Then the communists came, pulled out the cherry trees in full bloom with their roots
Jan Ston was born on 9 April 1942 in Bludov, Šumperk region, to parents Alois and Zdeňka, née Březin. The blood of important ancestors runs through his veins. His mother’s uncle Jan Březina became an honorary citizen of the village of Bludov for his memoirs. Another uncle of my mother, priest Antonín Březina, was imprisoned by the Nazis in the Kounic dormitories in Brno during the Second World War for his patriotism. His father’s brother Karel Mansuet Ston was interned as a Capuchin by the communist regime in the Želiv monastery and in the monastery of the Mountain of the Mother of God in Králíky. The family owned a farm in Bludov with 10 hectares of fields. During the collectivisation of the countryside, Father Alois Ston resisted not only the constant visits of agitators, the setting up of disproportionate supplies of agricultural commodities which he had to hand over to the state, but also the threat of imprisonment and the exchange of fields. He farmed privately until his death in 1971. Only then did his fields become part of a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD). Jan Ston worked at home on the farm until he entered basic military service in 1961. After two years at the airport in Moshnov, he started working as a driver. In 1966 he married Maria Kvapilova. They built a house in Bludov, where they moved and raised their six children. After working as a driver, he was employed in associate production in the JZD and then in horticulture until his retirement in 2002. At the time of filming in 2023 he was still living in Bludov.