Anna says her family on her father’s side had spent time in Pennsylvania and that she thought of traveling to America from an early age. Her brother emigrated to the United States and, in 1981, she came to visit him. She returned to Czechoslovakia after one year and a half. In Slovakia, Anna had two daughters, Brona and Zuzana, both of whom she raised as a single mother. In 1987, Anna returned to the United States and applied to have her two daughters join her. She says this process was complicated when U.S. Immigration Services lost her daughters’ documents. Brona and Zuzana joined their mother in the Chicagoland area in 1988. In the United States, Anna met her husband, Zdeněk Vesely, and the couple had a daughter, Margret. Anna worked in a number of restaurants and as a housekeeper for a family in Saint Charles. She became an American citizen in the mid-1990s. Anna returns to Slovakia at least once every two years and still refers to Slovakia as ‘home.’ Today, she lives in Darien, Illinois.
]]>Anna Vesela was born in Lipnica Mała – in what is today Poland – in 1945. She spent most of her childhood in the Orava region of Slovakia. Her father had trained as a joiner in Zakopane but spent much of his career working as an X-ray technician in a military hospital. Anna’s mother worked as a server in a canteen. Anna had two brothers and a sister. She attended teacher training college and graduated in 1974, but was thrown out of her job as a teacher the following year – she says on grounds of her religious beliefs. From then on, Anna worked as a cleaner. As a hobby, Anna played bass for the Slovak folk ensemble SĽUK, with which she traveled to Yugoslavia and the United States.
Anna says her family on her father’s side had spent time in Pennsylvania and that she thought of traveling to America from an early age. Her brother emigrated to the United States and, in 1981, she came to visit him. She returned to Czechoslovakia after one year and a half. In Slovakia, Anna had two daughters, Brona and Zuzana, both of whom she raised as a single mother. In 1987, Anna returned to the United States and applied to have her two daughters join her. She says this process was complicated when U.S. Immigration Services lost her daughters’ documents. Brona and Zuzana joined their mother in the Chicagoland area in 1988. In the United States, Anna met her husband, Zdeněk Vesely, and the couple had a daughter, Margret. Anna worked in a number of restaurants and as a housekeeper for a family in Saint Charles. She became an American citizen in the mid-1990s. Anna returns to Slovakia at least once every two years and still refers to Slovakia as ‘home.’ Today, she lives in Darien, Illinois.
“My neighbor was lent a dream book, and then his daughter gave me this dream book – I have it at home. In it was written that Pisces, which is my sign, not being close to the sea, will go to the other side of the world in search of the sea later on in life. And already then I thought: America! I don’t know why I didn’t think of Germany or… But the other side of the world meant a different continent…”
“Not from Czechoslovakia – they told me at the Embassy when I went in November that they would be here at the soonest in half a year, my daughters. But at the immigration office they lost their papers three times. And we went there, with my friend, and they said ‘We don’t have them. Next!’ As if we weren’t there… So then, I was so unhappy and going to English classes and a Polish woman came. She came to join her husband who had been her for seven years already. And so I told her about the problems I was having and she advised me ‘You know what? Go to Batavia, and there’s a congressman. You don’t need to speak to him, but he has a secretary, Zuzana – Sue, and she will help you.’… When I told her – and even now I don’t know English well, and then I was even worse – this one was little, I remember it was May when I began visiting her every week. I complained in May ‘What’s going on?’ They had gone to [the American] Embassy and were told there that they knew nothing about it.
“So she told me, ask once again for all of their documents, like birth certificates etc. So, once again, the family had to go and get all this, and I brought them to Sue. And she, from her own telephone, at three in the morning, called the Embassy in [Czechoslovakia]. She had to put in her own code and all of these numbers, told them I’m married here, that I have a Green Card, that my husband is an American citizen. And on the basis of this they got visas to come here. She did that for us, Sue.
“When the girls came here, we all put together a vase like the one over there on the stove and I don’t know what else – a fruit bowl – three things altogether. And we went to see her and thank her. It wasn’t a bribe, because she had already taken care of it. So we went to see Sue. But it was only her. I don’t know what would have happened if it weren’t for her. But you see – even in the worst cases, you can find a solution.”
“I came to the lady and first they ask ‘Why did you come here?’ And I started from Adam and Eve about how I finished school, how I was thrown out of teaching and I went on for 40 minutes. She brought me a coffee and tissues, we cried together when I told her about how I was thrown out of teaching and how I went to the Virgin Mary to ask her for help, and how I had a husband who had shot my eye out. In the end when I left, we gave each other a hug!”
Zuzana and Brona received English lessons from a tutor who also helped them enroll in the local high school. In January 1989, they started as juniors in the ESL program, and the following year took regular classes as seniors and graduated. While in school, Zuzana worked at the deli at Kmart, a job which she says helped improve her English. Upon graduating, Zuzana worked a number of customer service jobs. She then moved into the IT field, working at Motorola and HP. She received a two-year degree from the College of DuPage.
Today Zuzana lives in Downers Grove, Illinois, with her daughter, Emilka. She speaks Slovak to her daughter and the two of them return each year to Slovakia to visit family. Zuzana, along with her extended family, keeps Slovak holiday traditions and loves to cook Slovak food. While she says that she is ‘so glad’ to have grown up in Slovakia, today she calls the United States home and is thankful for her mother to have made the decision to give her daughters a better life.
]]>Zuzana Lanc was was born in Liptovský Mikuláš in central Slovakia and grew up in the nearby village of Liptovské Sliače. She and her twin sister, Brona, lived with their mother, Anna Vesela, and their grandparents. Zuzana speaks fondly of her childhood in Slovakia and says that she was ‘so happy,’ especially compared to children growing up in the United States today. She enjoyed Russian and Slovak classes in school and excelled at recitation and speaking competitions. In 1987, Brona’s mother moved to the United States and married Zdenek Vesely, an American citizen. Although the plan was for the girls to follow shortly after, it took well over one year for Brona and Zuzana to be allowed to leave the country. They arrived in the United States in October 1988 and settled in with their mother and stepfather, who now had their younger sister, Margret, in Aurora, Illinois.
Zuzana and Brona received English lessons from a tutor who also helped them enroll in the local high school. In January 1989, they started as juniors in the ESL program, and the following year took regular classes as seniors and graduated. While in school, Zuzana worked at the deli at Kmart, a job which she says helped improve her English. Upon graduating, Zuzana worked a number of customer service jobs. She then moved into the IT field, working at Motorola and HP. She received a two-year degree from the College of DuPage.
Today Zuzana lives in Downers Grove, Illinois, with her daughter, Emilka. She speaks Slovak to her daughter and the two of them return each year to Slovakia to visit family. Zuzana, along with her extended family, keeps Slovak holiday traditions and loves to cook Slovak food. While she says that she is ‘so glad’ to have grown up in Slovakia, today she calls the United States home and is thankful for her mother to have made the decision to give her daughters a better life.
“Compared to the kids here – my daughter – I think we were so happy. We didn’t have any computers, no TV, no games. We were just happy to go outside and play soccer and badminton and make bunker and just be outdoors. And we were safe; our parents didn’t worry about us. So I think it was a lot easier than kids have right now these days here.”
Do you think it was better to grow up without internet and computers?
“Oh yeah, totally. Big time. I’m so anti-computer, anti-TV. No, no, no. I mean, we had so many adventures. We made up games and we didn’t kill our brain cells with watching TV and passive time. We had wooden blocks and games that we’d play without TV. They just come home from school, sit down, watch TV, [use] the internet. I don’t think they use their brain as much. I’m so glad that I grew up in Slovakia and I had that childhood. I would wish for my daughter to have the same experience, because it was a lot more fun, I think.”
“I remember we were seven years old and my uncle came and it was at Christmas. At that time, it was my uncle, my mom and her sister… So there was like 12 of us and we had 105 Christmas presents. I remember that because we were counting them, and during communism that was like ‘Wow.’ You would have like 30 presents. I remember that after we came from midnight mass, my mom and my uncle and we stayed up and he was telling us about America, how great it is and this and that. As a kid you are like, ‘Oh my gosh, you have bananas every day? You can have oranges? You can have this?’ It was euphoria.”
“My uncle immigrated in 1968 and my mom came to visit him when we were ten, stayed for a year and a half, and she really liked it and she came back home and told us ‘This is the place where I want to raise you up and it’s going to be a better life for you.’ And she was making plans how she was going to come back here again, so then when we were 16 she finally succeeded and she came here. She got married to a Czech with American citizenship, and that was the way she brought us here.”
“I remember when I came and when the other immigrants came it was like a monopoly. If you want to work here – do construction, be a cleaning lady – you always have to go through Polish people. And Polish people, except two that I know, they are firm on speaking only Polish. They would not every learn Slovak or Czech. So we had no other choice but to speak their language.”