“The Democratic representative for Ohio’s 9th congressional district is honoured as one of Hungary’s greatest friends,” Ambassador to Washington Reka Szemerkenyi, said at the ceremony in the US capital on Tuesday evening.
Marcia Carolyn “Marcy” Kaptur was born in Toledo to Polish immigrants and later served as an advisor to Jimmy Carter. Serving her eighteenth term in the House of Representatives, Kaptur is the longest-serving woman in the House.
“At the start of the 1970s I fell in love with Hungary thanks to Ohio resident Peter Ujvagi who as a child escaped to the United States in 1956 with his parents,” she told MTI. Ujvagi is a founding member and executive committee member of the Hungarian-American Coalition and was a member of the American delegation to the state funeral of Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall.
A Hungarian Catholic priest took her to visit Hungary in the early seventies. “The country was not yet free but it was beautiful, its architecture, art and, yes, its cuisine,” she said. Ever since, she has paid several visits to the country and regularly follows Hungarian events.
In 2013, when she became co-chair of the Hungarian-American caucus, Kaptur declared that the new Hungarian constitution overrode the country’s party-state past and enshrined the freedoms of its citizens.
Last summer, together with fellow representative Dennis Ross of the Republican Party, she drafted a declaration in commemoration of the Hungarian 1956 revolution.
With the award, Hungary recognises Kaptur for her merits in deepening Hungarian-American political, economic, cultural and personal relationships.
