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Bob Ratonyi

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The student led march to the parliament building had been exhilarating for Bob Ratonyi and he got up the next morning to go to his classes but there were no streetcars running. Then he saw two dead Russian soldiers in their vehicle. The peaceful march had turned into the bloody Hungarian Uprising. Part 2 of 4. (8:23)

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When Bob Ratonyi heard that a good friend had fled the country after the Hungarian Uprising, he decided to do the same. He recruited another friend and they began to plan their escape. Their group of two expanded to seven and they naively set out for the Austrian border. Part 3 of 4. (6:46)

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It was a shakedown. Bob Ratonyi saw that he had to go off the trail and around the soldier collecting the money. Along with six others, he was making an attempt to escape communist Hungary after the brutal putdown of the Hungarian Uprising. He stumbled through the dark and found a group of peasants, but they were part of the operation, too. Part 4 of 4 (7:32)

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He was free. Bob Ratonyi had made it out of communist Hungary into Austria. His first stop was a refugee camp, which was overcrowded. He made it to Vienna with the help of a Catholic charity and, once there, he made straight for the American embassy. Unfortunately, the quota for refugees had been met. He had three choices, Australia, Sweden and Canada. (6:35)

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On the spur of the moment, Bob Ratonyi sent a transcript to MIT. He'd never heard of it but one of his professors said it was one of the best engineering schools in the world. As a Hungarian refugee in Canada, he was unaware of it's reputation and he surely could not afford it. When he was accepted, he faced a hard choice. (Caution: coarse language.) (4:32)

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How could a continent populated with Christians stand by as their Jewish neighbors were murdered? Hungarian Holocaust survivor Bob Ratonyi has given this a lot of thought. He survived the Nazis and their successors, the communists. He wrote of these experiences in his book, From Darkness into Light. (6:06)

Bob Reynolds

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Why the Navy? Bob Reynolds says he didn't like ties and the Navy had open necks. That and the varied trades offered made him pick the Navy over the other services. Nearly his entire class from boot camp was assigned to the brand new carrier, the USS Franklin. He worked in the most hazardous area of the ship, the flight deck. (7:06)

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The kamikazes were everywhere, recalls Bob Reynolds. Three of them attacked his ship and two were fought off but the third got through. The ship was repaired and back at sea but, before long, it was the target of dive bombers. (7:07)

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He was carrying a letter from his girlfriend and the news wasn't good. That moment of inattention on the flight deck cost the pilot his life in a most grisly manner. Bob Reynolds describes that incident and other perils of life on an aircraft carrier. (3:44)

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Six years after the war, Bob Reynolds rejoined the Navy and once again served on aircraft carriers, this time as a Gunner's Mate. He got in his twenty years chasing Russian subs around the world in the Cold War. (2:10)