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Emma Palova - Greenwich Meridian Memoir

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Greenwich Meridian Memoir
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Emma Palova
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Books / Home and family
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2020
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Greenwich Meridian Memoir

Where East meets West

Emma Palova

Introduction copyright 2020 by Emma Palova
Cover design 2020 Jeanne Boss
KDP Publishing
Seatle, WA
USA
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission of the Publisher. Some names have been modified to protect identities.
For info contact Emma at emmapalova@yahoo.com
Book edited by Carol Briggs of Lowell, MI.
Paperback ISBN: 9798610855837
Ebook ASIN: B085DD2ZR3
Library of Congress LCCN: 2020913910

To my beloved parents Ella and Vaclav Konecny

And history has a tendency to repeat itself as Bohemian writer, screenwriter and film director Vladislav Vancura put it:
Arent human thoughts and desires like a stream hidden in rain drops and in elusive feelings? They can be discarded, but they come back in a new form giving way to action. And then comes the trial of one era with the next, then comes the renewal of resources, then comes victory.

Vladislav Vancura

Contents

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my parents, Ella & Vaclav Konecny, for the inspiration for this memoir. They have set an example of living a life of strength and courage in face of adversity. Both of my parents have contributed to the memoir with their own accounts.

A big thank you goes to my editor Carol Briggs, Lowell Person of the Year, 2019, to my friend and former editor of Lowell Ledger, Jeanne Boss of Rockford for the pretty cover, which is a collage of memorabilia from our lives.

Thanks to the Lowell Ledger for publicity and ongoing support of my author's work.

Special thanks to the Fallasburg Historical Society for hosting my authors book signings at the signature one-room schoolhouse.

Reviews

Greenwich Meridian Memoir is a book full of history and family struggles. It covers a period of time Emma and her family lived through, as they experienced oppression in their homeland of Czechoslovakia. Having to escape their beloved homeland, Emmas father, Vaclav, a university professor by trade, and mother, Ella, a pharmacist, encountered many day-to-day roadblocks, limited job opportunities and clandestine lives as they attempted to carve out a safe and fulfilling future for their family of four.

With periods of time separated from one another, Ella and Vaclav remained devoted to their family and each other. Through the words of Emma, her father and her mother, you will learn the struggles they faced. This is a book of survival, of love as well as one of triumph.

Carol Briggs, Lowell Person of the Year, 2019

Greenwich Meridian Memoir truly brought back memories of my trip with my grandmother to Czechoslovakia in 1960 when I was 17. We stayed with friends in one of those gray apartment buildings. The deal was you couldn't talk to people without them looking around to make sure no one was listening. I knew part of what was going on but this book provided insight as to what was really taking place.

Also I knew about the Charter 77 movement and this memoir helped to provide a bigger picture of the actual situation. This book gave a great amount of insight into how the citizens of Czechoslovakia actually lived and their struggles during that period of communism. It was very informative.

Thomas Bradley, Michigan State Polka Music Hall of Fame 2012 inductee

I've heard many stories from my grandparents and elders in the family who immigrated to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia. Arriving between 1900 and 1910, they were from a different time and socioeconomic background.

I so enjoyed reading of Emma's family journey to a new and safer life. Their memories were of a new era and different circumstances. Greenwich Meridian Memoir truly broadened my perspective of immigrants' lives and challenges.

Diane Bradley, Michigan State Polka Music Hall of Fame 2012 inductee

Introduction I wrote this introduction to the Greenwich Meridian Memoir during - photo 1

Introduction

I wrote this introduction to the Greenwich Meridian Memoir during the unprecedented time of the coronavirus pandemic, as we celebrated the Easter Triduum in front of televised services in empty churches across the nation without audiences.

More than half a billion people around the globe are under a stay-at-home order to slow the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus. This includes my homeland, the Czech Republic. The coronavirus did not discriminate or recognized borders between the states, the countries or the continents. Time will show if this was a modern apocalypse.

Our immigration story from former socialist Czechoslovakia to the U.S. has come full circle; from one historic milestone to another one.

The milestone that offset our journey across three continents--Europe, Africa, USA-- was the reformist movement known as the Prague Spring 1968 under the leadership of Alexander Dubcek.

The epic story of love and desire for freedom spans 52 years at the date of publishing of this memoir. The major characters, Ella and Vaclav Konecny, are my parents, to whom I have dedicated this memoir. Mom Ella was a happy pharmacist in former Czechoslovakia, while Dad Vaclav was an unhappy mathematician in the old country.

Dads quest for his career fulfillment has been a constant source of inspiration for me in good and in bad times. Recently, I found out that dad was afraid in the old country of persecution by the communists due to our religious beliefs. He thought that he wouldnt be able to fully realize his teaching ambitions.

From the humble hometowns of Vizovice and Stipa in the hilly Moravia, we traveled to exotic places such as Khartoum in Africa, to the ancient Byblos known for its papyrus and the City of Jasmine Damascus in Syria with the Roman Temple of Jupiter.

We were no strangers to dangers connected to travel in the Third World Countries. My parents had a few close calls: the tourist boat on the Nile capsized with all the people on board either drowning or the crocodiles ate them in the murky waters, a week after we were aboard the cruise.

Then a cable car to the second highest peak in the Alps, Matterhorn, crashed also a few days after my parents were on it.

An interview with my parents in Venice, Florida in March of 2013 revealed that the hardest trial of all was the separation from the family back in Czechoslovakia. Nothing can bring back the lost time or not being able to say the last good-byes to the loved ones, as we have recently found out during the COVID-19 quarantine.

My parents both surprised me with an answer to my question about immigration.

Would you do it again? I asked seated in their pretty white dining room with mirrors in Venice.

The unison answer at the time from both was a definite no.

"It disrupted our lives," mom said. "I couldn't help my parents and the fear from the interrogations caused me health problems--tachyrcardia."

Later, dad said that he had mixed feelings about it. As far as his career, the immigration was worth it.

They both added their own written accounts of the immigration experience to the memoir, which I am grateful for.

I structured the memoir in a way that all three of us tell our stories. I lead off each chapter with the storyteller part, as I remember it. Then follows either my moms account titled In her own words or dads experiences.

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