Steven Vago

Dr. Steven Vago was born in Debrecen, Hungary in 1937. He was a brilliant student and athlete, and at the age of only 19, he became one of the legendary Hungarian Freedom Fighters during the 1956 uprising and revolution. He escaped to Austria just prior to the closing of the border between Hungary and Austria by the Soviet Army. He made his way across Europe and eventually to the United States. Vago matriculated from the University of Alabama where he received his B. A. in Sociology. Upon...See more

Dr. Steven Vago was born in Debrecen, Hungary in 1937. He was a brilliant student and athlete, and at the age of only 19, he became one of the legendary Hungarian Freedom Fighters during the 1956 uprising and revolution. He escaped to Austria just prior to the closing of the border between Hungary and Austria by the Soviet Army. He made his way across Europe and eventually to the United States. Vago matriculated from the University of Alabama where he received his B. A. in Sociology. Upon graduation, Vago furthered his graduate education at Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned two Ph. Ds: one in Sociology and one in Anthropology. During graduate school he was an integral part of the creation of an alcohol treatment program at Malcolm Bliss Hospital in St. Louis. Steven became part of the Department of Sociology at St. Louis University after finishing his graduate studies, and was a full professor there by the age of 37. Thereafter, he chaired the Department of Sociology several times, teaching at St. Louis University for over 30 years. During the 1970's, Steve was asked by the United Nations to work for its member agency UNESCO, and worked in Paris for several years in their Office of Population and Demography. During the years of Steve's involvement in the field of Sociology, he was frequently asked, by universities throughout the United States and Canada, to participate in a variety of discussions addressing the legal and social changes occurring in the former Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. In 1975, he met and married Kathe Hartley, a St. Louis on-air reporter working for the CBS-owned KMOX Radio in St. Louis. At the end of his teaching career in 2001, Steven and Kathe retired to Bellingham, Washington. Vago passed away in 2010, at the age of 73. See less