Retired physician Stephen Gergatz has just been named honorary consol for Sarasota by Hungary. This relatively rare designation gives people who want to explore cultural or business ties to Hungary a contact who will work with them. Dr. Gergatz is set to return a honorary consul plaque for his previous post in New Orleans, where he relocated from recently.
STAFF PHOTO / ELAINE LITHERLAND
Published: Friday, September 14, 2012 at 4:53 p.m.
Last Modified: Friday, September 14, 2012 at 4:53 p.m.
SARASOTA - In an effort to explain why he loves a nonpaying and often thankless problem-solving job involving a potential constituency of more than a million people, Stephen Gergatz of Sarasota uncorks an anecdote about a Hungarian expatriate he calls "Rattlesnake Attila."
At 19, during the 1980s, Rattlesnake Attila visited relatives in New Orleans and decided he didn't want to go back to then-communist Hungary. Attila fled U.S. immigration authorities on a cross-country bicycle odyssey, landed in jail, paid an African-American woman $500 to marry him, adopted her kids, and built a lucrative business as a handyman.
A few years ago, Attila was riding his bicycle, its rear basket containing a live rattlesnake he intended to brew into stew. When the serpent began to squirm free, the distracted Attila crashed into a wall and died.
"He was loaded, he had lots of money, and his stepchildren started demanding this and demanding that," Gergatz says. "There were lawyers involved, there was fraud involved, there were prostitutes ? it's New Orleans. I'm telling you, this was a movie."
Gergatz was privy to the lurid details thanks to his duties an an honorary consul for Hungary in Louisiana.
On Sunday, Gergatz, who moved to Sarasota this year, will formally assume that same role for Florida.
Presiding over the noon installation ceremony at the Petofi Hungarian Club House in Venice will be Csaba Hende, Hungary's Defense Minister. Hende is visiting Florida for consultations with U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Central Command.
"This is a big deal," says Andras Szorenyi, political and public affairs officer for the Hungarian embassy in Washington, D.C. "Hungary has no embassy or consulate in Florida, and there are only a few honorary consuls around the country. We are hoping business and cultural relations will grow as a result."
According to recent census data, some 1.5 million U.S. residents cited Hungary as their primary ancestry. Florida is the seventh most-populous state in that category. As the new local point man for resolving linguistic and cultural obstacles facing Hungarian-Americans, Gergatz expects to be much busier in Sarasota than he was in Louisiana.
"In New Orleans, I had maybe 10 clients a year," says the 66-year-old retired internist. "I would anticipate anywhere from 50 to 100 cases a year here."
Gergatz, one of just 16 Hungarian-American honorary consuls nationwide, estimates that 20,000 ethnic compatriots reside in his region of responsibility, which ranges from Fort Myers to points north. His only Florida counterpart is based in Miami.
The 66-year-old arrived in the U.S. with his parents following Hungary's ill-fated revolution against Soviet occupation in 1956. He pursued a career in medicine and lived in New Orleans for the past 40 years. Gergatz enlisted for consular duties in Louisiana 12 years ago.
His Sarasota ties go back several decades, when he began attending local seminars that reflected the area's concentrated demographics. The Worldwide Hungarian American Medical Academy, now defunct, would convene annually in Longboat Key, and the Hungarian Medical Association of America gathers each year in Lido Key. Those connections account for his presence here.
Gergatz and his wife Julianna were living three blocks from the 17th Street Canal in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina breached the Lake Pontchartrain levee in 2005. Flooded out of their home by 6 feet of water, they were forced into a six-week evacuation drama that ended in New Jersey.
Amid the turmoil, Gergatz, also a member of the American Academy of Hospice Physicians, worked the system from afar to find safety for one of his clients, a terminally ill patient stranded under nightmarish conditions at Memorial Medical Center in downtown New Orleans.
"Fortunately, we got him out and he survived Katrina," Gergatz says. "He succumbed to cancer at Lake Charles Memorial."
Hurricane Gustav, which slammed Louisiana in 2008, was the final straw for the Gergatzes. They moved to Sarasota in March. He hopes his constituent neighbors understand he isn't a miracle worker. Although he can provide notary services and cut through red tape, "I cannot renew passports. I cannot grant visas," he says.
Otherwise, his best general advice for living in America comes from the lesson exemplified by Rattlesnake Attila. "Use your common sense," Gergatz says. "You can't be Crocodile Dundee in New Orleans."
Source: http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20120914/article/120919794
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