Cetoraz and How We Connected - a Dedication

In 2003 I had the good fortune to visit Cetoraz, Czech Republic, the ancestral home of our line of the Vacek family.  I traveled with my daughter, Marla and her husband John Broadfoot.  We didn’t have any contacts lined up there.  We just sort of winged it.  I knew Cetoraz was the ancestral home so we drove in and started looking around.

After locating the cemetery, we were pondering whether we should open the gates and go into the walled enclosure.  At that moment, a man in green overalls came walking down the road toward us.  I didn’t know what his intention was.  Was he going to run us off or was he just curious about the strangers in town?  I put on my best smile and walked to meet him.  I pointed to myself and said, “Amerikansky!”  (Which I found out was not even a Czech work).  I was much relieved when he smiled and said, “Chu-ka-go!”   “Wow, he was not only friendly he knows English”, I thought to myself.  I soon found out that “Chu-ka-go” was half of his English vocabulary.  The other word he knew was “Utah.”  But he was friendly and extremely helpful. 

My Czech vocabulary was only slightly better than his English vocabulary.  But with a few words and a lot of pantomime I was able to explain that we were looking for Vacek family connections.  We found out that his name was Josef  Plašel and that he was not a relative.  He took us under his wing and escorted us around the town looking for those connections.  We got a lot of photographs, but little solid information.  We left the village with warm feelings about the residents of our ancestral home..

And then in 2011 Carol Lea Klein Hoffman was contacted by Pavel Jareš from Cetoraz.  Carol Lea and I had collaborated on the Vacek family tree.  She posted it on Ancestory.com and posted on the Vacek board asking for any information leading on the Vacek ancestors.  Pavel Jareš saw the posting and responded (in Czech) to Carol Lea which she forwarded to me for translation.  Since that time we have received a wealth of information on Cetoraz and the Vaceks; both current and historic.  Pavel has dug into the Cetoraz Chronicles, the Cetoraz fire brigade documents.   He shared old family photographs.  He interviewed Cetoraz residents and took numerous photographs of Cetoraz features.  He explained details of Czech life and history. 

And we can’t forget Marcela Kršková.  Marcela has spent countless hours translating the correspondence between Pavel and myself. 

Many thanks to the material provided by Adella Vacek Miigerl, another cousin.  She has been a collector of family history for many years.  She has become the repository of old photos and documents for the Vacek and Dusek families.  She has provided us with many of the old photographs of the family in Nebraska.