"Each time someone asks me how we started, I told you it was a coincidence, but then it was important if you had the money to start it up. Because at the time, who had no acquaintances from the totalitarian past, the beginnings were really not easy. It is said that everyone stood at the same starting line, but that was not true. Those who had acquaintances, who was in the party at the time and had the right acquaintances had a great advantage, so in fact, thanks to those acquaintances, one was closer to getting a loan. Because the same people were still sitting there at the time, just after the revolution, they didn't change right away. Well, people like us, who suddenly decided like this, wouldn't have gotten a loan right away, if we had no guarantee. So we were very lucky to have just worked before. We were very hardworking, but also frugal, we were really like maybe even too much. We thought, whether we would buy this at all or not, we preferred to save money so that we could have a better car, we didn't buy it anyway, we had a Trabant."
"Well, it wasn't on part of our family. But I know people who were in that party, and they were basically decent people, but they joined due to certain circumstances, just like a job, that they couldn't do the job they wished to do."
"Then it was the morning of August 21st, and my mother came to wake me and said: 'So they're here.' And I didn't want to believe it, I was crying, and it was a terrible, terrible disappointment. And even more disappointing then was what followed. Well, I have to say that I experienced that year 1968 as a university student. And we actually took it even tougher as young people and looked forward to the freedom at that university, and then there were the student strikes at universities. I remember that I went to the betting committee because I could type, so I went there to write leaflets, and in the end it turned out that, of course, it was all for nothing and the regulations came; Dubček was removed from his post, and the hard normalization has come. All the tutors at the university lecturing at the university at that time, and commented with enthusiasm at that time in the Prague Spring, our upcoming freedom, so they were all removed, they were not allowed to teach. The dean from the university was also gotten rid of, as he rode in the procession of majáles university, where the students, of course, the recessions, made such allegorical cars, it was like the anti-Russian tuned, that was before the Russians came here. It was then a very great sobering up, the crazy event with the Palach came and then it was just all lost and we experienced great disillusionment."
Jaroslava Valová, née Štyndlová, was born on April 15, 1947 in Dobříš as the youngest of three daughters. Her parents came from Čimelice, where her father Bedřich worked as a chief gardener at the noblemen family of Schwarzenberg. Jaroslava graduated from primary school in Dobříš. At the age of eleven, she spent several months in a children’s hospital for spinal scoliosis. In the years 1962–1966 she studied at the School of Economics in Příbram and then worked for a year in the Jitex spinning mill in Písek. In 1967 she began her studies at the University of Agriculture in České Budějovice, the field of operations and economics. She experienced the promising Prague Spring and the occupation of the Warsaw Pact troops there in August 1968. She then went on strike at school and wrote anti-communist leaflets. Like most people she took badly tough normalization that followed. While still a student, she married and gave birth to her first son, Vojtěch, who has an even younger son, Tomáš, and a daughter, Jana. Her sister Ludmila Polesná, who was thirteen years older, was a successful water slalom skier and won the World Championships several times. Jaroslava Valová recalls the Velvet Revolution, when she and her husband went to demonstrate in Wenceslas Square and Letná. Shortly after the revolution, they started a business and founded the SIKO company in Čimelice. They started with the sale of ceramic tiles and today are one of the largest companies in the Czech Republic. Jaroslava Valová lives in Čimelice and already has eight grandchildren.
