Story Connection: Dr. Tom Kando

AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM KANDO

Hi folks:

This is a You Tube video of an interview I had recently on Sacramento’s Access TV (Channel 17). The interview was part of the program “What’s Your Story.” The topic was  my autobiography.
Click on the title of this article.

Here are some of the things that were said:

“I was born in Budapest, Hungary,   at the beginning of World War II......my saga  is extraordinarily eventful and interesting. Sometimes I joke that my life conforms to the ancient Chinese curse that wishes you an interesting life...

...I have lived in four separate countries,  almost a decade in each, and traveled to another thirty. I speak four languages fluently and dabble in another couple. I have had an exceptionally international upbringing and background.


My autobiography describes my family trekking across Europe as refugees, as immigrants, during the war and shortly thereafter. Growing  up in Hungary while bombs were dropping all around us, pulverizing our own house and other ones in our neighborhood.  Then moving  to Paris, France, where we lived for eight years,  and then to Amsterdam for the next decade.

We were like gypsies,  living at times like homeless people. We  hitchhiked everywhere. We couldn’t afford trains, let alone cars. The first car that was every owned in my family was the one I bought in my mid 20s. The international character and the adventures that we went through,  sleeping on benches in city parks, at railroad  stations or under the stars. All of that was pretty amazing. We were kicked out by  landlords. To force us out, they  turned  off the electricity. There is a picture in my autobiography  of us doing our homework by candlelight!

It’s also a bit of a Horatio Alger story, from hardship to success. I’m not a multimillionaire or anything.  But I did end up with a PhD and a fine university professor’s job for 40 years. The American Dream, to some extent.

The paradox:  The freedom we had, compared to the middle class kids who looked down upon us. It was fun. Sure, the  discrimination was there, too.  “Filthy Hungarian, go back home to where you belong.”

My mother is Jewish.  My grandparents were carted off to the Budapest ghetto,  ready to be shipped out to Auschwitz. Luckily, the war ended just in time for them, although not all of my relatives survived.

My parents did some pretty heroic things. They are both  recognized and honored at the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, at the Avenue of the Righteous. Because they used their skills to create false documents for people who went underground. At first, when my mother told me this, I didn’t believe it. But it turned out to be true.

I came to America on the boat, in steerage. I was in one cabin with seven other immigrants, a Moroccan, a couple of Swedes... I came all by myself in 1960. On an old Liberty ship. There were  1500 other immigrants on board.  It cost me   forty dollars to sail from  Rotterdam to New York.

America was the  Mecca for  everyone who didn’t belong anywhere and who was  restless. America was the future, the holy grail. America was the goal for all people who didn’t belong anywhere. And  I was nothing - I was not a Hungarian, from where I had fled, I was not Dutch, not French, I was nothing.

I got naturalized here in Sacramento  at age twenty-seven. My God it felt good. I had a citizenship! The judge asked me: “Son, what is the Constitution of the United States?
I was a first-year professor with a brand-new PhD. I started pontificating: “The Constitution is the legal document which regulates...”
He cut me off and said: “Son,  the Constitution is the law of the land.” Then he handed me a little US flag, shook my hand and congratulated me: “You are now an American.”

I taught at several major universities.  Penn State, the University of California,  Sac State for several decades.

Maybe the most interesting work I did was the  research that led to my first book forty years ago, about transgender people. I interviewed twenty-nine transsexuals post-operatively at the University of Minnesota. They had all undergone sex-change operations, all male to female.

I have written and published almost a dozen books. Most of them academic. For example one on Leisure and Recreation. The topics are very varied. I am a jack-of-all-trades, a master of none.

I taught the Violence and Terrorism class for many years.  This is now  very topical, but I’d rather teach popular culture, play Rolling Stones records for my students.

I recently completed  my Future History of the World. I  describe the next twenty-five thousand years. Pretty modest, he? The same amount of time which has lapsed since  Cro Magnon and Neanderthal man...Writing this was a  lot of fun. I describe the world’s  trajectory over the next 25,000 years. First, of course, the world has to unite. Each country becomes like a state within the  US. The world then expands. Planets become colonized. Then the big step comes after  25,000 years, when humanity considers moving out of the solar system. But how? Using our space shuttle today, it would take forty thousand years to reach the closest star - Proxima Centauri. So interstellar travel is only possible if you violate Einstein’s laws. So far, I don’t know how you can do that...

You can get the paper version of my biography by e-mailing me at:
kandotom@csus.edu
You can sample it and my other publications on my web page:
www.tomkando.com
To get the e-version, go to Amazon and type in my name as follows:
Thomas Kando.

The main thing I would  like to impart to the audience is this: I feel that I have had a incredibly interesting life.   Despite many errors  and much trauma, things  worked out pretty good. So I urge people to remain fairly optimistic.  In my case, things turned out alright. I am fairly happy and proud of what happened to me. And one more very important thing: You also need lots of luck. I  could have ended  up dead or behind bars many times...A lot of sex and violence in my memoir."
(Laughter)

leave comment here