Paul Newman
Q: Was Paul Newman's mother Slovak?
Paul Newman was born on 26 January 1925 in Cleveland, OH. He died on 26 September 2008 in Westport, CT.
His mother, listed as Teresa or Theresa Fetsko in U.S. records (spelled as Fetzer in one of Newman's two biographies), was born in a village that has since been incorporated in Humenné, now in East Slovakia, in 1896. In turn, the nearby village of Ptičie claims her paternal ancestry. Her name would be spelled Tereza Fecko or Fecková in Slovakia today. She was baptized Roman Catholic, but converted to Christian Science as an adult in the U.S., where she immigrated as a child in order to to join her father several years after her mother's death. Paul Newman's father Arthur of Jewish German ancestry was her second husband.
She maintained contacts with some of her relatives in East Slovakia in the 1930s and again after World War II until the onset of communism. One of Paul Newman's biographies quoted him as saying that his mother was particularly influential in his younger years.