Dan Varga
Life Sketch
Rudolph Theodore Varga Jr.
Ted Varga is the eldest son of Verda and Rudy Varga, both deceased. There are five sons in the family, Ted, David, John, Henry and Jim: Unfortunately, no girls. As a seamstress, his Mom always wanted to dress a girl, so there are pictures of Ted, at two years old, wearing a dress that she made.
Ted was born in the Los Angeles County Hospital on January 18, 1939. After the mandatory 20-day hospital incubation period for both mother and child, they finally were released to return home to where they were living---in his grandparent’s home in Los Angeles. The family soon bought a house on Croydon Avenue in Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles. His brother David was born 19 months later. They grew up in a new-family neighborhood and made many friends and playmates. There was Gary Holmes (an actor from way back) who lived three doors down the street, Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton with her older sister from across the street, and many others. They played games after school such as hide and seek, kick the can, and rode their bikes and homemade go-carts down a local hill for fun. There were not many cars on the streets in those days to get in the way. Some of the kids were always at the bottom of the hill to stop any traffic.
Ted was seven years old when his dad brought home their very first television. None of them had ever seen one before. There were only two channels available. Hardly anyone spent much time watching the programs since nothing of interest was being shown. Ted’s opinion was that not much has changed since then---300 channel’s and still nothing of interest to watch. Some 40 years later Ted and his brother David paid a visit to that same neighborhood and visited that home on Croydon Avenue where they used to live. They met the current owners who remembered their names, having lived at the house all those many years previously. They were permitted to take a guided tour of the house and its yard that brought back many memories. Unfortunately, the neighborhood was another story. Most of the houses had bars on the windows, poorly kept yards, and deteriorating exteriors. It seemed that the community of Watts, a rough and rowdy community, had grown up right next to Inglewood.
Ted’s Dad eventually joined the LDS Church. He and Ted were baptized at the same time when Ted was nine years old. His Dad quit his job at the Northrop Aircraft Company, and moved the family to Salt Lake City so he could experience the church and the saints at its home base. Not a good time to move to Salt Lake City---it was 1949 and 1950, with the heaviest snowfall the area had experienced in a hundred years---or so they told us. Snow drifts where eight to ten feet high in some areas. Ted’s Dad was involved in eight automobile accidents. Each time another car skidding into him. And, it took six months for the bishop to ask if they were going to stay. He then proceeded to read their memberships into the ward.
While in SLC Ted learned about girdling trees at school, an obvious very enticing skill. So he and his brothers girdled the trunk of a very large tree in the front yard ---taking off all its bark about four inches wide all around the trunk. Of course the tree eventually died. When visiting that house 40 years later the tree was still standing in all of its dead majesty. They never stopped by that house again. This may have been the beginning of Ted’s love of trees. He probably felt so bad for killing that tree, it became one of his life’s missions on planting, pruning, and caring for as many trees as he could when he purchased their home in Orem many years later, creating his own aviary in the backyard.
After the year in SLC, the family moved to Buena Vista, California, south of Los Angeles about half way between Oceanside and Escondido. They rented a two bedroom house with very little landscaping, no fencing, and surrounded by unkempt fields. For entertainment, the boys chased tarantellas back into thei