Katherine Magdaline Mary Somogyi

Katherine M.M. Somogyi, 82, a resident of the Carmel Home, passed away Saturday, July 9, 2011. Dr. Somogyi was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1928. After escaping the Communist government, she fled to Innsbruck, Austria, where she pursued advanced studies in philology. In 1950, she received permission to enter Canada, thereafter achieving Canadian citizenship. In January 1957, she entered the United States and soon resumed her postgraduate studies in Social Work and Psychology. In the spring of 1982, she was awarded a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Katherine, as she came affectionately to be known in her later years, had an interesting personal and professional history. Her father was a university professor of philosophy and psychology in Hungary and was one of the best-known lay Catholic philosophers in Central Europe. He died in 1948, soon after the Communists came to power, leaving a young wife to raise Dr. Katherine and four younger brothers. The burdens of Communism were hard on the family. One brother was ordained a priest, but due to government restrictions, had to conduct Mass in secrecy and maintain a secular career as a cover to avoid imprisonment. Dr. Katherine, after obtaining false identification papers and changing her appearance to match those, travelled by train and bus to the Czechoslovak-Austrian border. She recalled in detail the rising full moon, poles and barbed wire soon to be used as a barricade and searchlights crossing the sky above them as the smuggler struggled to keep his group safe as they crossed the border. The first night of freedom was spent in a farmer's stable among the cattle until dawn came and they boarded a bus for Vienna. She did not remain long in Austria before the opportunity to immigrate to Canada arose. She stayed in Canada for 7 years before coming to the United States where she lived in Nevada after being sponsored by the Bishop. Then she traveled to Oregon, California, and Connecticut while she pursued her studies in psychology, and finally to Pennyslvania where she completed her doctoral studies, achieving U.S. citizenship in the process.

Dr. Katherine's professional career as a licensed clinical psychologist took her from "the problems of the big city" as she referred to it, to "the rolling hills of Eastern Kentucky" in 1982, and briefly to Bowling Green and then to Hopkinsville where she was on the staff of Western State Hospital from 1989 until her retirement on April 1, 2000. In 2003, she became a resident of the Carmel Home in Owensboro where she died peacefully on Saturday, July 9, 2011.

Dr. Somogyi is survived by two brothers in Budapest, Agoston Jozsef Somogyi and Father Sandor Somogyi; a first cousin, Erika Gaal of Columbus, IN, and a number of nephews and nieces still in Hungary.

A memorial mass will be celebrated at 10:30 a.m., Tuesday, August 9, 2011 in the Carmel Home Chapel with interment to follow in Resurrection Cemetery. Visitation will begin at 9 a.m. at the Carmel Home Glenn Funeral Home and Crematory is handling the arrangements.

Online condolences may be left at www.glennfuneralhome.com.