Fred was born in 1924 in Pittsburgh, PA to Hungarian Reformed minister, Reverend Samuel Horvath and his wife Bertha Dokus Horvath. When Fred was 4 years old, his father was killed by a bus while standing on a street corner. His mother took Fred and his four brothers back to her home town of South Norwalk, Connecticut where they lived with her parents in her childhood home - the church parish. The boys did odd jobs in order to bring in money to help support the family during the Great Depression. Fred excelled in school and was awarded a full-ride, four year academic scholarship to Wooster College. After completing his freshman year in 1944, World War II was still raging. Fate intervened and Fred was drafted and sent to the U.S. Naval Academy. After graduation from Annapolis, Fred served our country as a naval officer, first on aircraft carriers and then in the submarine service, travelling to ports all over the world. He rose to the rank of Commander and last served in the Korean War.
In 1954 Fred matriculated at the University of Michigan’s graduate school where he obtained his doctorate in Experimental Psychology with his thesis, “Subcortical Mechanisms in Behaviour.” While in Ann Arbor he married his first wife, Joan Lenora Martin, on June 23, 1961. They traveled to Los Angeles in 1961 where Fred completed a National Institutes of Health post-doctoral fellowship at the UCLA Brain Research Institute. He received a travelling fellowship in 1963 where he worked at the University of Chicago, Rockefeller Institute, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He ended at Harvard Medical School where he worked for several months and developed a close professional relationship with his research mentor there, ending in the plan for him to join the Harvard faculty. In 1964 Fred and Joan moved to the Faculte’ des Sciences at the Universite’ de Paris in Paris, France for Fred’s second postdoctoral fellowship. In Paris, Joan pursued her passion for the film industry and did voice dubbing for French movies. In 1965 Joan moved back to California and started a very successful Foley Company providing sound effects for major motion pictures. The couple divorced in 1967 but remained friends until Joan’s death over 20 years later.
After leaving Paris in 1966, the plan was for Fred to join the neuroscience faculty at Harvard Medical School in the department of his research collaborator, Dr. Frank Ervin. But fate intervened once again and the family realized that their mother would need someone to help her in her senior years. Since his brothers were already established across the country with their families, Fred took this responsibility upon himself. He declined the faculty position at Harvard and obtained a position in the Department of Physiology at New York Medical College. Fred traveled to help care for his mother in Connecticut on the weekends until her death in 1982. While in New York he married his second wife, opera singer Diane Marie Cawood, on March 5, 1969. Eight years later, Diane decided to leave New York to pursue her opera career. The couple divorced in 1980 but remained friends until Diane’s death over 30 years later. Diane’s cd of sacred hymns will be played during the slide presentation at Fred’s Memorial service.
In 1984 Fred met Karen who was a doctoral student at NY Medical College. It was love at first sight for both and they married soon after. They lived on Squantz Pond in New Fairfield, Connecticut during Karen’s medical school and surgical residency at Columbia, College of Physicians and Surgeons. They then moved to Seattle in 1998 for Karen’s faculty position in the Department of Surgery at the University of Washington. After Fred’s retirement as a brain research scientist, he worked as a tax preparer for H&R Block and for the US Census Department. Their daughter, Kathryn Amaris Horvath, was born in 2001. He was a devoted father to Kathryn, the light of his life. On December 19, 2010 Fred gave his life to Jesus Christ and received God’s free gift of eternal life through the forgiveness of his sin.
Fred was loved by all who knew him from every season of his life. He enjoyed good food and loved to ski, play tennis, puzzle, collect stamps and kooky hats, listen to opera, and read the NY Times from cover to cover every day. He loved vigorous discussions about current events, the environment and national or global politics. Fred could best be described as a man who had a deep-seated, quiet confidence and sense of who he was from an early age. He also had an uncanny ability to live in the present moment. He was easy-going and happy-go-lucky with a fun-loving sense of humor. With an extraordinary capacity for forgiveness, he never went to bed angry and saw the good in everyone. It was almost impossible to offend him. He saw most problems as mere inconveniences and felt blessed when he had sufficient personal or financial resources to roll with the punches. Fred was selfless and was always thinking of others. He lived a happy and long life, always full of gratitude and was never depressed or self-absorbed. Fred had a strong set of values and was fearless in standing for what he believed was right and was not driven by self-gain. He was an oxymoron: dignified to his last, yet humble and approachable - strong, opinionated and highly intelligent, yet thoughtful, wise, supportive, warm, kind and gentle. Fred was not
materialistic, but frugal, as one would expect from being a Depression child – and yet enormously generous to those in need. He was content with the simple things in life and wanted for nothing. Fred was a living example of a son, brother, friend, husband and father who loved and laid down his life for his family and his country – and this was his life’s testimony to God. He cherished Karen and Kathryn.
On June 24, 2019 Fred died peacefully in his sleep in his Sammamish home with his family at his side. He is survived by his wife Karen and daughter Kathryn from Sammamish WA, his brother Reverend Theodore Horvath from Valley Forge, PA and several nieces and nephews. His loss cannot be estimated.
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A memorial service and celebration of his life will be held on Thursday, July 11 from 3:30-5:30pm at Crossroads Bible Church, Bellevue WA.
He will be laid to rest on Friday, July 12, 2019 in a ceremony from 9:30-10am at the Tahoma National Cemetery, Kent WA with military honors.
*In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission: https://www.ugm.org/ -or- Samaritan’s Purse: https://www.samaritanspurse.org/
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