Ted Juracsik: Revolutionary and Reel Maker

Ted Juracsik walked from Budapest to Austria before finding his way to New York City and a new life in the U.S. In his own distinctive voice, he traces the remarkable path from his beginnings in Hungary as a soccer player and tool and die machinist to his eventual emergence as one of the world’s top fly reel designers.

Podcast Excerpt: “It took me almost a week to walk to Austria and I had to go through a minefield — that was kind of scary — but you know I was eighteen and didn’t really know what was going on. But thank God I made it to Austria and stayed in a refugee camp and the Austrian people were very good to me. I had a couple of fellows with me and we were hiding during the day and walking at night and we finally got to the border. We spent about a month there and then everyone was going to the United States and so we got on a four-engine plane heading to the U.S. but the motors quit over Iceland and we crash landed there. So I was thinking, my goodness, I made it this far and all of a sudden I wind up in Iceland in some godforsaken place … oh my, it was cold.”