Hi, everybody.

I am not a Fuzy, and am not related to any. But I do have some information I think may be relevant to some of you. I grew up in Los Angeles. In the late 50's my piano teacher was a totally wonderful woman named Gladys Claire Harkless Sinay. Her maiden name was Gladys Fuzy (with an umlaut over the "u"). She told me many, many stories of her family and the old Hungary, including her father Stephen Fuzy, who was a count and who was also a wonderful pianist and gifted composer.

Ms. Sinay was born in Cleveland to Stephen Fuzy and his wife Jessica Fuzy. He had been born in Hungary (somewhere near Budapest, I believe). But his wife was born in Ohio. He moved to American and settled in Cleveland, where he dreamed of becoming a great romantic composer. Alas, such dreams rarely come true, and neither did his, though some of his songs did, I believe, get published. To make a living he arranged music for the local Hungarian community, and played for dances and parties, etc.

Ms. Sinay once showed me her father's signet ring. I think it was carved in amethest or some light blue stone. I cannot quite remember what it looked like, but I will never forget how impressed I was to see it. I do remember that it featured a hand in a gauntlet with a sword, which Ms. Sinay told me dated back to the days when the Hungarians fought the Turks. She often said that the Fuzy family was 500 years old, and that it included many distinquished members.

Sometime in the late 1930's, when she was still in her early 20's, Ms. Sinay told me she whent to Europe to be with her father's family for a while -- one summer I believe. I think that she spent most of the time in Budapest, because I remember her telling me that one beautiful night she walked across a bridge over the Danube. It was cold, and as she did so she hugged herself tightly and said to herself, "This is a night you must never forget." I believe she said that she had just been out on a date with a Jewish Hungarian newspaper editor who did not survive the war. She was raised Catholic herself, but had other jewish friends who studied at the Franz Liszt Conservatory in Budapest, and who wound up cremated in Hitler's concentration camps. (Heady stuff for a young boy such as I to be told about).

Later, in California, Ms. Sinay married Arthur Harkless, and had one son, Douglas (?). She was divorced from Harkless and later married Dr. Henry Sinay. Dr. Sinay died before her, and she lived alone in their home in Woodland Hills (in the San Fernando Valley) for the last few years of her life. I think she died in around 2000. She was one of the most remarkable women I ever met, and she certainly made a deep impression on the awkward young piano student I was then.