Dad commuted three hundred kilometers on a moped, so he invented the Velorex
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František Stránský was born on 10 September 1946 in Dolní Sloupnice. He lived all his life in Česká Třebová. His father, František Stránský (1914- 1954), had a locksmith’s workshop and a store with motorcycle parts, and he was also the designer of the Velorex motor tricycle. His mother, Ludmila (1923-1996), helped her husband in the shop. František also had a sister, Oldřiška, born in 1944. Father built the first vehicles in the late 1930s. He and his brother Mojmír patented a motor tricycle called OS-KAR in 1945. After 1948, the communists nationalized the Stránský family workshop and incorporated it into the Hradec Králové Velo union. František Stránský became a capitalist. Not only the father suffered from surveillance and oppression, but also the son, who was mocked by children at school. In order to produce the tricycle in series, it received the designation of a vehicle for invalids in 1950, and the company moved in 1952 to the Velorex Solnice Production Cooperative. In January 1954, two of the closest people in the family died - father and grandfather. František was going through the worst time in his life and felt lonely for a long time. Only his apprenticeship as a toolmaker and independent creative work, which he enjoyed, gave him security. He could not establish a closer relationship with his mother’s new partner but was very fond of his half-sisters Blanka and Alena. In the same year, OS-KAR was renamed Velorex. In 1966-1967 František Stránský was in the military, and then in 1971, he married Věra Valiková (1953-2010), together they had three sons, born in 1971, 1974, and 1977. He worked at Strojtex Česká Třebová, then at his uncle Mojmír’s communal plastics workshop. After 1989, František Stránský went to work in Austria, and for 17 years, he commuted there during the week doing construction work. He found shelter there with his cousin, who emigrated there in the 1980s. As a religious person, he knows that no matter what he experienced in his life, he always had a protective hand over him.
