As he boarded his flight from Hungary to Texas in 1984, 15-year-old Viktor Szucs thought he was on his way to visit his aunt and uncle, Frances and Laszlo, the latter of whom had defected to the U.S. 20 years before. What he didn’t know was that his uncle and mother, Margit, had secretly formed a plan to have him permanently reside in America, away from Budapest, then part of the Soviet Bloc. His father, Gyula, had tried to move the family in the early 1970s but failed due to his membership in the Communist Party. Gyula was left stranded in Austria, effectively divorced due to political affiliations, and without a true relationship with his son before dying in the 1990s.
In the nearly 40 years since that staggering and fateful decision made on behalf of Szucs, he earned his undergraduate degree from the University of North Texas with career stops at Quest Capital Management, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch. Here, Szucs, the senior vice president of wealth management for UBS in Dallas, recounts the events that led to his move, the emotions that followed, the contrast between his upbringing in America and Hungary, and more.
“My mother and uncle colluded,” Szucs said. “They decided to ship me out here on a visitor’s visa. Once I got here, they got me on the phone, and my mom, in between a lot of tears, told me that my fate was going to be here with my uncle. After my father left, things became difficult. It’s hard to grow up in a communist country, but my mother always made things as normal as possible, and we have a great relationship.
“The cards that were dealt in terms of my father’s absence, which wasn’t the typical absence, because most people are not separated by borders because of political inclination, but that’s what happened to them. In spite of that, [my mother] always made childhood as normal for me as possible and from afar, my uncle has always served as a proxy, because he felt bad that he compelled my father to make the trip and and take the chance and defect, and then got stuck and he wasn’t able to get him out here. So I think he always had that in the back of his mind, as well. I feel that he may have felt that he owed my mom, me, and my father an opportunity, and that might be one of the reasons why he brought me out, besides the fact that he always wanted a son.
“But my mom and I have always gotten along well, we were obviously left to our own devices. So I try to make a point of seeing her as much as I can, but I’ll never forget her sacrifice and will always be appreciative of it. And she doesn’t hold it over my head. She reminds me every once in a while that she had to give up that connection that she had with me, which was really her only connection. Remember, her husband was stuck in another country, and she didn’t remarry until much later, mainly because I encouraged her so she wasn’t lonely until after I had left the country.
“I think part of what made [my transition to America] easier than most is my uncle has been a constant presence in my life from the time that I was very little, not just in a sense that he was financially supportive, but he was always present. Every year, my uncle would show up with five suitcases and go home with none. The suitcases were essentially filled with all the stuff that we as a family needed and wanted. That was his thing that he’s done from the late 1960s all the way up to the mid 1980s. In fact, he got to the point where the Hungarian government would have assigned people to watch him when he arrived in the country, and track him, because they felt that he was bringing in foreign currency. He was a person of interest. So anytime he came through the border, he had to register with the police station. They would have people following us around. We would know that they would do that from time to time. And then one time, they actually detained his daughter. There was a robbery at the national museum, and an American screwdriver was left. And she was coming back, and they detained her because they thought that she had a connection to the robbery. Of course, she didn’t.
“But as part of the detention, my mom thanked my uncle for providing us with all the goodies that he sent with [his daughter], and they arrested my mom and detained her for two weeks because she basically thanked her and listed all the goods that weren’t supposed to be coming into the country.
“Budapest was built during the Gilded Age. A lot of the architecture that you would find in a city would be this beautiful architecture, and wealthy people had summer houses out in the what I grew up in the 16th district. The Soviets were very clever, because they always thought that was so ostentatious. So the very first thing that they did when they came in is took away all those homes from the wealthy, and they subdivided them. So if there were 20 rooms, they put 20 families into that home. And then the other thing that they did is they built these projects where they put all the socialists and communist workers’ families, as well as the soldiers families and barracks.
“They watered down these beautiful neighborhoods that were previously owned by wealthy families as summer homes in the name of equality. I grew up in one of those neighborhoods. My mom had to work two jobs. She worked at the Ikarus bus factory and moonlighted as a seamstress. On the weekends we would clean the four project buildings. From top to bottom we swept and mopped every single weekend. I grew up doing that, and so my experience in Budapest has always been hard work, enjoying some of what the city had to offer, but recognizing that the city at that time was basically a rundown version of its former glory at the turn of the century; or certainly a far cry from what it is today.
“My journey has been helpful in serving clients today. We do values-based financial planning. Others start with ‘who, what, when, or how,’ while we always start with ‘why.’ Why did I come to this country? To create an opportunity for myself, to help make life easier for others—to help other people be free.
“It’s very easy to get motivated when you have your ‘why’ in order, and you know your hopes, fears, and dreams. Then you can formulate your values, articulate your goals, live your purpose, and create a legacy for your kids. My journey effectively always prepped me for what I am today. It’s not really a job, this is who I am. All of that came from how I was raised, how I came here, and what it required. The sacrifices that not only I made, but my uncle and my aunt made by taking on a grown man child in his teenage years. And the sacrifices that my mother made by letting go of me after raising me from the very beginning.”
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