I have devoted my life to meteorology
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Jaroslav Baný was born on January 15 1936 in Bystřice pod Lopeníkem as the second child into the Baný family. He was raised in a Christian household. His mother was a housewife and later worked in agriculture, his father worked for the state roads, and later in a quarry. From the war years Jaroslav Baný recalls hearing the bombing of Vienna, the partisans moving around in the surroundings, the Germans retreating rapidly from the approaching front, and finally the liberation by Romanian soldiers. After the communists came to power, the Baný family had to join their small field to the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD), otherwise their children would not be allowed to study. After finishing the elementary school, Jaroslav completed a one-year apprenticeship course and in 1956 he graduated from the Secondary Agricultural-technical School in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. He got married and had two children. He completed his mandatory military service in Čáslav with the air battalion, where he worked for the dispatchers as a meteorologist. He fully devoted his life to weather in 1961, when he became the administrator of the meteorological station in Vizovice and collected data until 2016. All his life he taught at the Agricultural School in Vizovice, and in the 1960s he graduated from the Faculty of Science in Olomouc, where he studied remotely. In August 1968, he saw tanks coming from Vsetín towards Gottwaldov and during the morning meteorological measuring, he constantly saw planes flying over his head. He had the opportunity to work as a regional school inspector, under the condition of being a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. He refused. In the busy days of November 1989, he was offered the post of chairman of the Civic Forum in Vizovice, but he refused that too. After the revolution, he became a representative at the Secondary School of Services in Vizovice, where he worked until 2015, when he retired. In 2014, he received the Senior of the Year award from the Charter 77 Foundation. In 2022, he lived in a home for the elderly in Lukov. He died on November 17th, 2023.
