Model at the drawing board
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Jarmila Trávníčková, née Vranečková was born on 25 June 1949 in Gottwaldov. Her father Josef joined partisans at the end of World War II and later arrived in Zlín together with the Red Army and he got married to Jarmila´s mum there. Jarmila went to school in the 1950s that were highly affected by the Stalinist Era during which for example the teacher bullied their religious schoolmate in front of the whole class. She started to study at Secondary Technical School in Gottwaldov, majoring in construction. When she was seventeen years old and had her dancing lessons dress sewed, she was asked whether she wanted to be a model. Jarmila then modelled at the big fashion shows that took place only in Prague and Gottwaldov in the second half of the 1960s. In 1971, she got married to Jan Trávníček, a guitar player and a singer of the Ozvěny band, which operated under the management of the monopolistic art agency Pragokoncert. It bullied its charges rather than helping them in any way. The musicians had to pay Pragokoncert in foreign currency for going abroad and bring back expensive bribes from their travels to be able to go abroad again next time. Her husband´s foreign travels often meant six months apart from him for Jarmila and their daughter Daniela. Some fellow citizens did not like the family. They envied Jarmila for her husband who went to the West and also for the fact that she worked as a model for the Centroprojekt company. Jarmila Trávníčková started to work as an editor in a regional newspaper after the fall of the Communist regime and she became a spokeswoman for the Zlín Municipal Theatre in 2001. She and her husband Jan were living in Zlín in 2021.
