Women's Portraits

Běla Petříková

Born at České Budějovice on 12.12.1925, as the only child of a house painter and a dressmaker. After having finished the elementary school and the town school, she went three years to a family school and became teacher of domestic work. It was during World War II when she was endangered by forced labour in Nazi Germany. She decided to continue her study. She enrolled in the fourth year of Teacher Institute where she studied French, chemistry and mathematics for a year. In order to go on studying at the university, she passed the secondary school leaving exam at a grammar school.

Desire for education and sports

I had a gift for movement and after being admitted at the Faculty of Education I started studying history and physical education. I chose the discipline combination of “History and Physical Education” at the Institute for Education of Physical Education Professors.

Thanks to the support and financial security of my family – my father owned one of the biggest painting companies of České Budějovice – I could fulfil my life dream. I loved skiing. Thanks to my tenacity, diligence and desire to rank among the best ones I advanced to wider national team of women’s skiing. We trained in the Giant Mountains and High Tatra Mountains the whole winter period and we had to manage the exams in shorter time than the others.

It was a demanding period by I had to confront the challenges. To join education and sports was conditioned by observance of due discipline. Personal discipline and order accompany my life even today. Results of my effort and will arrived. I took the 12^th – 14^th place in skiing, downhill race and slalom. When I finished studying teaching, my unrepeatable student life full of active skiing ended.

Teacher’s profession

After graduation, I started working in a small border town in the Region of Ústí as a young and single teacher. I started teaching in local ungraded school and could not find satisfaction from the acquired education and fulfilment of my personal goals. After half a year of cheerless life in the borderlands I married and left for Brno. I started teaching physical education at the Department of Physical Education of the University of Brno in the capital of Moravia.

When my first child, son Jiří, was born, my husband and I returned home, to České Budějovice. Two years later, our daughter Lenka was born. She warmed towards mountains and skiing and devoted a part of her life to them like me. She achieved the second performance class in skiing and took a place among the top ten sportsmen in the region two years in sequence. She founded a child skiing school at the Koh-i-noor Sporting Association, and the skiing school has been training beginning child skiers for several dozens of years.

After Lenka had been born, I continued my teaching job at the grammar school and Teaching school of České Budějovice where young Iva Janžurová, today a seventy-year old significant Czech actress, was studying teaching at that time.

Teaching brought me back to the Faculty of Education in České Budějovice, to the Department of Physical Education. I taught beginning physical education teachers for elementary and secondary schools until I was sixty, and I passed them my life experience, love for motion, skiing, mountains and nature.

Memories that give joy

I like remembering my students. When I was fifty-eight, I still led training of eighteen-year old students in the winter centre at Železná Ruda as skiing instructor. I first was afraid of a boy sportsmen team. I could not imagine how they would accept the training, particularly as for discipline. But my fears dispersed after the first day on cross-country skis already. I obviously captured their attention not only with my technique and style of skiing, which they had expected from an instructor, but also with my good physical fitness. I set the pace and they often stayed far behind me in the loipe. I got their respect and was able to transform the weekly training on mountain slopes and in loipes into a challenging, but relaxed skiing lessons completed with friendly lingering at the fireplace in the evening in the chalet. We experienced also unbelievable stories there together.

Sport leads to health

A well known proverb says: “Sport leads to health”. I have lived and breathed sports my whole life. Today I am through several surgeries, but I still seek motion and meaningful activity. I am eighty-four, I am interested in the world and its events, I follow news from our country and from abroad, give remedial classes of German to secondary school students and learn English. I read, do crosswords and handiwork. When the weather gets warm, I spend all my time in nature, at a cottage near České Budějovice. I enjoy each day of my life.

Teaching as mission

I devoted my professional life to pupils, students, future teachers and sportsmen. I have always perceived teaching as my mission.

Jiřina Tampírová