Ferenc Marki
Ferenc Marki was a Hungarian trained fencing master from the Toldi-Miklos military academy, in the same graduating class as Julius Palffy-Alpar and Istvan Danosi. A native of Szeged, he established a very successful club there, training Junior World sabre champion Tom Orley and Olympic Gold Medalist Daniel Magay.
After the 1956 revolution, upon learning the news that Magay had defected to the US after the Melbourne Olympic Games, Marki got his family out of Hungary to Italy. He coached in Turin for a short time before taking an offer to head a fencing program in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Upon the death of George Piller and at the behest of Dan Magay, Marki was recruited to take over at the Pannonia Athletic Club in San Francisco.
READ MORE...He found great success at Pannonia for many years, including numerous Pacific Coast championships and National Women’s Foil Team titles in 1964 and 1966. In addition, he taught highly successful programs at San Francicso State University, San Francisco City College and Oakland’s Mills College for decades, retiring in 1987.
Articles
Daniel Magay, Part 1
Daniel Magay was a member of the Olympic Gold medal winning Hungarian sabre team at the 1956 Melbourne games. Along with many other Hungarian athletes who wished to escape re-occupation of Hungary by the Soviet Union, which happened while the Olympics were underway, he chose to come to the United States on a plane chartered by Sports Illustrated magazine.
1964 Letterman Open Foil
Harold Hayes of The Pacific Fencing Club on Alameda Island, Oakland, CA has been a generous contributor of cool things for the Archive. Among other things, he transferred possession of two long boxes of material he received from Mary “Demi” Huddleson, past editor of...
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