Tales of a Budapest Baker: Meet Judit Wolfe

by Julia Buckley

       Judit in Haiku, Hawaii

Judit Wolfe lives in Maui today. She and her husband run an Air B and B, and she has come to call her little town, Haiku, the home of her heart, filled with that Hawaiian spirit of Ohana. A long-time Lucille Ball fan, she named her vacation rental after the comedienne, so one can make an appointment to stay at "Lucy Fan Ohana" and spend vacation days cavorting in the surf.

Before this Hawaiian life, however, long ago and on another continent, she was Judit Homonoi, a young Hungarian girl who grew up in Lake Balaton. In 1956, before her birth, Judit's father was one of the many young Hungarians killed in the Russian Invasion of Budapest (now known as the Hungarian Revolution). This tragic loss was compounded by others: most of her remaining family had been killed in the Holocaust or in WWII. Judit's mother, a Holocaust survivor, died suddenly at age fifty-eight, and at twenty-four years old, Judit found herself alone. She wasn't sure how she would support herself, and the uncertainty was traumatic for her. 

Young Judit in Budapest

In 1987, she found out about a job as an au pair in the United States, so she got a temporary visa to fly to America and take the position in Boca Raton, Florida  When her visa was about to expire, she obtained a six-month renewal and moved to New York, where she worked for the rest of her allotted time. There was no option to stay, as Hungary was still a communist country. She returned to Budapest not knowing what she would do next. As fate would have it, she learned that there was an opening at a legendary baker in Budapest called Rezso Hauer. He ran the Hauer Coffee House, which had been established in 1890, and is, as far as Judit knows, still there today. She applied at Hauer and got the job. "I was honored," she  says today, "to get a job there."

But the Hungarian government had found another placement for Judit in Lake Balaton, so she was obligated to leave her Budapest job and return to her childhood home, taking a position as head pastry chef, armed now with the skills she had learned from Chef Hauer

Judit the baker, circa 1989 or early 90s.

In 1992, Judit came to Maui to meet a pen-pal with whom she had been corresponding for a year. They had a brief relationship, but it was Maui that won her heart. She got a job there, and fewer than ten years later she had bought her house. She met her husband Timothy, an actor, when she went to see one of his performances, and they  married in 2006.

In 2011, she celebrated Lucille Ball's Centennial Year by visiting her museum in Jamestown, New York Her American experiences had been pivotal and positive moments in her life, and she knew this was her permanent home. She is now an American citizen.

Judit at the Lucille Ball Desi Arnaz Museum in Jamestown, 2011.

Judit had been in Hawaii for many years when she and I crossed paths. An avid reader, she was in a bookstore in her town, in quest of a different title, when she happened to see a book with the word "Budapest" in the title. This happened to be my book, the first Hungarian Tea House mystery, Death in a Budapest Butterfly. Judit bought the book and read it in one day. Not only did it reference Budapest and Hungarian baking (both of which had been integral to her life), but two of the characters were from Lake Balaton, her first home. 

Judit wrote to me, telling me that she had been a baker in Budapest, and that my book had brought back memories. From that point to this, we have chatted back and forth, and she has convinced me that I would love Maui. Meanwhile, I think of a nebulous train of events that led to our connection: the birth of my grandparents in different parts of Hungary, for starters. When they came to America, they sponsored at least one immigrant (my Uncle Steve) who wanted to escape the Hungarian Revolution. Their parenting of three children, one of whom was my father. My childhood filled with Hungarian culture from my father, German culture from my mother. My life-long love of reading and writing, and, when I became a published author, my desire to write something about my father's heritage.

And then, thanks to my publisher, my book ending up on a shelf in a little bookstore in Maui, and a transplanted Hungarian with memories of a distant life in Budapest and Balaton,  buying that book and taking it home.

Life offers so many fascinating intersections, and Judit Wolfe and I have met at one of them. She has memories of the beauty of Lake Balaton and its environs, but is permanently immersed in the beauty of Haiku, where the sun dips low into the water each night, and rises each morning in a miraculous display of light and color, a reminder of the endless horizon which makes our borders a mere illusion.

Judit the Hawaiian, 2000s.