Her father suffered poverty as a child, so he was enthusiastic about communism
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Zlata Kalousová was born on 13 December 1940 in Žamberk and lived in Kunvald until 1954. She had older brothers František (1938) and Bohuslav (1939). Her father, František Kalous (1911-1968), was a ski maker and an enthusiastic skier, who helped to spread the sport in the village. Her mother Marie (1907-1945) died after giving birth to her fourth child. Father then remarried to the widow Jarmila Keprtová (1917-2001), who already had a daughter Miroslava of the same age as Zlata. Together they had another son, Jan (1948). Zlata liked to observe what was going on in her father’s workshop, but she did not ski, unlike her older brothers. Every school child in the village had to have skis and František Kalous knew how to make good quality ash skis for everyone. He was a pioneer of skiing in his time. He participated in races in Czechoslovakia and also abroad. Skiers from all over the area came to Kunvald. Before the ski races declined in the 1990s, the Krč Memorial was held there, with races in cross-country and ski jumping. After the nationalisation in 1948, her father joined a production cooperative and was also active in establishing a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD) in Kunvald. Coming from poor circumstances - growing up with only his mother and three siblings when his father did not return from the First World War, he liked the communist promises of ‘plenty for all’. Zlata left in 1954 to study textile secondary school in Dvůr Králové and never returned home. After graduating in 1958, she worked at the Stuha Dobruška Company for forty years, until her retirement. In the early 1960s she was lured into the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. After the invasion in August 1968, she gave up her party legitimation and was finally expelled from the Communist Party in 1970. She remained unmarried and lived in Dobruška in 2022.
