North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: A Wolfpack Legend Honored
5/19/2005 12:00:00 AM | Pack Athletics
May 19, 2005
BY Tim Peeler
RALEIGH -- At the end of the meal, the man on the other side of the table stuck out his hand and said "Why don't you come to NC State?"
To be honest, Peter Fogarassy - only two years removed from a daring escape of his native Hungary, just a few paces ahead of 200,000 invading Soviet soldiers - wasn't sure he knew what the man was saying. Fogarassy had just spent an hour or so at the old Haufbrau Restaurant in Cameron Village, understanding very little of what the three men who were at the dinner table talked about.
That's because Wolfpack swimming coach Willis Casey was with two of his hometown cronies, Jim Graham and Jesse Jernigan, and their Goldsboro brogue was so thick that practically no one could decipher it. "Of course, they couldn't understand what I was saying either," Fogarassy said, adding the gregarious laugh that permeates all the fantastic stories of his remarkable life. But he completely understood what Casey meant when the coach stuck out his hand, instead of shoving a binding letter-of-intent at him, as so many other coaches had done. "In Europe, you word is your signature," Fogarassy said. "When you shake someone's hand on a deal, nothing else is worse than if it leaks out that your handshake ain't worth a crap."
And that's how NC State landed one of the finest swimmers to ever jump in a pool.
Fogarassy, who came to the United States with five bucks in his pocket, came to NC State on a handshake and a promise, and he turned into a national champion and world record holder in the 200-meter breast stroke. He was twice named the ACC Athlete of the Year as an unbeatable swimmer. In his four years at NC State, he never lost a dual meet competition.
Thursday, the man Casey called "the greatest swimmer I ever coached" will be inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, in a six-member class that includes baseball coach George Whitfield, broadcasters Add Penfield and Woody Durham, soccer coach Anson Dorrance and former professional football player Elvin Bethea.
Fogarassy becomes the 29th former Wolfpack player, coach or administrator to be inducted into the hall, which was established in 1963. He is only the fifth swimmer among the 233 inductees, joining former Wolfpack swimmer Steve Rerych.
It's been a long time in coming for the 65-year-old Fogarassy, but it helps erase some of the hardships that he went through to get here.
Fogarassy, the son of a successful owner of a hat factory, escaped Budapest with a high school buddy, Tommy Rudas, at the age of 17, thanks to a carefully placed honorarium by his father to the station master of the last train stop on the Hungarian-Austrian border and a pack of cigarettes to mollify any hostile soldiers who happened to cross their paths.
Fogarassy was a junior champion swimmer in Hungary and a member of the national water polo team, when the Hungarians regularly won Olympic gold medals in the sport. He took up swimming after failed attempts at boxing and wrestling, the first because his bad eyes kept him from seeing the punches and the second because he didn't want cauliflower ears.
When he made it to America as one of 30,000 Hungarian refugees allowed into the United States by President Dwight Eisenhower, Fogarassy landed in New Haven, Conn., because a former Hungarian national coach happened to live there. He entered Cheshire Academy, where some 30 college coaches came calling to recruit him. But there was something about that handshake with Casey that made Fogarassy want to come to NC State.
After his swimming career was over, Fogarassy went to Appalachian State to get his master degree. He then worked for Levi Strauss jeans company as a traveling salesman for 33 years, with a home base in Raleigh, where he, his wife Joan, and their two married daughters, Mara and Lisa, all live.
He is now a marketing director for Redflex Traffic Systems, which sells, installs and manages cameras at intersections to prevent accidents. Fogarassy, who graduated with a degree in education in 1964, values the lessons he learned in athletics, the losses almost as much as the victories, the disappointments as much as the accomplishments. In 1960, he watched Bud Mulliken, someone Fogarassy beat every time they raced head-to-head, win the Olympic gold medal in Rome, which Fogarassy was not allowed to compete in because he was a "stateless country." He sat in front of a television to watch the race and cried as Mulliken made his final kick to win the race.
"It was the biggest disappointment of my life," Fogarassy said. "But what I learned in my athletic career is that you have to move on. You pick yourself up, kick yourself in the [behind] and move on. You learn by losing and you learn by moving on."
It's a lesson that is almost as valuable as a good firm handshake.
N.C. State's members of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame
(Year inducted in parenthesis)
Everett Case, basketball (1964)
Jack McDowall, football (1965)
Bone McKinney, basketball (1970)
Roman Gabriel, football (1971)
Earle Edwards, football (1974)
Vic Bubas, basketball (1975)
Ron Shavlik, basketball (1979)
Sam Ranzino, basketball (1981)
David Thompson, basketball (1982)
Willis Casey, administrator/swimming (1985)
Roger Craig, baseball (1985)
Kay Yow, basketball (1989)
Lou Pucillo, basketball (1991)
Julie Shea Graw, track (1993)
Steve Rerych, swimming (1993)
Norman Sloan, basketball (1994)
Ted Brown, football (1995)
Jim Valvano, basketball (1995)
Tommy Burleson, basketball (1996)
Jim Mills, baseball (1997)
Mike Caldwell, baseball (1998)
Vic Sorrell, baseball (1999)
Jim Ritcher, Football (1999)
Connie Mack Berry, football, baseball, basketball (2000)
Vic Molodet, basketball (2001)
Page Marsh, golf (2001)
Betty Springs Geiger, track/cross country (2003)
Carey Brewbaker, football (2004)
Peter Fogarassy, swimming (2005)
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
