An Interview with Chris Hlavinka

Interview conducted by: Jaquelyn Ramos-Caceres

Christopher Joseph Hlavinka was born and raised in the small town of East Bernard, Texas. His grandfather immigrated from Czechoslovakia when he was 5, to join family members who had already settled in the Lone Star State - where the land was cheap, and opportunity plentiful.

Here he reflects on many aspects of his life, as influenced by the rich history of his past. He remembers his family's entrepreneurial spirit, unleashed in a new and prosperous land, and helps us understand the notions of segregation and integration - embracing a new future whilst respecting the past.

Interview

This interview was made in collaboration with the Department of History in University of Houston and the Czech Center Museum Houston. The following text is the verbatim transcription of the oral history project.

October 30, 2019

UH Interviewer: Okay, well first of all, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I'll be asking you a few questions about culture and immigration from your personal experience in our interview today. Can we start with you telling me your full name?

Chris Hlavinka: It's Christopher Joseph Hlavinka. And the “H” is silent. It’s H-L-A-V-I-N-K-A.

UH Interviewer: Oh wow! Very interesting.

Chris Hlavinka: It's one of those Eastern European names. A lot of letters! Not all of them pronounced.

UH Interviewer: Alright, okay. Well, when and where were you born?

Chris Hlavinka: I was born in a very small town in Texas called East Bernard.

UH Interviewer: Okay.

Chris Hlavinka: It's not that far from Houston. It's about 50 miles west of here.

UH Interviewer: And do you have any relatives that were born in Czechoslovakia?

Chris Hlavinka: Yes, my great grandparents and grandparent - great grandparents on my mother’s side, great grandparents on my father's side, and my grandfather on my dad's side and my mother's side came over as a child. My grandfather came over, Hlavinka came over when he was 5 years old as a very young child with his parents at the time and the crossing that Martin described in his talk on Saturday (October 26, 2019)1. But they had that same experience I think of being at sea for I don't know, 6… 6 to 8 weeks or something like that and then the Hlavinkas came through the port of Galveston.

They were fortunate because they already had other family members who had immigrated here about a decade earlier and had been corresponding with them… if I talk too fast just tell me to slow down or anything.

UH Interviewer: Oh, no. It’s okay!

Chris Hlavinka: They had been corresponding over time I think a letter probably took you know months to get back and forth. But anyway, they actually at that time… a cousin had already purchased some land in Texas so they felt like they had a pretty safe and secure type of you know it wasn't I mean not that it was easy I mean none of them spoke English so they all had to learn in fact my great grandparents never learned English. There is just a small corner of Texas where there were like, four counties where there is really intense immigration through the Czechs and East Bernard is in one of those counties so is Morgan County. They also had family members in Fayette County which is then the county next door. So, once again some of the immigrants came in… you know without any connections here… you know if they came most of them as he said would go through like the port of New York because they're coming to America they have no place to go, they’re just really taking a big chance on their life and just hope you know once they land there that the Immigration Services will allow them through and… you know a lot of people were turned back so it was really important… you know I think if you already had family members that established themselves here you had a much higher chance of
being allowed to immigrate.

My grandfather, and he had one sister and one brother that also came along. There were other children, I think they had five children in the family, but two of them did not survive. They died before the family left which is pretty common back in the 19th century that people would usually have large families that have a lot of children because not all of them survived childhood you know there were not pediatricians her medicine. And a lot of them just you know… you know were not able to survive. And uh… so, that… that you know… that's 1905 my family comes along, and they were what you call a peasant stock in Europe. And Czech and Slovakia were part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire at that time which had a King and emperor, and they had the… you know… it was a monarchy and had princes and all this type of thing. And then all the land holdings in the Czech Republic at that time were divided up and controlled by different princes, so all the people that lived on the land you know, worked in service.

It was like I guess in the US now what you would call a tenant farmer. Except now in the US, we have a lot of immigrants come from Central America or Mexico to work in California and agriculture, to pick fruit and vegetables and that sort of thing, or for construction. In the 19th century, in Europe, the people that lived on the land… they were not actually paid money. That's why they call them tenant farmers. It was kind of an enslavement… almost like an enslavement. So, they had to produce the crop for them at the Lord of the Manor and basically, the production of the crop was considered their rent, and as long as they continued to… you know, produce and keep the Lord of the Manor happy, they could live on that. And that probably went on… you know for centuries. That system was like that in the Eastern Europe… there was a lot of unrest in Europe at that time because a lot of people were standing up for their own nationalistic… you know culture they didn't at that time the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was largely a German culture. The primary language is German everyone was forced to learn German as their primary language. And Czech…

UH Interviewer: Oh! And that was after World War I, or during WWI?

Chris Hlavinka: It was a… yeah, up in to World War I, yeah, I mean my great grandparents spoke German and Czech but no English. And my grandfather and his two siblings were… you know learned German also just because… you know to conduct business generally… you know… uh just with the officials you have to be able to… if you had to do anything, like if you had a child and want to get married and then you need to apply for a marriage license, all that stuff was in German. So, you have to have at least the basic knowledge of German, but then once they came to the US, they really dropped German and never used it again because now they needed to learn English… so there was a big change in Europe at that time and I think that coincided also with the French Revolution when France went from being a monarchy to a republic… a lot of the countries the Austrian-Hungarian Empire decided to abolish the manorial system and basically the people that were living on these landholdings… you know we're given actual ownership and title to the land and when they produced the crop on it, they were actually paid for it. So, that I think you know prior to that if that system had been an effect, none of these people would ever have been able to have the finances to afford transportation… you know to North America.

So… uh… eventually, you know there was World War I happened and all these different great powers, I'm sure if you studied World War I, align themselves in certain manners and different sides to different sides. But the Austrio-Hungarian empire actually kind of lost out in the end and it ended up being a much smaller… you know… the country of Austria is now is all that remains. And the countries of Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, these were all… these used to be part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. They were after World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, they were allowed to be independent countries.

That was…so by that time 1905 that was before World War I, my family had already been hearing it in the United States for almost a decade. And because they had been allowed to be paid for… uh… the crops; and this is probably multiple generations. They had money. They were actually able to, overtime, save money, and they bought a business in the Czech Republic and they made bricks and sold bricks because that was the primary building material. In America we make everything out of wood but in Europe, back then, if somebody wanted to build a house you know... a business anything, everything was made out of brick because that was just the material that they used back there, so my family… you know probably in the 1870s started this brick business and… uh they… once the cousins had all but probably in 1875, 1880, the cousins had already made the trip over, 'cause they too had been able to under the new regime as they were able to accumulate some cash holdings. And they could afford to take the trip over, and they actually brought money over and bought some land. But… uh so, by that time… you know the earlier the 1st wave of immigrants and Southeast Texas had already been there probably close to a generation maybe 10 or 15 years. I don't think maybe… but they had established, Some of the institutions that they had created like these sporting associations train kids how to become athletes and also… you know every town had like a social hall. Since everybody was in a… kind of in this situation where they were not knowing English… you know they were having to assimilate into the American culture as fast as they could and the way for that to happen was they had you know these social organizations where people like in my hometown and of course by the time I grew up in the 1950s after World War II, that really wasn't popular with the… you know the old generation you know us younger kids we were just hanging out with their high school and elementary school kids get out… Anglo kids we had Hispanic kids. We didn't have African American kids until later because in Texas there was Jim Crow. My dad's… my mother and dad's generation were the last generation. Even though my dad… mother and dad were born here… you know they still grew up in a household where the Czech culture… you know my grandparents wanted that to be… you know they wanted them to grow up in that environment…

UH Interviewer: So, keep the preservation of the culture…

Chris Hlavinka: They learned both languages. But they did not want us to learn Czech, they wanted us to be fully American. So that's…you know, starting in my generation then… you know I mean we knew some Czech, just basic Czech and that's kind of the way it… way it is.

UH Interviewer: Do you feel like over the years… that you’ve somehow grown a little bit away from your culture? I feel like you’ve grown from that…

Chris Hlavinka: Yeah… yeah.

UH Interviewer: So, do you feel like there are any special items that they maintained or that they brought over from their country that were really important to them or anything like that?

Chris Hlavinka: Yeah… you know they didn't bring you know as far as material items they really didn't bring… much. I guess [for] my grandmother there were things like family bibles and that sort of thing that were Czech, and my father's side of the family was Catholic. So, East Bernard has its own Catholic parish there and that entire side of the family was Roman Catholic. And we went to a parochial school that was run by the church which had probably 50% of them… probably more. In the 1950s when I was a child, at least 50% of the parishioners were Czech, and they had services in Czech. The other 25% was a mix of Anglo or Hispanic ‘cause all the Texas Hispanics… you know that was the church… that was the nearest church so that was the kind of parish that I grew up in.

And… you know we had Hispanic kids in our classes from 1st grade just because obviously, they were here before the Anglos came. I mean obviously Texas was part of Spain and then it was its own Republic and then the Anglos came in… became part of America. But um… trying to think of what else. And I think that's Martin1 said most of the immigrants who came to Texas were Catholic but there were exceptions. My mother was raised, and her family was… they called themselves Bretherens, which is kind of close to the Lutheran, modern day Lutheran Church, in the United States because of the… sort of religious… I don’t know if I want to call it…wars is… that the right word name… let’s just say different factions broke away from the Catholic Church because of what happened with Great Britain and Germany. And that's where Martin Luther got his start in the Czech Republic. There was a local guy who was… you know an advocate of Martin Luther and trained by him. So, on my mother's side of the family, in the United States, the closest church for her family, to one was the Methodist Church and so my mother was a Methodist. My father was Catholic. But in those days, I think Catholic Church is very strict about intermarriage and so, in order for my mother to marry my father, she had to convert to Catholicism before they could get married, so we were all raised as Catholic. Even though my grandparents on her side and my cousins on their side, they all went to the Methodist church. So now gripping that kind of environment or people… different parts of the family went to different churches. And by the time… you know the next generation came along and everybody was pretty much…it wasn’t as bad. We have people who went to the Baptist church, some were Lutheran, mostly Catholic though still in in the core of the family.

UH Interviewer: Do you have any interesting stories that come down from previous generations in your family such a from the war, as in, have any of your family members been part of the military?

Chris Hlavinka: My grandfather, because of his age, I guess he was lucky - he was too young to serve in World War I. On both sides of the family… they were just… you know they happen to be in between generation: too young to serve. At the time he was a farmer and was able to save enough money. Texas was a good place to raise crops you know, and then eventually after being a farmer for I don't know maybe 10 years, he developed a relationship with the local bank in East Bernard. And the owner of the bank also owned a dealership that sold tractors and other type of pieces of farm equipment that… you know, every farmer… nobody could do anything without… you had to have at least a tractor and a plough. People didn't run around Wharton County with mules and ploughs like in Europe. By the time, early 20th century, everything was mechanized people were able to make enough money from selling.

At that time they were growing primarily cotton in this part of Texas and… you know there was a high demand for cotton and they were able to make enough money to buy equipment and have a bigger farm, buy more land, so and then eventually they were successful enough at farming that the…you know, my grandfather had a close association with one of the head members of the bank in East Bernard. And he said well you know “We want to set up… East Bernard doesn't have a dealership for any of the farm equipment and it's a missed opportunity, and we think that you have promise. So we would like to set you up in your business and be your partner.” And that was probably one of the most… you know… the luckiest breaks from my family and their immigrant story when that came along, because I mean the family didn't own the business initially. It took a number of years and eventually, I think probably, I think they started the business probably before the Great Depression was probably the 1920’s. Texas was booming then. A lot of cotton was in… Houston also was booming at that time because it… after… you know, they had the hurricane that destroyed Galveston. The port of Houston was the primary port for Texas. After that, it used to be Galveston but then it became Houston and living in East Bernard which is only 50 miles from Houston. Also, East Bernard was on a rail line. It was the primary rail line that went all the way up to San Francisco, all the way across the desert, all the way to New Orleans. So, when that rail line was complete, then it took… you know, they would load the cotton there and put it on the train and take it into the port of Houston. And most of that was being sent overseas to textile mills, as far away as England and France. Because they couldn’t grow cotton in Europe. The climates… was too cold. You need a hot, humid climate for it. So, they… uh … and we still have the family business. In fact, two of my brothers are still working in the business and two of my uncles and other cousins are still in the business.

I personally, after growing up on the farm and …you know working in that environment, I just
wanted to kind of go in my own direction. My grandfather did not, neither of them served in the Military, but they were able to, like I said use that time to… you know build their wealth and their estate or whatever you want to call it. But my dad was not so lucky. He was drafted and… you know it’s not a matter of luck. I think everybody…WWII was such a…the things that were happening in the 1940’s was just so terrible. I mean everybody wanted… my dad volunteered. But my grandparents said, “We’re not going to let you go until you're 18.” So, when he turned 18, then he went ahead and signed up for the Navy and he was in the Navy. He lucked out though because he had gone through his training ended up in Washington DC, a station there. There's a naval base right near Andrews Air Force Base right now in Anacostia naval base. He was about to be shipped out and the war ended. My dad expected to be heading that direction but he stayed in the service long enough to where he could qualify for the GI bill, because he… my grandparents were not… uh they had no more than like a 5th or 6th grade education. The local school, Catholic school, no 8th grade… but that's what they had then. The Catholic school had 8 grades and most of the kids the Czech immigrants that came over… that's as far as they went. Then… you know, they went and worked on the farms for their families. They were ‘cause you needed a big family so, my dad had two sisters and three brothers. So, they had 6 kids. Everybody had big families back then and it was very laborious.

UH Interviewer: What were some traditional chores you had to do in your early childhood that were different from what your grandparents had to do in their childhood, in their country? Or was it the same thing, basically…

Chris Hlavinka: Well…Oh yeah well yeah… it kind of went in stages I guess you could say when you know… my great grandparents in their household, they were totally subsistence. They lived on a subsistence farm. In other words, everything that they ate, they had to raise. They raised their own chickens, cows, milk the cows from the milk, made cheese, butter, everything; bread, make their own bread, they had to harvest it. By the time and you know how to do all that stuff. My great grandparents brought those skills with them, but by the time they came to America, I think they were already in Texas, what which you would call every little town but they would call it a general store and general store would sell bulk products like that had already been… you know by that time, Texas had become a developed… and you know we had 2 or 3 large things by that time San Antonio probably had I don't know a couple 100,000 people now… you know Houston probably a little smart… San Antonio used to be the largest city in Texas, after Galveston. And then so, anyway, there was already a supply chain and especially the railroad made that possible. It also could get milk from dairies. The railroads there were dairies out like halfway between Houston and San Antonio I think… um and they would cook the fresh milk on the train every day. Those trains… then people lined up San Antonio or Houston and supply about hundreds of thousands of people wanted, needed milk and that all ended up on everybody's front porch. They went to dairies here in town. They put it in glass bottles, and a guy in a truck took them around, drop them off everybody’s front porch. That's happened, by the time I came along in the 1950’s that's how we got our milk. We had a milk man. But, so my great grandparents like I said, everything was subsistence and then my grandparents by that time when they came to America, like I said, they already had supply chains for bulk materials. So, they didn't have to do… they didn’t have to raise their own… you know wheat. They still baked everything at home, because…

UH Interviewer: …that’s what they were used to…

Chris Hlavinka: … and that's what they're used to, and I felt like it tasted a lot better than the commercial stuff that they would buy. So, my grandmother, it was her tradition every Saturday was her baking day in her kitchen. She had this big bin of flour that had like 5-10-pound bags of flour… and you know she would make I don't know… make 3 or 4 loaves of bread and then all the traditional… uh you know pastries. Depending on the season, if it was Christmas or Easter you know… she would make strudels and kolaches every weekend. I grew up with that, so it was pretty fabulous actually. Because my grandparents live next door and you know… I mean you would walk outside and “Mmm! That smells good!”…

UH Interviewer: (Chuckles)

Chris Hlavinka: …you would just walk in there “What are you baking today?”… you know and… uh… But also, the thing about it was ‘cause there were only boys in my family. You know, my mother needed help in the house with the housekeeping side. I had my mother, but also my grandmother, she had two daughters. They weren’t really that interested in baking, but I was. I use to like… every Saturday, when I could because we had other things going on, but when I could I would go in there and watch her you know… make a strudel, or roll it out on the table and everything and help her. You know starting at about…you know, age 5 or age 6 and then she gave me all her… you know, just like in a notebook that she handwritten. A lot of her recipes were handwritten like… but I still have some from her and we made copies of them. A lot of my cousins have gotten copies of them too. And then by the time I was in elementary school and high school, we had 2 or 3 supermarkets there… you know, everything was just like an HEB today, or a mini version of it. So, you went to the store for everything. When I was like a really young kid, my grandmother was still butchering her own chickens and had fried chicken every Sunday for dinner. It was a traditional thing, but that’s a lot of work. So, when the local supermarket already had chickens that were ready to go, that saved her a lot of work. Made her life a lot happier and she could devote more time baking all of these wonderful things too. Anyway…

UH Interviewer: Okay, um… what were some issues in your country that would make you feel as if the United States would have been a better choice to live in?

Chris Hlavinka: Uh…why they… me personally? Oh, okay. Well I think I know America's in the 19th
century yeah I think for most Europeans America was definitely at the top of the list of places where they wanted to go. There were other countries in Europe they could have gone to where there was certainly work, but you know the thing that America offered more opportunity, I think not only to work… but to you know…

UH Interviewer: …not just employment, but like a…

Chris Hlavinka: …not just constant employment, but just more opportunity and also more independence and more freedom. You know, if you move to England… there…for example, my grandparents could have gotten jobs there, working in textile factories, or something, but there was a class, there was a queen, and all the lords and all that. So, very different from what they wanted to get away from. The first half of the 20th century was really a very difficult time in Europe. There were two world wars. A lot of bad things happened. You know the holocaust and I think they just wanted to get far away from Europe as they could.

Another place people thought about at the time, but it was a lot harder to get to and not nearly as developed as the U.S. was Australia or New Zealand. I have some distant cousins now from Moravia who were like in their 20’s and 30’s and they now moved to Sydney. As far as they are concerned, they have given America and Canada a look and they decided for them, Australia is the place they want to be. That’s kind of interesting. I also have some relatives who went to Canada, but that’s just not many, just 1 or 2 families. But there are a lot of Czechs in Canada too. I would say for most people in the Czech Republic, America would be their top choice, Canada would be their third, second, and then…if they want to stay in Europe, of course you know, now a days things are so different. It’s a lot different.

After WWII, it took probably a whole generation for Europe to rebuild. Now, I still have family in close touch with there in Prague. They are distant cousins and interestingly there is about a 60-40 split. I would say about 40% of them have decided to leave and most of them have come to America and those are people that are now probably in their 30’s and 40’s have already started a family. Those are like second and third cousins. But most of them have decided to stay there because it kind of breaks down… and this is universal I think you could…any immigrant will be faced with the same type of decision. It’s a hard decision. Do you want to leave your culture, your language behind for a new place? For some of my cousins it’s real easy because one of them is very ambitious and he grew up during the communist time where you were hungry all the time. Getting an apple or orange was like people waited in line for groceries. He felt so deprived during that period. He basically wanted to come here and get rich, I’ll just be honest and just make as much money as he can and drive fancy cars and all these things you couldn't do as a child growing up it's kind of like he went to the opposite extreme.

But his sister had stayed behind and has decided to raise her kids there as Czechs. They’re multilingual though I mean it's… which is kind of the European thing I think most Europeans speak at least 2 or 3 languages aside from their native language. No, she just decided to stay there, and they love Prague and it's a wonderful city so…

UH Interviewer: Yeah, I’ve heard that it's actually a very beautiful over there…

Chris Hlavinka: It is… It’s like I said, it’s different. Johnny, my cousin here is just like… he’s into making a lot of money and that's fine, nothing wrong with that.

UH Interviewer: With Germany mostly taking over Czechoslovakia like during the World War. How were they basically… you know your family was mostly Roman Catholic, so being that the Germans were there, how did you all basically, how can I put this… get along. Or was it kind of difficult to…were there um …how would I say this… were there tensions involved?

Chris Hlavinka: It’s… something, you know… I’m 68 years old and I have still not been able to completely resolve this issue in my life because its complicated in many ways. You know, the Germans treated the Czech people… you know historically there were periods when the Czech people were not treated very well by the Germanic culture. Certainly, under Hitler, the situation there was horrendous. At the same time, it's… And I think that's why I think that's the main reason why my family wanted to get out of Europe because historically, you know, the area where Prague is now, we go back maybe 1000 years in history depending on how far back you went. And sometimes it was more under the control of Germans and German culture. They had a legacy where they built a lot of buildings they built and then the Slavic cultures tended to be a bit more isolated and they had their own awakening and decided they wanted to go and have their place too and build their communities to the point to where they and what are now the Czech lands. They really had the dominant population. And that’s what makes it so difficult because it’s a disputed area. We see the same thing in southern Europe too like what use to be the former Yugoslavia where there is Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Turkey. Even after the Czech side and Slovak side had decided to join into one republic, there were still pockets of the country where you had a majority German speaking and German culture where 90% of the residents were German: the Sudetenland - and that was one of the reasons Hitler had for invading because he basically felt like he got a bad deal in the Treaty of Versailles. You know being a student of history…I am so happy you are a student of history because it is so important, you know for all of us to… you know, sometimes things seem like “why do people make life so complicated?”… you know? It’s either black or white, but it usually isn’t. It’s usually gray and shades you know…

UH Interviewer: It’s a mixture of a lot of things…

Chris Hlavinka: It’s a mixture of a lot of things, so I’m sympathetic to… and I have German friends here…who I am very close friends with. Worked with some of them and even when we were not working together professionally, we see our families and friends and our kids are friends of each other. And they are from that area. But they still… it's very complicated because some of them it's like well you know our friendship with you is more important than something that happened the past, that was our grandparents and great grandparents generation, you know we have to move on and live today and you know make our life for kids and grandkids. That’s our attitude and that's kind of mine too but for some of them it's not so easy to forget about that. And some of those people had stopped being friends with me because I'm a Czech and it's like OK, Hitler did terrible things in the Czech Republic but then after the war, the Czechs kicked out all of…when Hitler was in power he moved all the Germans back into the Sudetenland and they probably just killed most of the Czechs that lived there I mean they just lined them up, shot them, they just had massive…

UH Interviewer: A lot of massacres…

Chris Hlavinka: …yeah, a lot of massacres. When the war was over, the Czechs weren't exactly treating the Germans nicely either I don't you know...I think they basically you know they were chased out by gunfire and I'm sure that there was there was some loss of life there too so, well you know atrocities on both sides, so for the really older generation it's hard for…

UH Interviewer: It’s hard to get along even after so many years…

Chris Hlavinka: Well, it’s hard to forget. You know…I’m lucky because now I have some very close French friends who lived on the other side of Germany and of course Germany took over France during World War II and his attitude is in this guy still like in his mid-90s and he and his wife you know they survived World War II. They live in what is Alsatia which is on right on the border of “Alzass” in French on the Rhine River right across from Germany, Strasburg and he says well “we have forgiven but we can never forget but we want to get along” and that you know his daughter is a cabaret singer and she sings in nightclubs in Germany and so… for our generation, it's a lot easier but you know for the older ones but these people are not going to be around much longer so… it gets better with time.

UH Interviewer: So, what does your family miss more about your country? If you could go back, what would be the first thing you would do and why?

Chris Hlavinka: You know, it's an emotional thing. It's not really… it's not… I missed the cuisine or… I mean that's certainly part of it and also there's something very special about the landscape there. It's not the Swiss Alps or anything. It’s just really an incredible, magnificent scenery but it does have a certain beauty to it and Prague… you know is a very beautiful city. There is nothing in America like that, I mean we’re in the 19th-20th century country and we have fantastic cities like in New York and San Francisco. We’ve built great cities here too. The modern era we don't have… I guess for me personally, being an architect and into historic preservation, that's one of my this interests, I can just… I could spend the rest of my life there and not… you know there's so much to see that's historic every… I mean you couldn’t see it all just in the Czech Republic. Think about… I mean what about Italy, I mean talking about incredible antiquities that's the part… and also, I think even though I'm a third generation American, I still feel in my heart that I'm a European and I… in some ways I like the European system of government and you know like they provide maternal care to my mothers and you know they have more… they provide health care and all this type of thing but you know… so in some ways… you know it’s more of a socialistic country, you pay higher taxes. In America you can also be extremely wealthy I mean you can become Bill Gates you probably can become that in the Czech Republic so, what do you want to be in life?

For me I guess I'm somewhat more in the middle and to me, quality of life I think it's where it is. It's not when you open your bank account how much money you've got. I don’t think, at least for me personally, not everybody… everybody is different. For some people that is very important. Material things that they feel a sense of accomplishment in the need to always… making more money or something. But for me it's quality of life you know and you know having good friendships, health, family, all you know.

That's why when I go back, yes, it's the… it's reconnecting with and maintaining those relationships with the people that are there that's the most important part of it. And I guess when I'm not there that's what I miss the most but it's so easy to be in contact with people now with the… I mean when I graduated from college and got my first job as an architect here in Houston, I went on a tour with some… a couple of other friends that I went to architecture school with. There's two other guys that went with me and we were basically wanting to spend a month in Europe and went around to different countries. I said OK I'm going on this trip, like I got to go back to my home country. And they said, “Well, that’s going to be a little difficult, that’s behind the Iron Curtain now we have to get visas and all that kind of stuff. It was very difficult to do but I did that and I'm trying to think how… age 32 I guess and it really changed my life you know and I have maintained relationships there and I've met people in Germany on that trip, I met people in France on that trip and now for 3 generations we have maintained… those people were friends with my parents.

My parents… both of them died relatively young in their mid-60’s so I've had more relationship in the US with aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews, but I don't know but that's the most important thing to me is maintaining those relationships… you know that's what gives me… that's not to say I didn't have to bust my rear end for 30 years and as an architect, and having an office job, I'm pretty much retired from the profession now. I still do some consulting if somebody has a special project. But basically, our family has a ranch. At four counties [referred to above] we have a little weekend property up there and it's a place where my brothers hang out or my nieces and nephews. We usually have Thanksgiving out there Christmas and Easter or Easter egg hunts and all that sort of thing. So, yeah. Just keeping all that kind of stuff going.

UH Interviewer: Okay, and um… let’s see. What are some differences culturaly that stood out once they were living here in the Unites States. Could it have been… you know you were talking about the Hispanics and the churches and the Anglos that were here in the churches. Maybe some neighbors that you guys had living here. What would stand out the most culturally or religiously?

Chris Hlavinka: I think the thing that I find the most ironic was when my grandparents came here and they moved… OK…I had also one branch in my family later that did not come to Texas though went to Oregon instead, which is much further away, a lot different kind of place to live than in Texas but the ones…my grandfather’s generation and my parent’s generation, up through probably the mid 1960’s, living in Texas and the southern states, Jim Crow was definitely… are you familiar with the term?

UH Interviewer: Mhm.

Chris Hlavinka: …Okay, it's definitely you know the way they rolled around here and I mean in the family business we had a separate restroom and the business for it said 'colored bathroom'. You go to a service station, a gasoline station… same thing. And I grew up with that and when you were a kid 5 or 6 years old you know it's like well you really don't question it. And then I guess the thing that made me start questioning it, though, was I also grew up in the age of television so when we had television in the home, basically you saw the rest of the world. And then it started made me questioning “why is this?”.

My mother had a lady in the house, a part time housekeeper that helped her do the ironing and cleaned house like every other week, and, but she also helped my mother raise us. And ever since I think by the time my mother had… I was the number two kid, by the time she had me, she started using this lady. Her name is Love, Love Kravin. It's pretty mazing to grow up in your household, would have a lady with a name like that. That kind of lays an impression on you and I mean she was just a lot of fun… you know, and so we had an African American lady in the house that we grew up with, but she didn't live in our neighborhood. My mother drove her to a little town, about 10 miles from East Bernard, called Kindleton. I don't know if it's still there. I don’t know if you ever even heard of it.

UH Interviewer: No, I have never heard of it.

Chris Hlavinka: It’s still there but at the time it's like the African Americans that worked in the businesses of Wharton County it's like they had I don't know maybe a handful of small communities. It wasn't quite that way for Hispanics. The Hispanic community were still segregated from neighborhoods in East Bernard, but Hispanics tend to live in this part of town and the white people tend to live in that part of town but the African Americans, there weren’t any. They lived in separate towns or out on the countryside on their own farms, but… so that didn't really start changing in my life until I was in high school by that time. I was old enough and mature enough to really start questioning that whole system. We saw what happened in Washington DC when Martin Luther King had the March in Washington. The Hispanic kids that I grew up with, they went to the Catholic school that I went, so we grew up together, but not the African Americans. They weren’t allowed to mix with us until I got into high school. So, starting with my freshman year, then we did have four or five African American kids… East Bernard was such a small… I mean I only had like 45 people in my graduating class so there are 5 African Americans.

But you know, so then that was normal for me but still, why did it take so long… and why did
my grandfather who came as an immigrant to this country, not speaking a word in English, had someone else not been here to help him and give him a break, you know? Why was he any different from those people? I thought that's why everybody came to America because that was the idea and that’s what the statue of liberty was all about and all that kind of stuff.

The sad thing about history though is that… for me personally because I’m a politically progressive person, I’d like to think that…as we all continue to live, that life will continue to get better for all of us…If I am able to better my…My parents were able to do better than my grandparents…and I was able to do better than my parents, and that my kids could be better than me. That’s kind of my…you know…society.

I want to say society progressing, but I want to see them, not just for some people. I want to live in a place where everybody has an equal shot. And no questions. You walk in there and if you have the ability, no pre-judgement about, well okay you’re from this part of town or this skin color. To me, that’s the ideal. Maybe it doesn’t exist. I always wanted history to be like this constant trend where progress is always being made. But sometimes…

UH Interviewer: It fluctuates…

Chris Hlavinka: Its like a graph. We have a little dip and we have to recover. I think that’s how you look back at the 20th century, just the horrors of what happened in WWII. They fought after the first world war. After something so horrendous, there’s no way that anything like that could happen again and…

UH Interviewer: And one last thing. This is the last question. What is one thing that you or
your family wish could have done differently when migrating?

Chris Hlavinka: Hm…let me think about that… (silence) …you’ve stumped me. I have to think a
minute…differently. Are you talking about like…any second thoughts about the fact that we chose America over other countries?

UH Interviewer: Well…somewhat like whenever they traveled here, what do you think they could have done differently in terms of transportation, or in terms of what they had to bring, or what they had to do and had to plan in order to live here?

UH Interviewer: Was it somewhat a long process to…

Chris Hlavinka: I guess…to think about the most regrettable thing was that because I was always
taught by my grandparents and parents to value our culture. To be an American…all of us mericans except the native people’s basically, are immigrants. America’s a melting pot, but still you should maintain your identity. That’s why we have organizations like this, like the Czech Cultural Center. The Polish people have theirs, the Hungarians, all the immigrant groups… the Hispanic, whatever. I guess the biggest regret I have is… after WWII, the Soviet Union, the USSR, made it…trying to think. After WWII my grandmother actively communicated with her relatives and they had to communicate mostly by letter. It was too expensive to make telephone calls then but for those 44 years or so… you know when I was in elementary school and high school years, not able to go there, so that was quite a loss for us. Whereas, German kids or French kids, or Spanish kids from Espa֤ña, Portugal, you know… anywhere. If their parents were Italian, they were free to travel. We were not free to go back. So, that’s like almost 20-25 years of my life that we were deprived of just very limited contact. That’s why my buddies and I planned that trip over, that’s why I had to go. My randparents read the letters and we hear the latest news and all that, but its like there was all this pinned up desire to go there that I had to just… and still it was pretty bad there. Just actually being able to meet and be with people that I had written to and have gotten letters from…to actually meet them and see them in person. It’s such a…it enriches your life so much…

UH Interviewer: After so many years, especially.

Chris Hlavinka: Yeah…after…yeah. So that’s probably the biggest regret that…it’s too bad that…the geo-political situation is always very complicated at that time. The U.S. was trying to avoid getting into a nuclear confrontation with Russia, so it’s like people in little bitty countries in eastern and central Europe were the collateral damage in that larger geo-political…as they call it, the Cold War. That’s my regret, but anyway, I've tried to make up for lost time by going there. My brother…both of my uncles now and their families …a lot of them are too old to go back there now but now 2-3 generations and what we’re trying to do is to continue to take them back to the homeland because we didn’t actually didn’t come from Prague, we were from Moravia which is the far south providence in a very small town. I mean it’s a town that maybe had a thousand people in the nearest county seat would be the nearest town maybe has about 4-5 thousand people. So, it’s very rural today, you know I still have some relatives there and 2005 which is the 100th anniversary of when my grandparents came over on a ship, we organized a trip about 50 people. We flew to Prague, spent some time there, and those are the first time my cousins and nieces and nephews had ever been able to have an opportunity to go there.

Fortunately for me, just because I had taken it upon myself to do it…my brother and parents have done it. We organized a big anniversary celebration in the village that my grandfather grew up in. It was the most amazing experience I’ve had in my life. There were probably 150-200 people there.

UH Interviewer: Oh, wow!

Chris Hlavinka: Just the locals came out. They were so happy to have the Americans there. And these German friends that I told you about that I had…and the French friends…they were so…they thought, “sounds like a great party, we want to go too!” So…it was.

UH Interviewer: Wow! Christopher: It was pretty amazing. And so now, I don’t know. We got to
keep it up.
UH Interviewer: Alright! Well, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about your personal experiences and especially with your family history and allowing me to conduct this interview with you.

Chris Hlavinka: I enjoyed it. Thanks for giving me the opportunity!

UH Interviewer: Thank you!