On Thursday, it was only me and the 5th troop that applied to join the Scouts, but the following Thursday, everyone was already there
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Alois “Ali” Pučalík was born in 1932 in Olomouc and he has been a devoted Scout all his life. He joined the local Boy Scout troop in Kroměříž immediately after the liberation of the city on May 6, 1945. After the family moved to Znojmo, he continued as a Scout in the local troop there. He attended the jamboree in France in 1947. His father was sentenced to 18 years of imprisonment for high treason. After successful graduation from grammar school he was admitted to the faculty of medicine at Masaryk University in Brno, but due to his unfavourable family background he was then forced to interrupt his studies and begin military service, which lasted 25 months. He still had to work several months as a manual worker before he was allowed to return to his study of medicine. He completed his studies in 1959 and began working as a dentist in Třebíč. He established a water-sports troop there, which became incorporated in the Junák organization (Czech Boy Scouts - transl.’s note) in 1968. The promising development of water scouting was however crushed by the normalization in 1970. For Ali, this was not a first encounter with the totalitarian regime and perhaps this was the reason why the Scouts in Třebíč managed to carry on with their activities under the local Pioneer organization (state-approved youth organization - transl’s note). This way they continued to keep their “Scouting” until the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Brother Ali has been their leader all this time, and he continued as a leader for several more years in the restored Boy Scout organization Junák. In the 1990s he participated on Junák’s restoration and he was involved in preparation of educational framework for Junák officials. He was elected a member of the central council of Junák. At present he serves as the chairman of the regional committee for leaders’ examinations in the Vysočina region, as an examiner for captains’ examinations and as a district reporter to the regional council. The city of Třebíč awarded him with honorary citizenship.
