Like most successful businessmen, Robert W. Prescott always had a fighting spirit with a strong affinity for others who had the same. The following is an excerpt from the March, 1957 issue of Tigereview (page 2), “Hungarian Freedom Fighters Become American Flying Tigers”
Four refugees from Hungary who fought in the Budapest as Freedom Fighters and then escaped the Russians and Secret Police after they had run out of ammunition found new jobs in a new land with The Flying Tiger Line.
Among a group of 57 men and women brought to Los Angeles under sponsorship of the Los Angeles Presbytery, the men came to the attention of President Bob Prescott, who referred them to Flying Tiger’s Personnel Department. Since they were skilled mechanics, they quickly qualified for work in the airline’s Burbank shops.
The men are Anthony Zandor, 38, a 5,800-hour pilot formerly with the Hungarian Lufthansa; An thony Kovacs, 28. his cousin, formerly an airplane engine mechanic; Joseph Varga, 23, former aviation instrument assembly worker, and his brother, Leslie, 21, also an aviation instrument man.
Among the first of the newly-arrived refugees to get work, the men were placed with The Flying Tiger Line after Prescott heard a friend remark that he was trying to help some Hungarians who had been flown to California under sponsorship of Southern California Presbyterian churches. When Prescott learned that the men had aviation background, he suggested that they contact the company.
The men were part of the movement of refugees for whom President Eisenhower offered asylum after the October slaughter of the Hungarians in Budapest by the Russians and Secret Police.