Barna Toekes

Age 90, of Mason, MI, died on Thursday, April 10, 2014, at McLaren Hospital, Lansing.  He was the widower of his beloved wife of 38 years Georgianna Doyle Woehl Toekes, who passed away 23 February 2006.

Barna was born 12 October 1923 in Budapest, Hungary to Barna and Jusztina Szatmary Tokes.

He was in the First Hungarian Student Battalion during World War II. He immigrated to the United States on 11 June 1949 as part of the Displaced Person Transportation Effort on the SS Elgin Victory. He married his first wife, Ida Maria Kalman in Munich, Germany on 24 August 1950.

Barna received a BS degree in Chemical Engineering from UCLA in May 1955, after repeating college education because the original European records were destroyed by the war.  He became an avid glider pilot and received International Soaring Badges for duration and for Altitude without oxygen. He divorced from Ida on 08 June 1967.

He married Georgianna Marie Doyle Woehl on 26 August 1967 in New City, New York and to that union was born one son, Christopher Justin.   Barna treated Georgianna’s children as his own.

Barna retired as a Sr. Process Engineer from Dart Container of Mason with more than twenty years there at end of February, 2010 at the age of 86.  He maintained his lifelong passion for genealogy that he “inherited” from his father to the very end.

In addition to his son, Barna is survived by his “son” Michael G. Woehl, of Haleiwa, Hawaii, his “daughters” Kathleen Woehl Carville of Rutland, Massachusetts and Lise Woehl Tsue of Haleiwa, Hawaii; grandchildren, Jenny Woehl of the home, Christina Woehl, Elana Woehl, Maria Seymour, Elizabeth Carville, Charles Carville, all of Massachusetts, and Christopher Tsue of Hawaii; and great-grandson, Dylan Hendrickson and his father Todd of the home.  He also leaves a number of very dear friends Patricia “Trish” Quirion-Henrion and her husband Tom of Louisville, Gary Wilkes and his wife Ruby of Mason, and Vicki Garcia of New Jersey as well as a number of cousins, including Elizabeth Campion, and Kathy Woehl.  He will be sorely missed by his four-legged feline son “Sam” as well as the feline daughter “Abu” of Jenny.

Arrangements with the Estes-Leadley Holt/Delhi Chapel are incomplete at this time. Memorial contributions may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association.

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2 Messages to “Barna Toekes

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lise tsue
July 31, 2014 at 6:38 am

Barna, we will miss you. We will miss the young man who experienced the effects of what Hitler wrought to Hungary during the second world war. We will miss the dashing young divorce who loved music and our mother and danced the Waltz with her down their rented winding staircase as it spiraled toward the marble floor, where balconies could provide the setting for a late night inspection of the stars or an early morning examination of the day to come. It was in this house that Barna came to realize that mom had an entourage, one that was vocal and unavoidable, there 3 complex and uncertain young children wondered what this man would bring to their lives together and individually.

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Jennifer Woehl
September 27, 2018 at 11:19 pm

Dear Grandpa, it has been a few years now since you are gone in my daily life. I still feel that the best gift ever given to me is the ‘favor’ grandma asked in her passing that I move to you. I thought it a way to say thank you for the light you both brought to my childhood, but it became my way to become the woman I am now. In a way you made me a student, a gardener, a person I can respect, but most of all you gave me the courage to be the best mother I can be, and improve as often as I can. You made it impossible to complain ( as you never really did when you could), and you never bragged though you always had the right to. I always found you enlightening and fascinating, but it was only through reading your journals and files after you passed that I saw how little any of us ever really knew. You were a knight in the wrong time to be honored, but I am glad you were born out of your time. Your time in my life is a gift I will forever treasure, as will my son Dylan. To him you were and are, his first, and best friend.

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