MARIANNE HOCHULI

1922-2018

Mariana Balazs (known to her friends as Marianne Hochuli) was born in Budapest, Hungary on a cold December day in 1922. She was born with a condition that caused the attending doctor to tell her parents she would never walk normally, unless she had a radical and risky surgery. Her mother sought out the expert in this condition who happened to be in Vienna, Austria. The doctor told Marianne’s mother that her daughter was too young to have the surgery, but the mother persisted. The story is that she showed up in the doctor’s lobby every day for weeks, until the doctor gave in. Marianne was the youngest child to ever have this surgery in Europe in the early 1920’s. After several months that this toddler was in a cast from her waist down, the surgery was declared to have been successful. Marianne spent the rest of her life traveling around the world! She told many harrowing stories about WWII. She was in her early 20’s, so her memories were vivid of this time. One story was about Russian soldiers breaking into their apartment and raping one of her neighbor girls in front of everyone. The soldiers threatened to kill anyone who protested. Marianne said that she was so small and skinny, that the soldiers must have thought she was a boy and left her alone. Other war stories included stealing a jar of pickles (which she felt guilty about), and about her father having to cut the meat off of frozen dead horses in the streets to have something to eat. You would think this would have broken her spirit, but it did not. She escaped from Budapest in 1944 with the Nazis on one side of the city and the Russians on the other side. She had the chutzpah to “steal” her passport back from a Russian guard who left his post for a moment, and made her way by train to Paris. From France she sailed to London to reunite with her first husband. After some time in London and a divorce, she moved to Berlin and worked for Radio Free Europe. She also worked for the US Forces as an interpreter since she spoke Hungarian, German, French, and English. (She later learned Spanish and Portuguese). When a fellow translator was found dead on the banks of a river in a rolled up rug, she decided to leave Germany. She wanted to go to the United States, but was told, “Sorry, we are all full up on immigrants.” Canada and Mexico also told her no. So in 1952 she made her way to Brazil, who was more welcoming to immigrating Europeans. She lived in Brazil for over 35 years, and met her second husband who was a Swiss-born hotel manager named Fred Hochuli. By her mid-40’s (in the late 1960’s) she was widowed, and decades later made her way to Houston in the 1990’s. She liked the climate, museums, ballet, symphony and opera of the bayou city. …and all the while she continued to travel. In her lifetime she went to Iran before the revolution, climbed down into the secret chambers of the pyramids of Egypt (when that was still allowed), went to China years before it was easy to do so, sailed to Antarctica and competed with a penguin for a place out of the wind behind a snow drift, explored the sights and sounds of India in her early 80’s, and hiked to the ruins of Machu Picchu in her late 80’s. Somewhere along the way macular degeneration took most of her eye-sight, but it never really slowed her down. Since she lived in Montrose which was so centrally located, she decided to sell her car. She started using taxis to get to cultural events, the nail salon and the hair dresser. She inspired great loyalty among her friends. They always made sure that her time in Houston was filled with laughter, opera, good meals, nice wine, music, and lectures at the MFAH. Wednesdays (or as she would say it “Vensdays”) were always special. Starting in 2004 “Vensdays” became a night when her friends ALWAYS took her to out to dinner. We calculated that somewhere between 650 and 700 “Vensday night dinners” were shared with this amazing lady. In the last few months the dinners were brought to her bedside, but the tradition continued until the last Vensday she spent on earth. The words of the song “Last Rose of Summer” ring true to those friends she leaves behind. If you have never heard this song, please take a moment and Google Renee Fleming’s version of “The Last Rose of Summer”. Only then will you have a HINT of what the loss of this little 4 foot 6 inch Hungarian lady means to her friends. At noon on Saturday, April 7th a group of her friends will gather at Gaido’s Restaurant on the Seawall in Galveston to share a meal and share stories of this amazing life.