First Generation

1. Mária GODINA was born on 21 November 1890 in Rónafö (Predanovci), Vas m, HUN. She was baptized at the Evangelical Church in Puconci on 25 Nov 1890. Her godparents were Iván Szecsko and Kata Agoshin. The pastor was Rezö Czipott. According to her birth record, she was born in house #32. But, since all her siblings -- younger and older -- were born in house #22; and house #32 was occupied by a relative named János Podleszek at the time, the house number in the record is likely in error.

She died on 19 November 1983 at the age of 92 in Bronx, NY. Cause of death was cancer. At her funeral, Pastor William Carter described her as our family's "bridge between our heritage in Europe and our future in America." She is buried in Hartsdale, NY.

After her father's death, her mother fearing poverty put her out to serve at a local tavern where she was badly mistreated and given only table scraps to eat. Later she worked as a maid for a wealthy family in nearby Graz, Austria. There she was well treated and began to realize that a better life was possible.

When she had the opportunity to join siblings already in the US, she did, arriving in New York on 03 Sep 1907 aboard the SS Kroonland which sailed from Antwerp on August 24. According to the manifest, she was an 18 year-old single woman from Rónafö. She listed her next of kin as her brother István in Rónafö, and she was coming to stay with her brother-in-law, István Szukics, then living in South Bethlehem, PA.

By 1909 she had moved to New Brunswick, NJ and later to New York City. In the US, she always used the name Mary. She spelled her family name Gojdina, and we didn't realize that is was spelled Godina in official records until we saw her actual birth record in Puconci in 1990.

Initially in the US, she worked as a domestic. While their children were small, the three Godina sisters in New York took turns working and caring for all their children. During this period, Mary worked in a cigar factory, rolling cigars by hand. Later she ran a boarding house, and later worked as a hotel maid.

Though having little formal education, Kitty Grandma (which is what my generation called her due to the cat she owned when we were young) was very fluent with languages, speaking her native Vindish (a Slovenian dialect), plus Hungarian, German, English, several Slavic languages, and even a little Italian. She did a spontaneous translation of the parts of Nikita Khrushev's famous UN speech, when it was broadcast in Russian on TV.