“That we organized i? Someone had to do it,” recalls František Chrzan, co-organizer of the Velvet Revolution in Bardejov.
František Chrzan was born on January 1, 1955. His father Ján worked as a manual laborer in the cooperative and his mother Anna, who came from the village of Brezov near Giraltovce, was a pig feeder. František and three siblings grew up in modest circumstances in a Christian family in Radvanovce (Vranov nad Topľou district). František started studying in a small class in Radvanovce, he finished the second stage of primary school in Hanušovce nad Topľou in 1970. From there he went to the secondary industrial school of chemistry in Banská Štiavnica. After graduating from high school, he got to the Faculty of Education at Pavel Jozef Šafárik University in Košice, where in 1979 he graduated as a teacher of physics and chemistry for secondary schools. After completing basic military service in Humenné, he began teaching at today’s Leonardo Stöckel Grammar School in Bardejov. During the revolutionary events of 1989, he became a member of the VPN coordination committee and co-organized the protests in Bardejov. In 1990, he even became the head of the ONV education department. After the election in 1991, he returned to school as a teacher. In 1996, he founded a transport company that still operates today.