As a New York kid, I wanted nothing to do with Czech and Czechs
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Norma Zabka was born Norma Briza in the middle of the Czechoslovakian quarter in the heart of New York City on 7 August 1928. Her birthplace was right across the street from Sokol Hall. Her grandparents had immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia - then a non-existent country - sometime in the second half of the 19th century. Her parents Helena and Frank probably met in Baltimore, but they spent their entire lives in New York City in the immigrant neighborhood that stretched between 70th and 80th Streets on the so-called Upper East Side. At that time there was one Czech shop next to another, several churches, a library and a bank. As the city grew after World War II, much of the Czechoslovak community moved out to the outlying suburbs, but Norma stayed in the neighborhood all her life except for a few interruptions. She started attending Sokol when she was about five years old. Later she met her future husband there. She fell in love not only with him, but also with gymnastics, so much so that she devoted herself to it her whole life. She studied physical education at NYU, trained at Sokol, taught at Hunter College, passed several exams for sport judges and made it to the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Seoul, Atlanta and Barcelona. She was at the foundation of rhythmic gymnastics as a separate discipline in the USA. Although she did not want to have anything to do with Czech language or anything Czech when she was in elementary school, her interest in Czech culture and events in the country appeared naturally thanks to her involvement in Sokol. She watched with enthusiasm the performance and success of Vera Čáslavská at the Olympic Games in Mexico. She tried to learn as much as possible in Sokol from the legendary Marie Provazníková, who emigrated in 1948 during the London Olympics. Norma Zabka considered Marie Provazníková as her mentor and together they worked on the development of Sokol in New York. Norma Zabka became president of the New York Sokol Hall for 27 years and in the 1990s she attended the first re-established All-Sokol meeting in Prague. In 2023, she was living in her Manhattan apartment, just a few blocks from where she was born.
