Eulogy - Part 3

Interests
Peter was a man with a great many talents and they did not revolve around sport, cars or handyman pursuits. “I am not handy”, he would say when we were faced with a domestic repair conundrum. This meant getting in someone who was, or I would have a go, sometimes with mixed results which then required getting a tradesman. Nonetheless, Peter did have immense talents.

Peter developed an early love of music but did not take to classical music or opera as his parents may have hoped. He loved jazz, especially the music of Stan Getz, Django Rheinhard, Sidney Bechet, Fats Waller and others from the “Hot Club du Paris” era of the 1920's to 1950's. He also enjoyed folk music and while he learnt the piano and could play “by ear” as a child, he turned to the acoustic guitar as a young adult and I understand he quite liked playing to small groups of people. I also understand this gave him an opportunity and talent for meeting women, something on which he was keen from the age of 13 so he told me!
Photo: Peter, Athens 1983

He had a really lovely speaking and singing voice, which I always thought of as mellifluous and, if you closed your eyes, like being covered in melted caramel! When I first met Peter I told him he had a great voice and should have been on the radio – imagine my surprise when he mentioned that he had been a radio actor as a child!

He was a great raconteur and had an absolutely encyclopaedic repertoire of jokes or stories. He would invite you to give him a letter of the alphabet or a word and he would always have a joke about it, much like a juke box selector. He could also whistle complex classical, folk and jazz melodies unlike anyone I have ever known! They were so beautiful.

Peter loved the cinema and movies, undertaking the role of film critic when he attended Sydney university and spent time with Bill Collins in his movie appreciation weekends. In the last few weeks of his life he continued to enjoy DVDs with me, the most recent being some French films which Peter found very moving.
Photo: Peter at Frying Pan Creek 1989.
He spent a lot of time freshwater fishing in his early adult life and later while we were on holidays. He disdained bait fishing but liked using lures and I have strong memories of him up to his knees in a fast flowing stream on a baking, hot summer day in France. He loved the thrill of catching a pike perch in a lake in France or Italy, but talked with great affection about his adventures with trout in the rivers around Cooma.



Interestingly he didn't like eating fish.
Photo: Fishing at Villa Garuti in Italy, 2002
He also became a sporting shooter and spent some time in Queensland learning survival techniques many years before it became an adventure holiday concept. When I asked him about both of these things early in our relationship, because they seemed quite incongruous with the urban intellectual I knew, he said he wanted to be able to survive and protect himself and his family if ever there was a threat or need to do so. He said that no one was ever going to point a gun at him and round him up without a fight. He said “Never again. The holocaust is not going to happen to me.”

His other loves were Social Work, knowledge management, IT, writing and web development. He spent the majority of his waking hours at work, or on the computer at home researching new trends and changes in any of his interest areas. Recently he commented, that he used to think that anyone who couldn't use a computer or utilise software to it's fullest extent was either stupid or lazy, including me. But he admitted only a few months ago that he realised this was absolutely not the case, as he had been away from avidly using the computer or updating his knowledge for several months, and I had to remind him how to some things, which, to him seemed ultimately depressing . This was a a huge revelation to him, because he had been at the forefront of personal computing since the early 1980's including beta testing a number of products.

He contributed to many web discussion groups, as well as having 5 or 6 web logs of his own. One crucial one he developed was on Oesophageal Cancer, because there was nothing available in Australia to help people who were victims of this tragic disease or their carers to understand what the process, options, medical interventions and implications were for someone with this diagnosis. He maintained this for the whole 5 and ½ year period of his illness. I know that a wide range of people found this incredibly useful and thanks were often passed on by thosee who had googled the cancer and found a link to Peter's blog site.
Photo: This was all we needed for 3 - 6 months overseas, Cagnes Sur Mer, France 2000.
Peter was also totally passionate about researching genealogy. He found it so frustrating in the early years, before the internet became so useful for researching family history. He was desperate to find out more about his family and ancestors and realised that he had little knowledge when his parents both died so early in his life. The strides he was able to make when information became available on line, and he could hook up with others all over the world who were also searching, was hugely satisfying to him.
Photo: Peter with our Citroen Xsara, Auxerre, France 2002 (larger car but still camping with the same tent and gear)

Travelling also became important to Peter. From the late 1970's he started to travel overseas and maintained a schedule of having a long holiday every 2 years or so. By storing his annual leave and taking leave without pay he was able to maintain this schedule up to 2005, with many visits to Europe, a few to Asia and 2 to the USA to meet cousins. He was a bit of a”free-wheeler” without a plan, when it came to travel and enjoyed the people and food, with the sights sometimes taking second place. He always said: ”The nose knows” when he would find some wonderful patisserie, cafe or restaurant and he was rarely wrong. He also used the time to follow up on genealogical leads and track down people who remembered his parents or other family members. We returned each time to Szent Istvan Park on the Danube, in the XIII district of Budapest, and would sit in the park outside the apartment building in which he and his parents lived. He had a love/hate relationship with Budapest and would always want to return but when he did so the realities of modern Budapest often annoyed him. We agreed this was probably the load all migrants and refugees carry about their home country.

Photo: Peter's family apartment up to the time they fled Hungary in Budapest, Szent Istvan Park, XIII district.

Peter was also a very good cook, and loved to entertain. He loved eating out and experimenting with recipes or analysing the key ingredients in a dish at a restaurant. He enjoyed finding interesting cook books and by travelling to Europe he was in a state of bliss at all the wonderful bread, cheese, and different styles of cuisine. Whenever we would cross a border into a new country, province or region, his interests lay in the regional produce or specialities, rather than in the historic sites. While I was enthralled by another Romanesque church or trawling through antique or bric a brac stalls at markets, he would be smelling out a rare salami, a ripe Camembert, the best bread, or attempting to find the best espresso in the country by sampling at least 2 a day in a different cafe or bar. He always said that the difference between French or Italian and Hungarian espresso coffee was in France , you stirred the sugar in with the spoon, in Italy the spoon stood up and in Hungary, the spoon dissolved!!
Photo: Peter and Leanne, Montresor, Loire Valley, France 2002

His cooking style was mainly eastern European and Mediterranean but he was also a great lover of Asian food and he used to love stirfrys, Laksa's and curries. He was very good at Green Chicken Curry and veal with mushrooms. His view on salad was that it was, by and large, “Rabbit food” and green vegetables were only suitable as a garnish.

He was also a great reader, enjoying a wide range of books, articles, current affairs, think tank discussions and web related material. He was a speed reader and could finish a large and compelling novel in a day if he was so motivated, which meant that our home has been full of books from our first days together, as this is a joy we both shared, even though our tastes differed.

Like many migrants he was intensely proud of Australia but also of Hungarians. He always said that behind many of the worlds' great inventions there was a Hungarian and used to reel off a list of essential inventions, such as the Biro pen, whose inventors were Hungarian! Much to my amazement, I have to say when I started looking, he seemed to be correct!!!

Photo: Upgraded to a campervan in 2005, Germany.

He was also a very prolific writer. He wrote hundreds of articles and opinions for the NSW Social Work newsletter as well as editing and publishing for many years. He also contributed many articles to web discussions, wrote his own blogs and travel articles for the San Diego Jewish News. He was always so confident that writing articles and contributing to the global discussion on knowledge or change management was an important thing. He was so confident and unrepentant for his views or provocative style. He thought that it was always important to have the courage of your convictions and be prepared to engage in robust discussions.
Photo: Peter and I at our favourite restaurant in the Perigord region of France, 2005.

Peter also loved playing Bridge, and much to his disappointment, I was not good at card games. However, after a boycott on Scrabble for many years, in the last 6 months I relented and learnt many of his strategies for success. I can proudly say we recently enjoyed many good games together, even in the last 3 days of his life, when I had begun to give him a run for his money.

Community Work
He was absolutely selfless when it came to giving his time to others in any of his work or interest areas. He worked long hours often only stopping for 4 or 5 hours sleep. He took on many tasks for other people and always worked hard to get on top of something with which he was not entirely acquainted. Within a short period he often became the expert in that issue or subject, to the extent that he was often ahead of his time with many of the discussion papers he wrote or policies he advocated.

During his professional working life he was also a TAFE lecturer in social welfare and also the President of the NSW Branch of the Australian Association of Social Workers for many years. During his AASW years, he streamlined and implemented much needed modernisation and reforms, as well as contributing hundreds of articles on practice issues and writing as well as editing the professional newsletter. The mention of this in such a few lines in no way gives any indication of the years of hard work he dedicated to the AASW and the profession as a whole.

Apart from his membership and management of the Australian Association of Social Workers in NSW later in life, Peter thoroughly enjoyed being Youth Director of the B'Nai B'rith Youth Organisation between 1969 and 1975, where, I understand he successfully established and managed five youth groups comprising around 300 young people. These days he recalled with such happiness and satisfaction. He kept a large number of photographs from these days and often regaled me with anecdotes about some of the activities, or sing the songs they wrote for camps, wondering where those young people had got to over the years.


Personal Traits
Peter was not perfect and could sometimes be angry and impatient, although these episodes passed very quickly, and a little like the tide on the beach, were quickly washed away. He also “didn't suffer fools gladly”, which made us two of a kind!

He was a very self-contained person which came of being an only child and also spending many years as an independent adult without ties.

He was a highly articulate and intelligent man, who was voracious when it came to acquiring knowledge and sharing that with others, especially in his areas of interest.

He was forthright, frank and fearless and the most ethical person I have met. He was, as I mentioned, hardworking almost to the point of being a workaholic and enjoyed huge challenges.

I know that many people didn't like Peter but that never bothered him as he saw it as secondary to being a good public servant or manager. To that end, he was entirely honest and scrupulous and this engendered, in its turn, respect from others, even when the message may have not been entirely palatable or the recipients didn't like the messenger.

Peter was not a person who allowed people to get to know him too easily. He had many acquaintances and networked well with them but never really allowed too many to get to know his inner self. I know that this was because of a difficulty in entirely trusting people borne from some experiences in his early adult life, including the circumstances around the demise of his first marriage in the late 1970's.

He was, in essence, an “acquired taste” in many respects and many people did not really take the time or effort to “get to know” him at all. You had to work hard to get to see the real man behind the wall of his social, or work, self but if you persisted and demonstrated the enthusiasm, intelligence, integrity, hard work, loyalty and trustworthiness he, himself, gave then you could be rewarded by such unconditional positive regard that it was the most precious gift.

Peter had a very strategic and forward thinking mind which was always alert and ready for interesting ideas and challenges. He would often wake up quite suddenly and start immediately talking about an idea or a concept about which he had been dreaming or resolved overnight, when I have to admit I was just thinking about getting to the shower or having breakfast.

He was also a person who wanted, and did, control every aspect of his life. He was of the view that it was you who controlled the outcomes by the actions you took and that the concept of fate and drifting along in life was not one that brought very positive results. On this we were in total accord and we allowed each other the “space” to do so.