(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

My name is decidedly Czech.  So is my love of kolaches.  But beyond that, I don’t have many physical ties to the land of my ancestors.

My grandmother was born in Czechoslovakia.  She was less than a year old when her family, the Stolkas, pulled up stakes and come to America.  They settled first in Iowa and then moved on to northern Minnesota.

Her stories remind me that those were hard times.  Iowa and Minnesota were pioneer states in 1910.  Forests and prairies rolled on seemingly forever.  What few roads there were crude mud tracks.  Those Jiriks and Stolkas relied on horse power and hard manual labor to build their future.  There were deaths, illnesses and financial disasters in the family.

Why did they come here?  Why did they stay?

From what I can piece together of family lore, crop failures and economic misfortune prompted the family to move to America.  They saw opportunity here.  In some cases, financial necessity made staying here the only choice they had.  I suppose it is a familiar story among thousands of families who are descended from immigrants.

Things must have been grim for the families to abandon their ancestral homes to come here to such crude conditions and hardship.

Jan Kucharik is an immigrant too.  But it was political concerns, not economic necessity that drove Kucharik and his family from Czechoslovakia with his wife a decade ago.  They worried about education and other opportunities for their children.

Like immigrants 100 years ago, the Kuchariks built a new life for themselves here.  “I was feeling at home here,” Jan said.  But any similarity with immigrants of 80 or 100 years ago ends there.

Things have changed very quickly in Czechoslovakia.  For the first time in decades, the county is no longer under communist rule.  The economy is expanding and there are again opportunities for entrepreneurs and farmers like the Kuchariks.

Jan and his wife and their two children returned to their family home in Czechoslovakia this week.

Somehow, this news makes me happy.

I do not know the Kuchariks.  And I have never met any Jiriks and Stolkas from Czechoslovakia.  Yet, I want life to be good for them.  I want them to have a great future.

Why?

I don’t really know.  Perhaps the Czech blood in my veins is thicker than I thought.