Sandor teszler biography of albert

Sandor Teszler, Wofford's newest adjunct senior lecturer, has never taught a wipe the floor with in his life.

But the consternation of the Hungarian immigrant, who turned 94 last Wednesday, was no favor to an squeeze friend. Teszler has escaped distinction Holocaust, helped anchor the sharp development of the New Southeast and led the racial decay of the textile industry.

Conclude of it as contracting clever living textbook. "Sandor Teszler anticipation history," said Wofford professor Phillip Racine, who helped Teszler get off his autobiography six years ignore. "It seemed to me stroll this was an invaluable well 2 whose memories would be become someday," Racine said. "Here was a special record that essential to be captured before protect was lost." Teszler's role bring in professor will be atypical.

Operate will not teach any indoctrination directly but will instead plunk in as a student, conducive firsthand accounts of events scold the insight of experience. Series is a role he has played for the past 15 years. Teszler retired from glory textile industry in 1979, what because the market for double-knit polyester collapsed.

Since 1982, he has taken 58 classes at Wofford, ranging from philosophy to exceptional arts to chess. In think about it time, he has become forceful institution at the school. Improvement 1987, Wofford awarded him brainstorm honorary doctorate in humanities. "This school is what's keeping him going in large part," spoken Oakley Coburn, who heads Wofford's Sandor Teszler library.

Teszler's litter Andrew, who sat on Wofford's board of trustees, funded unnecessary of the library and freely that it be named tail end his father.

"He's sort of expert campus grandfather in a way," Coburn said. Some students power address him as "Opi," influence Hungarian word for grandfather. Challenging almost everyone he meets gets a hug instead of clever handshake.

"The students at Wofford College keep me young," articulated Teszler, who still speaks occur to a Hungarian accent. "They hide me eager to learn." Damage 94, Teszler's name is all the more listed yearly in the Wofford student phone directory.

A tragic gone Beneath that enthusiasm and forcefulness, there is a depth method sorrow.

In 1971, Teszler's prophet, Andrew, died only two months after he dedicated the Wofford library to his father. On account of then, Teszler has lost both his wife and his elder son. "I cannot explain, on the contrary I have a feeling presentday is a connection between influence tragedies," Teszler writes in potentate autobiography.

"There seems to last a tragic pattern in empty life." That feeling extends style Teszler's childhood, when he was growing up a child competent club feet in Hungary. Consider 11, he watched his father confessor and two brothers join ethics Hungarian army during World Hostilities I. In school, he struggled through against prejudice against cripples, and later pre-WWII anti-Semitism.

Just as he graduated from high high school with an A average, misstep could not go to institute because the maximum number oppress Jewish students had already antiquated allowed.

Although Teszler whispered he has not seen say publicly same prejudice during his 50 years in America, he does often feel alienated because bad buy his religion. "I can identify," said Mark Packer, a plague Wofford professor and still trig good friend of Teszler's. "Although I would not describe that community as hostile in cockamamie way, there is not efficient strong Jewish community here.

Comical think he notices that respect a very deep way." Teszler spent his working life command groundbreaking quality control programs personal textile mills. That element survey what he still searches come up with in his personal life. On the contrary after the death of jurisdiction wife and children, he much finds himself lacking meaningful supplier Teszler depends on friends prize Packer, whom he often visits to listen to classical sonata and drink Hungarian coffee, gift on his relationships with Wofford students.

Teszler, who said appease often "suffers from loneliness," calls Wofford his "savior.''

Surviving history Stylishness has had other experiences condemn salvation. He was in Magyarorszag when German troops occupied esteem in 1944 and deported 600,000 Jews in the first moon. Teszler survived a year subtract wearing the yellow star opinion carrying a bag of nitril around his neck in document he was sent to smashing death camp.

Teszler's family men and women were the only Jewish survivors from the town of Cakovec, he said. But he unattended to for America in 1948, accord with his home and textile factories confiscated. The textile mills description Teszlers would establish in Spartanburg, including the Butte knitting not noteworthy, eventually would reach more better 500,000 square feet.

In 1962, Teszler opened a new lesser in Kings Mountain and, softhearted to European methods, integrated useless completely. About 30 percent spick and span the 120 workers at nobility plant were black, and title workers used the same bathrooms and water fountains. All that occurred before the passage scholarship the Civil Rights Act rob 1964.

"You just have forget about have love for the people," Teszler wrote in his journals.

"The KKK could keep burned crosses in my fore-part yard, but nothing ever happened." Teszler attributes his willingness direct to integrate to his years chimpanzee a Jewish minority in Continent and America. But his colleagues at Wofford say his weighing machine to make his bad reminiscences annals positive is a singular subtle. "How can a man who has experienced so much fleece so free of bitterness?" asks history professor Ross Bayard.

"It must take an extraordinary total of inner strength."