Frank Schultz
<p><img class="wp-image-4022 alignright" src="http://web.archive.org/web/20170808051333im_/http://ncsml.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Handler-252.jpg" alt="Handler-2" width="400" height="317" />Frank Schultz was born in Maňovice, southwestern Bohemia, in 1930. One of five sons, Frank grew up on a farm run by his father, Vojtěch, and mother, Marie. He attended elementary school in nearby Mileč and went to high school in the larger town of Nepomuk. Frank says that his education during WWII was ‘poor,’ as the German-centered curriculum was not comprehensive. He spent much of his time helping on the farm. After completing high school in 1944, Frank became an apprentice for his uncle who was a cabinet maker. He traveled by train to Plzeň daily, and recalls his trip being interrupted in the waning days of the War due to bombings of the city. After WWII, Frank became involved in Boy Scouts, which had been banned by the Nazi authorities. He spent a few summers at a scout camp in Šumava as an assistant leader. Frank says that when the Communists came to power in 1948, the Boy Scouts were going to be absorbed by the Československý svaz mládeže (ČSM), a communist youth organization. He says that his opposition to this move branded him an ‘unreliable person’ and, fearing arrest, he made plans to leave the country. While at scout camp in July 1948, Frank crossed the border into Germany.</p><p> </p><p>Frank spent two and a half years in refugee camps in Germany while waiting for a visa to the United States. The majority of that time was spent in Schwäbisch Gmünd, where he established a Boy Scout troop, and in Ludwigsburg. Frank says that he was not given refugee status straight away because he lacked the proper documentation, and that his visa was delayed because of this. In March 1950, Frank received refugee status and a sponsor, and began the process of emigrating. He arrived in New York on December 21, 1950. Sponsored by the National Catholic Welfare Conference, Frank helped on a farm and worked in the carpentry shop at St. Procopius Abbey in Lisle, Illinois. In 1951, Frank joined the U.S. Army and served in Korea for one year. As a result of his service, Frank became an American citizen in 1954 and attended St. Procopius College (now Benedictine University) on the G.I. Bill. He studied political science and economics and began his career as a public health advisor. In 1959, Frank married Pavla Bouzová, whom he had first met ten years earlier at Ludwigsburg; they raised their six children speaking Czech. In 1967, Frank returned to Czechoslovakia for the first time. He says he had an emotional reunion with his four brothers who were at the airport to greet him. Today, Frank lives in Woodridge, Illinois.</p>
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Frank Lysy
<p>Frank Lysy was born in Spišské Vlachy in eastern Slovakia in 1916. His father worked as a maintenance supervisor on the Košice-Bohumín Railway, while his mother stayed at home raising Frank and his six siblings. As a child, Frank was involved in Boy Scouts, and enjoyed playing soccer and skiing. Of his childhood he remembered in particular a visit that Czechoslovak President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk made to his school on its anniversary, and a fire that caused severe damage to his town when he was around eight years old.</p><p> </p><p>Frank attended teacher training college in Spišská Kapitula, where he says he received a ‘unique’ education as graduates were trained not only to work as village teachers, but as organists in the local church as well. Frank graduated and became a teacher for a short while, but was taken away from his job in 1938 when he was drafted into the Army. He says that when he reported for duty in Košice, however, he was turned away as no new recruits were being accepted (as this was at the time that the Munich Agreement was signed). He traveled to Bratislava, where he became a student of Slavistics and philosophy at Comenius University. In 1943, Frank was accepted as an exchange student at the University of Padua in Italy. He had a friend who was then the Slovak cultural attaché in Rome and, as WWII progressed, he moved to Venice with his friend and the few remaining representatives of Slovakia in the country. In the last days of the War, Frank moved to Berne, Switzerland, under the protection of the International Labour Organization. By this time, he had already carried out a couple of diplomatic missions and says he worked with the International Red Cross to deliver donated medicines to Terezín concentration camp in Bohemia.</p><p> </p><p>Following WWII, Frank took a job at the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry in Prague. He says that Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk was a ‘weak man’ and that there was a fear throughout the ministry that Communist Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimír Clementis was aiming to take over the department. Frank remembers employees being ‘tested’ at that time with invites to join the Communist Party and trade unions. In 1947, he was posted to Olso, Norway, on a diplomatic assignment. When the Communist coup happened in February 1948, the Czechoslovak ambassador to Norway resigned but Frank stayed on at the Embassy. He resigned himself in February 1949 when he received an order to return back to Prague.</p><p> </p><p>Frank arrived in the United States on July 10, 1950, as he said staying in Norway would have been ‘too dangerous.’ His first job was as a researcher and analyst at Radio Free Europe in New York City. He moved to the Washington, D.C. area in 1952. The following year, Frank took a job with the CIA which he held until an intelligence leak outed him in 1956. Thereafter, he went to work for Voice of America, where he became a senior editor of the Czech and Slovak service. He retired in 1991. Frank was a member of the Slovak League of America and the First Catholic Slovak Union. He returned to Slovakia to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Matica Slovenska in 1988. Frank lived in Delaplane, Virginia, until his death in November 2011.</p>
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