Doris Drost
<p>Doris Drost was born in Olomouc, central Moravia, in 1920. Her parents had met in Poland during WWI, as her mother Jana was from there, and her father Vojtěch was a Czechoslovak legionnaire stationed in the country. Doris grew up in Rohatec where her father was the vice president of a chocolate factory; she attended elementary school there until fourth grade, and then transferred to a larger school in Hodonín. Doris moved with her family to Brno a few years later when her father found a new job, and so she finished her schooling there. She remembers spending a few summers in Poland with her grandparents and being very active in Sokol.</p><p> </p><p>Doris attended a teacher’s institute and taught kindergarten for one year before marrying John Drost in 1940. Doris and John had two children, Rudy and <a href="/web/20170609111847/http://www.ncsml.org/exhibits/george-drost/">George</a>. After the Communist coup in 1948, John left the country and Doris and Rudy followed a few months later, leaving George with John’s mother. With help from a guide, Doris crossed the border into Austria and then made her way to Vienna where she joined her husband. The family made plans to move to the United States once they were reunited with George. While in Austria, they lived in Kranebitten, a suburb of Innsbruck, where John found a job. With the help of a family friend and John’s sister, George rejoined the family in January 1950. The Drosts arrived in New York City in July of that year and settled in Chicago, where their sponsor, Ravenswood Presbyterian Church, was located.</p><p> </p><p>Doris says they were helped by many people when they first arrived and worked very hard to carve out a life in the United States. Doris cleaned houses and John worked in a factory before becoming a caretaker at a church and attending law school at night. He eventually opened his own law practice, and Doris became the lunch manager at Woolworth’s. The family was active in the Czech community, and both boys learned to speak Czech. Doris visited Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1990, an experience she describes as ‘very disappointing’ because of the condition of Brno. Doris lived in Arlington Heights, Illinois, until her death in August 2016.</p><p> </p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
NCSML Archive
Jan Florian
<p>Jan Florian was born in Hodonín in 1964 and grew up in the Moravian town of Strážnice. His mother was an accountant and his father worked as an electrical repairman. Jan’s father also built a greenhouse on their property and made extra money by growing and selling vegetables. Although his earliest memory is of watching the Soviet-led invasion in 1968 on television, Jan recalls a happy childhood and says that he had a certain freedom that his children don’t have growing up in the United States today.</p><p> </p><p>Jan attended <em>gymnázium</em> in Strážnice and then studied in the Mathematics and Physics Faculty at Charles University. He finished his undergraduate studies in 1988 and served one year in the military as a guard. Jan says that he learned English while listening to the radio and reading during this time. He began his doctoral studies at Charles University in the fall of 1989, and witnessed the beginning of the Velvet Revolution from his office at the university. Jan completed his dissertation – which he wrote in English – and spent one year at Southern Illinois University doing research. He returned to Prague after accepting a position at Charles University, but again returned to the United States one year later. Jan spent five months at Jackson State University in Mississippi before moving to Los Angeles for a post-doctoral fellowship with Arieh Warshel, 2013 Nobel Laureate in chemistry, at University of Southern California.</p><p> </p><p>Today Jan is a chemistry professor at Loyola University Chicago. Although he plans to stay in the United States for his career, Jan says that he still feels more Czech than American and returns to the Czech Republic every summer with his children.</p>
National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library
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