All Scholars

Lou Bolchazy’s father was born in the United States but returned with his parents to Michalovec at age 10, where he worked as a carpenter and farmer. Evacuated during bombing raids on their home town, young Lou and his family survived World War II, but when the Communist regime took over in 1948, Eugene emigrated back to America, where he earned enough money to bring his family over in May 1949. They settled in a Slavic enclave of Yonkers, New York, where Eugene worked as a custodian and Maria as a seamstress. Lou was educated in Catholic schools and intended to be a priest, enrolling at the Divine Word College and Seminary. He abandoned that idea and became a teacher, at Sacred Heart High School in Yonkers, where he met and married his wife Marie. He moved to college teaching in and around New York and completed his Ph.D. at NYU. In early papers delivered at conferences, Lou showed his ability to adapt new technological resources to classicists’ research needs by compiling electronically-generated concordances of More’s Utopia and Ausonius. A permanent position eluded him, however, and after a year at Loyola in Chicago, he decided to set up a publishing house that would serve the profession. Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers began in 1978 and by 2012 had published over 450 titles, 98 per cent of them dealing with classical antiquity and filling significant gaps in larger press offerings by producing reprints of significant works of scholarship, class-sized texts appropriate for the new millennium, and recordings of Greek and Latin featuring the latest rules of pronunciation. Bolchazy-Carducci was the only firm effectively reaching out to over 3000 homeschooling teachers with Waldo Sweet’s Artes Latinae series. Lou’s radio series “Myth is Truth” on college stations in Chicago was well received. His early interest in technology made this the most technologically advanced publishing house in the classics field, marketing an iPhone app for Latin quotations, vocabulary cards for the Wheelock series on iPod, summer webinars for Latin teachers. His exhibit tables at APA, CAMWS, CANE and other meetings were always a site of free buttons with Latin mottoes, interesting new publications for every need, and a welcome as warm as if everyone were members of an extended family, which in Lou’s eyes, we were. Lou retained dual citizenship in Slovakia, which he called his “mother” and Slovakia, which he called his “wife.” Published memoirs of Cardinal Jan Chryzostm Korec (b. 1924) , who was imprisoned by Communists. Published Slovak works translated into English. In August 31, 2007 Slovak President HE Ivan Gasparovic presented Lou with the Slovak National Award (Rad Ludovita Stura) at Bratislava Castle for his lifelong efforts on behalf of the Slovak Republic.