Dad left RCA in 1968 for a VP job in NYC with a man named Norman who owned a small publishing company. I can’t remember his last name. We moved to West Windsor (15 Darvel Dr.) and dad would take the train from Princeton Junction to NYC.
On several occasions my mom would get a call to pick my dad up in Trenton because he missed his stop. I wonder why? Could it have been the bar car or the taverns in Trenton?
Mom through the years became a “wire woman”, who soldered components onto computer circuit boards. She took a job with Base Ten in the Trenton area and really enjoyed working there. She also helped my dad’s company solder the AW computer boards in the later years.
I attended Princeton High School for four years, where I ran the 400-yard and 800-yard dashes and played basketball. I tried to live up to my “Speedy” nickname, but I was but an average athlete. My two sons, Adam and Neil, became great medium and distance runners thanks to their Hungarian genes and desire to escape from anyone that was chasing them.
We continued going to Phoenixville as often as possible, especially when there were events at the Hungarian Club. The club always remained the main connection between their past and current lives. It allowed them to bond with other Hungarians, and probably was a safe place to practice their English and talk about what was going on in their native land. There were affordable meals served and a friendly bar. It was always the center of their lives.
After graduating from high school in 1971, I went back to Hungary for the second time and visited with my godfather and other relatives, including my mom’s divorced middle sister Kati and her two sons, Tibi and Lazsi that never left Hungary. Tibi’s two sons, Peter and Gabi, now live together in London. Judzsi, the youngest sister, and her husband Miki Sr. escaped from Hungary to Toronto, Canada and raised a son, Kis Miki.
The trip back to Budapest was a graduation gift from my parents and was planned for eight weeks so I could also see some of Europe. My best friend from high school, Bob Woodside, planned to join me on this adventure, but did not expect to find me in a Budapest hospital having my appendix removed. I was once again fortunate to have Kalmar Laszlo’s godfatherly guidance, who somehow found an English-speaking surgeon to perform my operation. He was always more like a second father to me, stepping in as the primary male figurehead, particularly when I was separated from my real father for those four long years. His first wife has passed away since I left Budapest for America, but he remarried to a woman named Elizabeth and became a stepfather to her two daughters. They were planning a trip to Dubrovnik and wondered if we wanted to join them. Regardless, he was once again there in a time of need to rescue me from a difficult situation.
My parents of course were worried back in The States, so my father made the long flight to faithfully be by my side in recovery. He had also decided, even before this emergency, to have us share a car with his cousin, Edith, in Munich. We agreed to split the $2,000 cost of purchasing a used, red VW Beetle, so we would have a vehicle to tour Europe. The car would then stay with her when we returned home. I flew into Munich and picked up the car keys from Edith. Part of the deal was that I would come back to Munich and pick up her son, Rudy, for the last two weeks of the trip. I started to make my way to Budapest. However, on the fast-moving Autobahn, the 4-cylinder engine suddenly became three.
After my time in Hungary, I returned with Bob, and picked up Rudy as we headed towards Venice, Italy for starters. Rudy wanted to make too many stops for food and museums, so he quickly became a hinderance. After several arguments, we gladly dropped him off at the Venice train station, never to be seen again by the two of us. Bob and I caught a ferry to Split, before driving the winding roads to Dubrovnik in search of my godfather and his wife.
The two of us wandered from campground to youth hostel on our limited budget. We never did find my godfather. The car limped its way over the mountainous pass, and we soon realized that another slow-moving passenger car, an older Fiat, was giving us hand signals to assist in navigating our way through the truck traffic on the twisty, single-lane, highway along the coast. They were a newly-wed couple and turned out to be very friendly, so we stopped and had lunch with them in Split– their treat – a step up from the usual bread, salami, and cheese diet that provided our inexpensive, daily nutrition. We were no longer Hungry in Hungary – or in this case, Yugoslavia.
We somehow got the VW back to the ferry stop in Venice and then back to Munich. My father’s cousin was disappointed in us for both abandoning her son Rudy and damaging the car’s engine. We flew out of Munich for home. I would be next headed to Air Defense Artillery School in El Paso, where I would train for 3-months on handheld, heat-seeking rockets. It was good to see Jill again after all this time apart. Our relationship was getting more serious. She was about to graduate from Montclair State in New Jersey with a Physical Education degree.
I joined Army ROTC during my sophomore year at Rutgers. Junior year I spent at least six weeks at Ft. Bragg for basic training, then six more in El Paso. They tried to send me to both Turkey and Germany as an Air Defense Munitions Officer, but Jill refused to go with me. Finally, my superiors agreed to Wilkes-Barre, North Carolina. In all, I spent two years in the Service and four years in the Reserves.
Around 1974 my dad and Chuck Welch, who I call “the technical genius,” started AW Computer Systems (Ambrus and Welch) with the help of Louis Nemeth, Sr. getting them their first project with Basco. My dad had met Chuck when they both worked at RCA in Cherry Hill, while Mr. Nemeth knew the head of Basco, a fellow Hungarian, and went so far as to arrange for AW to use the available space above their jewelry store at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia for the initial offices. The Basco Showrooms thus became the market for AW’s primary product, a computer system that allowed clerks to tell a customer instantly whether the wanted item was in stock, complete the sales transaction, and send an electronic packing slip to a bank of printers in the warehouse.
In 1975, Mom and Dad bought their dream house in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Dad always said that someday he wanted to purchase a house in this neighborhood that, if you’ll remember, was part of his surveying job when he first moved to Phoenixville. It was the perfect home for all of us, including the “In-law House” for Granny who was ready for some privacy and personal space. She particularly enjoyed the peaceful surroundings where she could do yard work and garden. The famous Valley Forge National Memorial Arch was within walking distance. Early the next year, I went on active duty with the Army, and soon moved to Wilkes-Barre, North Carolina.
To start my computer career, I went to work part time at AW as an overnight programmer with plans to settle down. Jill Laabs and I got married on July 9, 1977. We first met at Great Gorge Mountain Ski Resort that is currently known as Mountain Creek Resort. It’s the largest ski area in New Jersey. I was in the bar with two buddies and offered to buy her a Whiskey Sour, not realizing that her boyfriend was still out on the mountain. She told me where she went to school and that she resided in Bone Hall but didn’t give me her last name. I looked up several Jills at Montclair State before I found her. Soon after, we went on a double date to a Rutgers basketball game and out for pizza.
Within a year or two after founding AW, my dad was finding unprecedented success. He and mom had the pool and landscaping added with a heated Jacuzzi. Dad always loved the water and liked to swim. Mom liked to get her toes wet and sunbathe. I was officially released from active duty, while Jill and I rented a place in Sherwood Village, Eastampton, New Jersey. I also accepted a night Computer Operator job with Basco, my dad’s AW client, who then hired me as a programmer in 1979.
With a steady job, Jill and I bought our first house at 22 Stonegate Drive in Eastampton and began to plan a family. A son, Adam Ambrus, was born on September 5,1982, but just a year later, in the Spring of 1983, our family moved to Wembley, England, so I could assist, train, and learn from our AW client, MFI Furniture Centres, Ltd. Their School of Advanced Programming issued this report (SERIOUSLY):
THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT P. AMBRUS HAS COMPLETED HIS INITIAL TRAINING PERIOD AND HAS PASSED WITH MERIT IN THE FOLLOWING:
USE OF ENGLISH: GRADE B (WOULD HAVE BEEN GRADE A BUT INSISTED ON CALLING PAVEMENTS SIDEWALKS.
DRIVING: GRADE C (WOULD HAVE BEEN GRADE A BUT PERSISTED ON DRIVING ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE SIDEWALK).
DRINKING: GRADE B (WOULD HAVE BEEN GRADE A BUT INSISTED ON PUTTING ICE IN HIS BEER).
PROGRAMMING: UNABLE TO JUDGE – NEVER SAW ANY CODE.
MAKING FRIENDS: GRADE A+ (COULDN’T BE BETTER, WILL BE MISSED BY ALL HIS FRIENDS AT MFI).
PROF. C. MILLER
PRINCIPAL LETCHERER
As the “Report Card” indicates, Hungarians like me are very friendly and gregarious. To know us is to love us!
Jill, Adam, and I returned to Eastampton in the Spring of 1984. Actually, since Jill was pregnant, there were really four of us on the flight back. At last, on U.S. soil, I was able to drive on the RIGHT side, just like they do in Hungary. Neil Ambrus, our second son, was born on October 11, 1984. Another U.S. citizen!
1982 was a tough year for AW Computer Systems. A major change in the industry had dried up business while prospects grew limited. My dad was quoted in The News stating, “For six months we didn’t make a sale to anyone. We almost couldn’t get anyone on the phone. It was a real futility around here.” The event that nearly put them out of business was the sale of the Basco chain to Best Products, Inc. However, my dad had faced adversity all his life and within a few years secured a contract with Montgomery Ward and had negotiations underway with H.H. Macy & Co and the Marshall’s Inc. division of Melville, Corp. He had once again made a great escape.
By the mid 80’s, AW had established itself in the Point of Sale (POS) retail industry as a vendor and had grown this operation to more than 40 employees. Best Products ended up buying Basco and 36 percent of AW. Most of my dad’s time was spent growing the AW customer base as well as our product base. He retired at age 62 in 1990.
In the late 1980s, mom and dad also bought a place in South Beach, Miami, on the 16th floor of a high rise and used it for 10 years. They enjoyed it for the great beaches, restaurants and of course the Florida weather, but it became very expensive when AW started to again have troubles. Our family of four moved to 7 Princeton Drive, Shamong, New Jersey.
With dad’s retirement, the company was having difficulty adapting to the changes in the retail industry. Without Nicholas to “keep Chuck in check,” the company put too much focus on vision technology. In fact, experts were hired from the University of Pennsylvania. Chuck Welch’s vision was to build a self-serve check-out system, like what we see today in major retail outlets, but the idea was a few years premature. He began to experiment with the Winn-Dixie chain of 1200 stores. However, identifying products and avoiding substitution tricks by using color cameras to scan rather than weigh items to be purchased put costs out of line. In retrospect, less expensive black & white cameras would have sufficed. It’s complicated but not quite as difficult as trying to escape from Communist-occupied Hungary!
At that time, AW was located at 9000A Commerce Parkway in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. A brochure, identifying IBM and Microsoft as “partners” detailed what the company called “Vision Technology.” The cover page stated the following:
“The Checker Productivity Analyzer System (CPA) is a real time security system that protects supermarkets against losses due to theft and accuracy at checkout. It is designed to be in constant communication with the POS system, “listening to” register transactions as they are sent over the register loop. Scan or keyed item information is used to obtain product descriptions known to the system. Visual images of products are captured by cameras at the check stand and converted to a form that enables comparison. When the system determines there is a mismatch between the camera data and data base representations of the product descriptions, an event is alarmed.”
Chuck was all about technology and didn’t have the business sense of my father, so AW eventually terminated operations on March 10th, 1998. Sadly, it also severed their friendship.
Without a connection to AW, I began to seek other opportunities. In January of 1998, I became System Manager for Pep Boys. The boys were in their teens, so Jill began a career in Special Education. In 2004, I began to consult as a project manager, made management stops at Bearing Point, AC Moore, and finally landed at WAWA as IT QA Lab Coordinator. As you can see, It was a steady climb up the ladder of success from AW to WAWA! I retired ten years later, with plans to continue consulting for a few more years. In 2022, we moved to the resort community, Islandwalk, in Venice, FL, while keeping our “second home on wheels” in a R,V. storage facility.
With the help of a neighbor, I finally got around to telling this incredible story, seven years after my father passed away. It’s interesting to recount how we followed in their footsteps from Budapest to New Jersey, the surrounding states, and ultimately Florida.
To Be Continued
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