America very well, maintaining still some of our customs.

[00:52:40] Julia Langley: So, what is one thing that you hope people would learn about your experience immigrating from Hungary to America?

[00:52:47] Ilona Benham: That’s a great question. I think that my word would be attitude. Because attitude that is within each of us is how we see our world. And my parents and my attitude to this day is positive. I look at the world lovingly and in a positive way. And I approach people I meet with a kind attitude. I think instead of looking at the glass half empty, I look at it as a glass half full. It’s a choice I have. And I choose to have a positive attitude. And consequently, that, I think, if you come to America and you know that you have an opportunity and it’s what you make of the opportunity and not what others do for you, if you keep that kind of attitude, you can kind of be and do whatever you want to. [00:53:46] Ilona Benham: And granted, some people, it’s easier because they have more money, but you work. So, it’s, to me, it’s a matter of the attitude you have, the effort you put forth. to make the life that you want. You have that choice.

[00:54:03] Julia Langley: Great answer. Is there anything else you would like to share about your childhood and growing up as an immigrant in America?

[00:54:11] Ilona Benham: I know that there are others who have had a much more difficult time. I’ve read plenty of short stories and books about people coming from, you know, Eastern countries that had a very difficult time adjusting, especially if they moved into New York City, for example. So I know that I was fortunate and blessed to only have parents with a funny accent, but looking at me, you didn’t know whether I had an accent or not, or where I came from. [00:54:50] Ilona Benham: I just looked like a pretty white person. And I think that was just lucky. I think others have had a much more difficult time and I can understand why. It makes me sad that there’s so many judgments in the world without getting to know someone. Getting to know someone’s heart and not what color they are or what religion they are. So I feel lucky, but I, as I said, I know. that many other immigrants, whether they’re from Mexico right now or from the Middle East or, you know, wherever, have a much harder time. And I’m sorry for that.

[00:55:35] Julia Langley: Well, thank you so much for participating in this interview for my class. I appreciate all the time you gave me. I enjoyed learning about your life, and how you immigrated to America from Hungary.

[00:55:46] Ilona Benham: Thank you. I enjoyed talking to you about it.