"I saw him. I was in Kroměříž at my uncle's on holiday and Masaryk had just arrived there. He gave a speech. When we arrived, there was a crowd. I screamed that I was going to suffocate, so my aunt took me out of the crowd. Masaryk was there then, I saw him with my own eyes."
"I had to learn to play the violin. When the harder stuff came along, I didn't like it so much. The kids made fun of me for becoming a teacher, so I decided to quit. One time I didn't get out of playing until four o'clock, it was almost dark and there was a lot of snow. I was scared, I was small, so I was knee-deep in snow. I was so tired I thought I'd lie down. And I remembered that the teacher told us that we couldn't do that, that we would freeze, so I got up. And as I walked, I started to see the rooftops of Čelechovice. I got a bit of an appetite and I got over it. I came home and I cried. Maybe they would have been late for me, I would have frozen, it was terrible."
"I came when a beautiful new school, a town and community school, had already been built in Kokory. It was a beautiful big school, and I went to school there for the first year. My mother went with me, to register me, but the nurse didn't admit me, saying that I was weak and that walking from Kokory to Čelechovice would be too much for me. So I didn't go to school until I was seven."
Jarmila Drábková, née. Šimoníková, was born on the 24th of November 1919 in Čelechovice na Hané as the third of four children. Her mother Marie, née. Nesvatbová, was a housewife, her father Gotthard Šimoník took care of the farm. During the First World War, he fought on the Eastern Front. He was declared missing and returned home in 1920. Jarmila spent a year at the family school in Velké Meziříčí after her elementary schooling and then attended a housekeeping school in Olomouc. In 1942 she married František Drábek from Velký Týnec. They subsequently moved there. In 1944 their daughter Jarmila was born. Her husband, an agricultural engineer, worked as a consultant for the Czech Agricultural Council in Brno, then as a professor at the agricultural school in Olomouc at Klášterní Hradisko. At that time Jarmila Drábková took care of the household. The farm in Čelechovice was inherited by her brother Valentin, who joined the cooperative after 1948. Daughter Jarmila graduated from the Faculty of Education in Olomouc, married, and had a daughter. She and her husband left for Canada in 1968. After her husband’s retirement, the Drábeks returned to Velký Týnec. František Drábek died in 2005, and Jarmila Drábková moved to a home for the elderly in Olomouc, where she was living at the time of filming in October 2021. She died on February 23, 2022.
