Thomas Morel

"The car was built or ready and we flew to Utah with it. There is a lake in Utah called Salt Lake. Why is it called Salt Lake? Because it's very salty. A part of the lake dries up every year. When it dries, it is completely white as snow and it is many kilometers completely straight in each direction. And on that lake every year, and it's in September and October, you can ride on it. Every year there are motorcycle races, cars, trucks, trying to break records every year. So in 1970 we came there too. We arrived there in September and started testing. Every day we drove, first slowly, then faster, gas was added. It was also unknown if it would not break, it would start flying, if it was stable, slow and faster. And one day it exploded, we had to fix it. We never knew if it would make the record or not; well it was very exciting. One day it broke the record. And it has to go twice; you go in one direction, turn around and come back. And it must be done within an hour. We broke the record once, turned around, something was wrong, they did it quickly, but we didn't do it in one hour. So it had to happen again. And every day again. And finally, one day we went in one direction, we went in the other. There's an organization that stands there, stop watch, it's very regulated. And they said it was the world record. We were very happy. That evening we went to the casino, great joy. We ate and drank, much joy. And when they got up the next morning and looked around; there was snow outside. The car was covered in snow, snow everywhere, which meant it was the end of the season when he could drive. If it hadn't made that record that day, the next day they wouldn't be able to have the money to come next year."

"I sent letters to various universities and chose the university here in Chicago called the Illinois Institute of Technology. They promised to support me financially because I had no money. I left Prague with just five dollars. That was more money than today, it was like fifteen dollars now. But fifteen dollars isn't that much, either. I came to school and came to my department's office the first day and they invited me to talk. I said, I'm here, I have the scholarship. ’And they said, ´What kind of scholarship?´ There was a mistake, you have no scholarship. ‘But fortunately the head of the department was Czech, or he was not Czech, but Hungarian, and he married a Czech and they lived in Prague for some time. And he also went to America before the war. He graduated here and was the head of the department here. So he saw I had a problem. That I have no money, so he asked different people what I could do. So he gave me some work, I did various (things), I built shelves, I did various auxiliary work and in the meantime they gave me a loan."