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"CHANGING TO MEET THE C NGING NEEDS OF FRATERNA LISTS"
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SPJST Herald "Joining Hands To Touch Lives-Fraternalism for the Family and Our Nation"
Official Organ Of The Slavonic Benevolent Order of the State of Texas, Founded 1897, BROTHERHOOD
HUMANITY
BENEVOLENCE
Postmaster: Please Send Form 3579 to: SUPREME LODGE, SPJST, P. 0. Box 100, Temple, Texas 76503 September 7, 1994 1SSN-07458800 VOLUME 82 NUMBER 34
SPJST Royalty Court on Parade
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SPJST Queen Delia Wr,c eir1
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Family Fun and Important SPJST Dates
of Lodge 1.. nirie peasofl Cervenka of Lodge 29, Tay11 were riding high eekend the annual Westfest Parade in the town of West, Texas. bie Royalty Court's honorable escorts were, from left, Supreme Lodge President Howard Leshikar and District Three Director and Supreme Lodge Chairman Cyrill (Sid) Pokladnik, driving. SPJST banner carriers were State Duke Chad Cervenka of Lodge 29 and Lindsey Wiederhold of Lodge 13. SPJST members from all over enjoyed the annual Labor Day weekend event. _--
Czech Heritage Day at Lodge 92, Fort Worth (National Hall) September 10 Kolache Festival; Caldwell, Texas September 10 Lodge 38, Kovar Annual Picnic September 11 Lodge 49, Rowena 90th Anniversary Celebration September 11 September 13-14 SPJST Supreme Lodge Meeting, Temple Tarok Tournament at Lodge 29, Taylor September 17 District Two Fall Meeting hosted by Lodge 80, Holland; September 18 Registration begins at 1 p.m. District Five Fall Meeting, American Legion Hall in Crosby September 18 Hosted by Lodges 65 and 91, Registration begins at 11 a.m. 23rd Annual Czech Fest at Lodge 84, Dallas September 18 District Four Fall Fun Day at the KC Hall in Seymour; September 24 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. District Seven Fall Meeting and Family Fun Day; hosted by October 23 Lodge 161, Jourdanton at the V.F.W. Hall in Jourdanton October 22-23 Eighth Annual Gulf Coast Czech Festival at Lodge 172, Pasadena' November 13 District Six Fall Meeting, hosted by Lodge 97, Placedo at the Victoria Electric Cooperative. Judging from the looks of our SPJST calendar, there will be lots of opportunities for fun and fraternalism in the coming months throughout Texas. Make plans now to attend an SPJST activity near you ...
Exploring the Texas Czech Connection
Texas Czechs! At Home on the Range by Sean Gallup PART ONE
en Jurica, 81, sits on the
porch of his faded white clapboard house, looking B out over the neatly cut lawn with its vegetable gardens and scattered sheds. With him are his neighbors—Toni Barcak, also in her 80s, and her son, Paul— who have come for a visit. The three sit talking in Moravian dialect about local gossip, about how expensive things have become, about Jurica's cucumbers. Sometimes they say nothing at all, just gazing out at the blackland prairie that stretches before them beyond their little hamlet of Velehrad. Velehrad lies just southeast of Praha, east of Novohrad, north of Komensky and west of Moravia. But Jurica and his neighbors don't live in Central Europe. They are residents of Fayette County, deep in the heart of Texas. Jurica speaks English with an accent unlike most Texans. Though born only a few miles away in the town of St. John's, he has spoken Czech most of his life. "We had some Germans living here," he
says, "but they spoke Czech, too." Jurica is hardly unique. Texas was the destination of thousands of Czech immigrants at the turn of the century; most were farmers. They formed tight, nearly self-sufficient, communities from Corpus Christi on the Gulf of Mexico coastline all the way up to Dallas, where they settled on a long stretch of black soil richly suited to their crops. Though estimates of the number of Texans claiming Czech extraction vary widely, scholars have recently put the number at 500,000 to 750,000. Unlike other ethin groups nic America whose languages and cultures have faded, the Czech-Moravians of Texas have maintained a strong sense of ethnic identity, accompanied by a rich folk tradition that blends customs of the old country with those of the New World. Much of the credit for instigating the
wave of Czech immigration to Texas goes to Arnost Bergman, a Protestant minister who established the first Czech settlement at Cat Spring in Austin County in the early 1850s, less than a decade after Texas was admitted to the United States. Encouraged by conditions he found, Bergman wrote enthusiastic letters home that were published in newspapers in Bohemia and Moravia. Grim economic conditions, cultural (and in some cases, religious) oppression, and forced conscription into the Austrian army convinced an increasing number of Czechs to risk the long journey across the Atlantic in search of a more hopeful future. Immigration to Texas by Bohemians and Moravians peaked during the 40 years between 1870 and 1910. By 1920, . there were over 200 Texas towns and villages with strong Czech identities.
"They formed tight, nearly self-sufficient, communities from Corpus Christi ... all the way up to Dallas ..."
About 80 percent of the immigrants from Bohemia and Moravia came from the area between just south of Ostrava and Zlin, and a strong Moravian identity persists among many of today's descendants. Stopping recently at Kahanek's Cafe in the little settlement of New Taiton in Wharton County, I asked the woman behind the counter if there were many Czechs living in the area. "No," she replied, and looked at me suspiciously. Puzzled, I asked if she was Czech. "No," she said. "I'm Moravian." "Are there many Moravians in this area?" I asked. "A few," she answered. Clinton Machann, a professor at Texas A&M University, has identified four distinct Czech dialects prevalent in Texas; three are Moravian. Among these, the Moravian Wallachian dialect is the most common. "I remember the first time I went to Czechoslovakia, I started talking to some workers on the train," says Thadious Polasek, a native of Texas' Lavaca County. "They laughed at my Czech, saying I talked like a peasant from Moravia." The persistence of Moravian dialects (Continued on page 3)