Catherine said, “The DC-10 is the plane they use to refuel other planes in the air.”
Jeff Witkop, 44, has flown a variety of aircraft and missions during his Air Force career, including a period when he piloted “Air Force 2,’’ the plane used by the vice president of the United States and other high ranking officials and diplomats.
Her business card tells us Catherine is “Chief, Preventive Medicine” in the Air Force Medical Support Agency, and her email address is the Pentagon. She works at the Defense Health Headquarters in Falls Church, Va.
I have addressed the subject of the extraordinary Takacs family before, in 1995 in The Hartford Courant. Erno sent me a dossier on Catherine and included a copy of same. I scanned it and jarred loose some facts that had been stored way back in my poor old brain.
Reviewing it, I remember my thoughts some 19 years ago when I wrote it. Chief among these was, “what a terrific American family story!’’
Erno and Elizabeth Takacs are natives of Hungary and the way they came to America, Erno escaping from the Soviets during the uprising in the mid-1950s, is a tense adventure story I must save for another day.
Married in 1967, they settled in Torrington and had two children, Catherine and older brother Robert, a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical College in Daytona Beach, Fla. He is one of the top engineers at Sikorsky Aircraft.
With her mother’s guidance and encouragement, Catherine became a brilliant dancer at Nutmeg for 14 years. As a senior at Torrington High, where she was valedictorian, she spent three weeks training with the Hungarian State Ballet in Budapest.
Catherine went through Yale. When I spoke with Elizabeth in 1995, she said, “She danced with the Yale Dancers but then she had to make a decision. She stopped dancing and enrolled at Columbia Medical School.” While doing her residency at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, she told her mother, “Mother, even when I work from 6 a.m. to11 p.m. I don’t get tired, I like it (medicine) so much.”
After joining the Air Force, she was assigned to the David Grant Medical Center at Travis Air Force Base in northern California. That was where she met Jeff Witkop.
They have two sons, Gabrial, 10, and Paul, 8, who accompanied them to Torrington for this visit. Gabrial is a musician. He plays the cello, and while I haven’t heard him play, I’m betting he does it well. It has to be in his genes.
Paul? He loves all sports and plays baseball and soccer. Again, I’m betting he’s an athlete of considerable skill. Striving, giving maximum effort and succeeding runs in the family, I’m thinking.