Print edition: 
Miki Lorik is a man of destiny. He has felt that his life has been shaped by a higher power that guided him during the sometimes violent crises of his life. And, while they didn't lead to greatness as most people would define it, he is immensely pleased with how his life has worked out.
This Fourth of July, Lorik is visiting his native Hungary, but he thanks God every day that he became an American.
Miklos Lorik, 74, is the semi-retired founder of PWI, a maker of specialty electronics, mostly for the aircraft industry, at 109 S. Knight.
PWI has largely been handed over to his son, Robi, and daughter and son-in-law Judy and Robert Baldwin. Another daughter, Eva Courchaine, also lives in Wichita.
Miki Lorik has had a full life by American standards. He moved from factory worker to manager to owner of his own small company, one that has felt its share of ups and downs. He helped found youth soccer in Wichita and was a Boy Scout troop leader. Last year he and his wife, Gabriella, celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.
"He's always telling us that his only dream and expectation was to be free to practice his faith and get a job and raise a family," Robi Lorik said. "That was his whole ambition, pretty modest. And he's been able to achieve so much more."
* *
Lorik was born in a small village in Hungary in 1935. As a 9-year-old boy he remembers the last months of World War II, when the Soviets drove the Germans relentlessly, crushingly westward.
His father was a butcher, with a large stone cellar for storing meat on ice. He found his Catholic faith deepened when he entered the cellar as the shelling started.
As he tells the story: he, his family and many of the neighborhood's women and children gathered in the cellar, terrified. Most of the town's women wore the traditional black clothes and headscarves, but the wife of the man who ran the town's movie theater stood out. She was beautiful, well-dressed, glamorous and worldly — too worldly, he said, to know how to pray during this moment of ultimate need.
The house took a direct hit, the people screamed and began praying. This woman pleaded to be taught how to pray to God.
"That left an impression on me," he said. "I want to pray when I don't need God. I don't want to learn to pray when I am in deep trouble to ask for help."
* * *
After the war, under the sponsorship of the Soviet Union, Hungarian Communists gradually took control of the government. The country became the Hungarian People's Republic in 1949.
Lorik was a cadet in 1956, studying military electrical systems at a military academy in Budapest when the country revolted against its Soviet overlords. One day, he said, a cadet came running in.
"He said 'Something is going on in the city. There are people marching in the streets and people are demonstrating. We don't know what's going on.' Pretty soon the whole military college is on alert and there is shooting, and we were issued guns and live ammunition. We were having a revolution."
The academy turned against the regime and its Soviet backers.
"We fought the Russians on the street. It was brutal. You never knew who was on your side and who was against you."
"Each day we returned to eat. For those who didn't make it back, we lit a candle on their plate, and the candles were growing every day. We never knew who was going to get the candle next time."
They won, at first, pushing the Soviets out of Hungary. But a much larger army returned a few weeks later in a surprise invasion.
Lorik was with his unit guarding a prison in Budapest when they heard an incredibly loud rumbling sound, the sound of hundreds of Soviet tanks. The rebellion was over, and the repercussions were about to begin.
"When I heard that, I went to my troop and told them 'You guys are on your own. Do what you can to save yourself.' "
The country was still in chaos. He was contemplating his grim future as a soldier who had fought the now- triumphant regime, when he was called down to see some visitors: Gabriella Torok, then 15, and her family, on their way to escaping to Austria.
Miki and Gabriella had met a year before at a resort lake in Hungary and developed a passionate letter exchange.
When her parents told her they were leaving Hungary, she said she wouldn't leave without Miki.
It was the biggest moment of his life.
"I had just a few minutes to make up my mind what I'm going to do," Lorik said. "I love my country. I love my family. I had a wonderful family, but when I saw that young lady who risked her life, I had to go."
* * *
They were among 200,000 people who left Hungary after the invasion. They walked or rode on farm carts into Austria.
They were together in a refugee camp but were split up after getting approval to emigrate to the United States. Lorik reached a refugee camp in the United States weeks after the Toroks had moved on.
At the camp, there was a giant message board for refugees to tell other loved ones where they had gone in the vastness of their new country.
"It was full of notes that people had left behind. I was searching and searching and I found it. The note said 'Miki, we were offered a job in Wichita, Kansas, and have left. Follow us.' "
He had no money and knew no English. He was given $5 and a train ticket.
"That's the only money I've ever been given by the government," he said.
* * *
The rest was less dramatic, if no less difficult.
He got a job, then another, winding up at Garwin, an aircraft instrument company in Wichita.
He learned English. He married Gabriella in 1959, and they started a family.
He started Precision Winding Inc. using Gabriella's sewing machine in 1963 after he told his bosses at Garwin that he could manufacture an electrical coil better than their current supplier. PWI soon moved beyond the sewing machine and all-nighters in the Lorik basement. Today, the company employs 45 people and makes a variety of specialty and custom electrical components.
A lover of the outdoors, Lorik helped start a youth soccer team in Wichita that became Wichita's AYSO organization. He was a volunteer and later a Scout Master of Troop 832.
He and his wife and family have traveled extensively. Mementos from trips to Mayan and Incan sites line the walls of their home, alongside old family photos from Hungary.
"If anybody lived the American dream, I am one of those. I love this country more than most native (born) Americans. In spite of all of our problems, it's still the best place in the world."
