NEW SCOTLAND – Andrew Barothy-Langer considers himself a fortunate man.

He was born in Hungary in 1918, and moved to the United States in 1950, following World War II. Barothy-Langer, 89, has been a resident of New Scotland for more than 50 years, and a member of the town’s board of assessment review for 16 years.
"It’s a wonderful life in America, and I’m a damn lucky guy," Barothy-Langer told The Enterprise last week.
The sacrifice he made for the freedom of life in the United States, though, was that he was never able to see his parents after he left Europe. "That is the saddest part of my life," he said.

Barothy-Langer served in the Hungarian Army during the second world war for six years, he said. He was captured by the United States Army during a stay in a German hospital, he said.
On the morning before the Americans came, he remembered, Germans were burning roads and bridges in the city of Ingolstadt, in the German state of Bavaria, where Barothy-Langer was hospitalized. He remembers throwing his pistol in the Danube River, and, he said, "It sank right away." The holster, though, filled with water before dropping to the bottom. The date was April 26, 1945, the day "the war ended for me in Bavaria," Barothy-Langer said.

After his capture, he traveled 1,800 kilometers on foot from Ingolstadt to Kiev, a trip that took one month and three days, Barothy-Langer said, pointing out the scar on his nose from frostbite caused by temperatures that dipped below 20 degrees below zero.

He worked with the U.S. Army for five years in intelligence and education.
"Being an indigenous person" I could, at ease, put maps together," he said of his role with the Army.
His father, a civil engineer, taught him how to draw when he was a young child, Barothy-Langer said. Maps are "a very important part of engineering design," he said.
He spoke German and the Army put him in charge of a group of German sign painters, he said. Barothy-Langer’s mentor was a captain from Alabama, he said. "I was teaching him German" He taught me English."

Coming to the United States
Barothy-Langer says he moved to the United States because he "didn’t want to be a Communist." Because he was born before the Austria-Hungary monarchy was dissolved, Barothy-Langer was a citizen of the16 countries that broke off from Austria-Hungary, he said.
Barothy-Langer became an American citizen in 1956, he said. "I was a member of the largest class to become nationalized in Albany."

He went on to work as a cartographer for New York State. He said he helped create an updated map of New York, worked on the design of the Northway, and was part of the Future of the Adirondack Park Committee.
"The English language was not easy," Barothy-Langer said in a thick accent that hasn’t faded much in 57 years.
"My first language in America was Latin," he said of the language he used to communicate at his first American job, on a chicken farm. His boss found it frustrating that Barothy-Langer was more fluent in Latin than him, he remembered with a smile.
He considers one of his proudest accomplishments that he "completely assimilated" into American culture and life. "I have nothing to do with my old country, except heartache" about what I had to go through" And, of course, I could not see my parents anymore."
He did communicate with his parents through letters, he said. Not long before his father died, he was able to call his "war monger" son in America, Barothy-Langer said. During the Krushchev era, Barothy-Langer was considered a "bad-guy," he said. "Any American in the Russian eyes was considered a war monger." His father’s call, however, was patched through to a Langer in Delmar, not a Barothy-Langer in Clarksville, he said, and he never spoke to him.
"My newspaper wife figured out what to do," Barothy-Langer said of his first wife, Libby. After an extraordinary amount of persistence, she reached a phone company official who said, "Tell your husband to call his mother as many times as he wants" and it will be charged to me." Barothy-Langer smiled at the recollection, still vivid in his mind. "For about a year, I had daily conversations with my mother," he said proudly.

Memories from the heart

While conversing last week in the kitchen of his New Scotland home, a white-tailed deer perused the greenery in Barothy-Langer’s front yard, as his cat, Kara, watched intently from the grass not far away. Barothy-Langer chuckled and continued to reminisce about his childhood in Europe, his experiences during the war, his loves, his children. He browsed through old photographs of his parents, a younger brother who was killed during the war, and a Latvian woman named Ina from Toronto.
"I believe I was nuts about her," Barothy-Langer said of Ina, whom he wanted to marry but was unable to get a visa to bring her to live with him in the United States. They spent a long weekend together in the early 1950s, kissed goodbye, and, Barothy-Langer never saw her again, he said sadly.

In 1953, he married Libby Bohen, a broadcaster for WPTI and WOKO. They were married for 17 years before Libby died, and they had two sons – Mark and Victor.

His sons were still young when their mother died, Barothy-Langer said; he married Martha Machold, whose grandfather founded The Amsterdam Recorder, shortly after the death of his first wife.

Barothy-Langer is proud of his now-grown sons. A bright smile lit up his face as he spoke about their achievements.

Victor Barothy-Langer lives in Del Mar, Calif. and is the general manager of the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego, which was built in the early 1900s by Ulysses S. Grant Jr. Barothy-Langer and Kara, his feline friend and roommate, recently returned from a six-month stay with Victor, and he proudly showed photographs of the luxury hotel his son oversees.

Mark Barothy-Langer is a professor of communications at the University of Wyoming in Cheyenne, and is currently teaching in Dubai. While traveling to Saudi Arabia, Mark bumped into Terry Haskell, an old friend from Clarksville Elementary School, who works for a Houston oil company and is stationed there, said Barothy-Langer.
Barothy-Langer said he feels "guilty" that he never taught Mark and Victor how to speak Hungarian. His only "dislike" of America – which he indicated as being minor with a small gap between his aging fingers – is that Americans don’t place importance on keeping traditions, he said.
"I am a man of peace," Barothy-Langer said emphatically. "Every creature on the earth was created for two purposes," he said, "to sustain himself, and to be sure his species survives."
He doesn’t understand why the human race is continually fighting. "We’re always fighting" for a quote-unquote better life" History has not shown us there is not a better life""