My father is a second generation American. His father, Thomas Neumann, emigrated from Budapest, Hungary to Vienna, Austria, then from Vienna, Austria to Paris, France, and then from Paris, France to New York, New York. Although, my Grandpa Tom was a child while this moving was going on. His father, Gabor Neumann, was a successful banker who was ushered out of Budapest when he refused a job as finance minister of the newly Communist Government of Hungary. When my great grandfather refused the job, he did not realize that there were going to be consequences until his wife pointed out that the Communist Government would not let him off that easy. So he and his wife and my Grandpa Tom fled to Vienna. In the late 1930s, my great grandfather and his family had to flee once again when the Nazis started taking over Vienna, because they were Jewish. This time they fled to Paris. Then, once again, my great grandfather and his family had to flee because of the Nazis, and that is when they immigrated to America. When my great grandfather came to America he and his family were forced to change their name to Newman because Neumann sounded too German during a time when Germans were not particularly popular. My Grandpa Tom was relatively young, so adjusting to American life was not hard for him. My great grandparents, however, had a tougher time letting go of Hungarian traditions. My Great Grandpa Gabor left behind a successful career, an apartment building that he had owned in Budapest, and his relatives. My grandmother’s family, on my father’s side, has been in America for as long as my father can remember.

My mother’s mother, Mildred Milligan, was a second generation American. Her mother’s last name was Huddy, and she emigrated from County Cork, Ireland to Liverpool in the early twentieth-century with her husband-to-be, whose last name was Tuohy. After a couple of years in Liverpool, the couple immigrated to Yonkers, New York in order to find work. My great grandma worked as a maid at Lyndhurst, a mansion in Tarrytown, New York, and my great grandpa worked as a furniture mover at the department store, Wanamaker’s, in New York City. They were both solemn people, emotionally distant from both each other and their children. The both of them had lived in poverty before they came to America, and they both had hoped that America might change that. It did, to a certain extent, but the two of them felt that their hope for a better life was never completely fulfilled. My grandfather’s parents met each other in America after they emigrated from their respective home countries. My great grandfather, last name Milligan, came from Ireland in the early twentieth century looking for work. My great grandmother, last name Kuntschmann, came from Germany also looking for work. The two thoroughly enjoyed their time in America, perhaps a little bit too much because they left their son, my Grandpa Fred, with his Paternal Grandmother in the Bronx.  My great grandmother’s family eventually immigrated to America a couple of years after she had. My great grandfather’s mother was the only member of his family to come to America, and she came a year or so after he had.