Synopsis

On October 23, 1956, eight-year-old Jules Apatini watched chants for freedom swell into gunfire on Rákóczi út in Budapest. Soviet tanks rattled his building; a shell blew open his bedroom; an unexploded bomb lodged in the living room until his grandfather — a doctor — removed it by hand. The family fled: train, then night hikes through snow and barbed wire under tracer fire. At a farmhouse crossroads, Jules begged to choose the nearer light — an instinct that spared them from a Soviet checkpoint.

Austria brought relief, not answers. A bus over the Alps delivered them to Rome, where the Italian Red Cross sheltered the family and nurses saved Jules during a grand mal seizure. The world shifted from black-and-white to color as his father, Gyula Apatini — singer, table-tennis player, community builder — found stages again, foresaw songs that would later circle the globe, and — years after — recorded those songs in the United States. In New York he founded Hungaria Radio (1966), a weekend broadcast that became a cultural lifeline for decades.

Arriving in America in 1959, Jules lived in motion: dancing with the Hungarian Rhapsody ensemble (including the 1965 World’s Fair), fronting The Fugitives in Greenwich Village and the Catskills, and learning early video — filming family, concerts, and his father’s show. His daughter, Lisa Anne Apatini, would sing at Gracie Mansion, appear on DUNA TV/RTL, Joe Franklin and Regis & Kelly, then chart her own path as a yoga teacher and tattoo artist.

One day in a New York basement, a student asked Jules to film his forehand. The phone kept slipping off a chair. What if the paddle were also the camera? Sketches became prototypes and, in 2019, a U.S. patent: 10,166,447. Reimagined as SIR — Smart Innovative Racket Cover, the device nests a phone inside a racket cover so you can shadow-train, record, analyze, and share. Paired with the Aerobic SDM app, SIR turns cardio into choreography and practice into content — connecting seniors in rehab, athletes in training, and families just having fun.

The story looks forward too: VR with Eleven Table Tennis, AI form feedback, and the SIR Social Challenge inviting everyone to #SwingWithJules. At heart, this is a memoir about courage and reinvention — a boy who outran tanks and grew up to put a camera in a paddle so others could see themselves move.

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