RELIGION / JOHN DART : Hungarian Church Rises Anew Out of the Ashes of 1992 Arson

Twelve days before Christmas in 1992, the most devastating of three fires that year finally destroyed the only Hungarian church in the San Fernando Valley.

It remains a mystery who torched the buildings that housed the Grace Hungarian Reformed Church in Reseda and why.

But despite a dispirited membership that dropped from 140 to 40 at its lowest ebb, the congregation expects to move this summer into a $700,000 new church and youth center on the same site.

Most of the money has already come in--from insurance, church donations and low-interest loans. Also, 19 sections of stained-glass windows arrived from a disbanded Hungarian church in McKeesport, Pa., and are nearly ready to be installed in what will be a 140-seat sanctuary.

To celebrate the recovery, the congregation--now up to 60 active members--is holding a Hungarian food and entertainment festival Sunday afternoon in its parking lot at Wilbur Avenue and Erwin Street.

As the Rev. Balint Nagy and longtime member Julia Palotay of Newbury Park this week helped prepare for the fair, the 36-year-old pastor said the church still has no idea of why its buildings were targeted for ruin in 1992.

“I hope that when they find out . . .,” said Nagy, pausing and then adding, “. . . Well, God’s mercy on him.” The travails started in January, 1992, with a break-in at the church office, Nagy said.

Then, before dawn on May 9, a fire broke out in the church office and community hall. Firefighters quickly doused the flames. Investigators said at the time that the incident appeared to be unrelated to the riots that had broken out after acquittals of police officers at the first Rodney King beating trial.

On June 1, fire damaged one room of the pastor’s home near the church. That fire was deliberately set with an unidentified flammable liquid, said Los Angeles Fire Capt. Stephen Ruda.

On Sunday, Dec. 13, the third pre-dawn fire destroyed the sanctuary itself, leaving pews, hymnbooks and an organ charred under the remnants of the building’s roof.

Despite a $50,000 reward assembled from city, county, state and private sources, arson investigators made little progress, Nagy said.

“There has been no evidence of a motive,” said the pastor. He added that the congregation has not appeared to have any bitter divisions that would lead to trouble.

In January, 1993, a month after the third fire, church equipment at a temporary office was smashed, Nagy said. It remains unclear whether that incident is connected to the fires or was a separate act of vandalism, he said.

There have been no incidents since then, Nagy said.

The Valley church was formed in 1958 by refugees who left Hungary after the aborted 1956 revolt against Communist rule. Three other Hungarian Reformed congregations--in Hawthorne, Hollywood and Ontario--are aligned with the Protestant denomination of that name, but the Valley congregation is affiliated with the United Church of Christ. The only other Hungarian church in the region is St. Stephen Catholic Church in Downtown Los Angeles.

“We are basically an ecumenical church,” Nagy said. “The chief elder is Catholic, elder Julia Palotay is Lutheran, and we have a Unitarian who is active in the church.”

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Nagy said there is no reason to believe that the arsonist was committing hate crimes either against a Salvadoran congregation that rented space in the Hungarian church during 1992 or against the Eretz Jewish Center, the next-door neighbor of the Hungarian church since 1988.

The Eretz Jewish Center is a synagogue for Iranian Jews, said secretary-treasurer Manijeh Pournazarian. “We are good neighbors, and we have had no vandalism or problems at our center,” she said.

The Salvadoran congregation has since found new rented quarters in Van Nuys, Nagy said.

For the last 2 1/2 years, the Hungarian church has been renting space for Sunday services at the small Fountain Springs Foursquare Church, a block away on Erwin Street. About three dozen adults attend the 2 p.m. Sunday services, which are in Hungarian, although attendance topped 100 at Christmas and at Easter, Nagy said.

The new buildings are made of concrete blocks and are roofed in tile. A sprinkler system and alarms are among the security measures, the pastor said.

“But basically our protector is in heaven, who sees what people are doing on Earth,” Nagy said.