Captain Bela Berty on his Ohio River flatboat. West Virginia was mainly settled by pioneers who traveled down the Ohio River on similar boats.

See note from director of film “Troop 214″ at bottom of this log.

Captain Bela Berty was born in Hungary but grew up in the Kanawha Valley. I have known him since my first days in West Virginia. He was a guest on my cable TV show, “Film Festival,” talking about his plans to make a film about his flatboat which he took up and down the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers. Recently he contacted me about a new documentary film about Hungarian boy scouts in which he appears. The film, “Troop 214,” is a new film about the amazing world of boy scouts, both in Hungary and in the United States. I found the film to be fascinating since it presents a history of people who were devoted to the ideals of the world-wide scouting movement that began in England. The Hungarians have used the group to keep their collective identity alive as the Communists who took over Hungary in 1947 banned the movement.

 90 + Hungarian boy scout from film Troop 214

Here are Captain Berty’s comments on the film -

You will probably not recognize me in the film because, if I am in it, I am in the back of the marching troop, being so short at age ten. Some memories of those times:  That tall metal staircase by the cliff leads one down to Lake Erie.  In the summer, we would walk down to swim and sail.  The big excitement that we could not do anywhere else (of which I know) was in the winter when we would play Hide-and-Seek in the wind-carved ice crevices.  Since then, I learned not to do that anymore because the ice could shift at anytime, crushing us. While boarding at the Piarist Priests’ home in Derby, we were picked up by a schoolbus to go to a school in town.  Being members of Hungarian Boy Scout Troop 214, we boys got to go on some big field trips.One year, we went to Canada for the big jamboree of Hungarian Scouts from all over the world, except from Communist Hungary, where Scouting was criminalized. I do not remember any big talk of politics nor struggles while in Troop 214.  We were boys having fun as kids.  Nor do I remember as many girls in scouting as the film suggests.  Once at a jamboree, I saw some girls in the Hungarian Scouts.  Perhaps I was not well-informed about girls. One time, as my big brother Laszlo and I were coming home to Charleston for the holidays, a friend of our father gave us some pocket money.  We never before saw a $20 bill.  Instead of busting it for a few nickels to play the pin ball machines, we took the 20 home and gave it to our father.  Our family spent it on groceries.  That trip was on a Greyhound bus that smelled of Diesel fuel, making me sick.  We spent a long time from Buffalo to
Cleveland and then south on Route 21, long before Interstate 77 was built.  (See info on Captain Berty’s plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the first steamboat to go down the Ohio River. )

Here are two descriptions of films that involve Captain Berty -

RIVER CALLING: FLATBOAT TO TOWBOAT (58:30 M.) + RIDIN’ THE RIVER ON A FLATBOAT (5 M.) 58:30 M. VHS TV Image
Traces the traditions of the working river from the flatboat of earliest commerce to the most modern diesel towboats. A trip on a modern towboat with scenes of the crew at work, interviews commenting on traditions, storytelling; narration by river veteran Captain James Coomer. Towboat featured: William F. Plettner, Midland Guardian Co. (Cin’ti), Captain and crew from WP, as of 1986. Some of the historic steamboats in black&white films or stills:Klondike, Island Queen, Kate Adams. Interviews: Capt. Fred Way, Capt. Clare Carpenter, and Capt. Russel Lucas.RIDIN’ THE RIVER: Fog swirls around the Spirit of Kanawha (kuh-NAW-uh). Béla Berty piloted the boat down the Ohio River and its branches from April to October in 1988. Here Berty holds a tin horn used to warn other boats of his approach. Come aboard for an adventure 200 years old. I have to thank my friend Bela for sending me this moving film. I was really touched by the courage that scout people both in Hungary and the U.S. have shown since WWII, keeping a truly positive movement alive. I myself was a cub scout and a boy scout for one summer, and really enjoyed the meetings, camping, etc., etc. just like the people shown in this film. Given the horror of super-evil Communists using the total hell of WWII to take over Eastern Europe including Hungary , this film shows a group of kind men who knew that their young people needed the positive support that the international scouting movement has brought to the world.( Available from WVLC)

Rebecca Bailey wrote a great recent non-fiction book, “Matewan Before the Massacre,” which describes an idealistic coal camp in Mingo County that was created by an Hungarian coal owner that trained the children of the miners in the language and history of Hungary. ( I told Dr. Fred Barkey about this Hungarian coal camp which he had never heard of before. He is editing a book on ethnic groups in WV called “Ethnic Notions.” The chapter on Greek-Americans has already been published.) ( Google lists over 1,000,000 hits for “Hungarians” and “West Virginia.”)

The directory, George Csicery, is well known to me. My friend Les Blank has distributed at least two of his many films, “Where the Heart Roams,” about romance writers, and “N is a Number - A Portrait of Paul Erdos.” Csicery is one of America’s finest documentary filmmakers and he does a great job on “Troop 214″ as well.

I will never forget showing New Hungarian Films in Minneapolis for the University of Minnesota Film Society. The American Film Institute had a touring collection of new films from Hungary. The one that most amazed me was “Sinbad” which became a popular film at the Film Society, requiring other showings.  Some of the films were amongst the most beautiful I have ever seen. When I came to WV, I purchased a 16 mm print of a great Hungarian film about the 1960s uprising ni  Budapest, “Time Stands Still,”(1982). Peter Gothar has directed many fine films since then. In 1981, Istvan Szabo won the Oscar for “best foreign film” for his German co-production, “Mephisto” which I also purchased and screened at the WV Jewish Film Festival. 

The great Hollywood director who called himself Michael Curtiz was actually an Hungarian film director, Mihaly Kertesz, who left Hungary for Hollywood, directing many classic films including “Casablanca.” Szabo worked with a great cinematographer, Lajos Koltai, came with Szabo to Hollywood and both have successfully become Hollywood icons, creating many fine films during the last several decades. When I first came to WV in 1978, I told people that I loved Eastern European and South American films the best. I also told people that the Kanawha Valley and much of West Virginia reminded me of the films I had shown that were made in Eastern Europe - low mountains, blue, foggy, industrial. I certainly can see why the boy scouts of Hungary loved to escape their industrialized zones for the pristine air and water of the mountains where they camped.One last note - my young brother, Dr. Daniel Fesenmaier at Temple University, is married to another Hungarian transplant via Canada. My brother studied at Western Ontario University, meeting his wife. 30 years latter they are still happily married, often traveling to places like Vienna where my brother has taught and does research on tourism. I wonder if he or his wife have seen the many great Hungarian films that have been made in the last 40 years. Probably. But in any case, the small nation of Hungary has contributed to many fields including math, science, and cinema. And one of their sons, Capt. Bela Berty, has enriched his adopted state of West Virginia with his great knowledge and enthusiasm for river boating and Hungarian culture.Final cinema note - during the last decade, since the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia, there have been other interesting films about life before, during, and after the collapse. One hilarious recent film is “Do Communists Have Better Sex?” about the competition between East and West Germans to show they have the best sex. ( To learn more about other films on Eastern Europe at Icarus Films.) Another is a film about Eastern European musicals during the Cold War, “East Side Story,” that is amazing to watch. I for one have never seen any of the films presented in the documentary.

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