Women's Portraits

Otilie Tymalová

A 77-year-old, vital, pleasant and friendly woman, loving movement, winter and water sports.Member of the Sokol sporting organization, enthusiastic organizer of physical education, admirer of nature, excellent mother and grandmother.

Statement on life  

I was born in Borovany and lived there till I was sixteen. My father was a technical clerk at South Bohemian Power Station, my mother was a housewife and helped her parents in the nearby village of Borovany. My grandfather owned a restaurant there and the events in it influenced my childhood and my further life. My grandfather was a convinced patriot, and as it was common in the beginning of the newly born Czechoslovak Republic, he was enthusiastically engaged in building it. The “Sýmalka” Restaurant soon became a centre of social life of the village, often hosting even “significant” personalities. My grandfather, as an eager official of local Sokol Association, contributed to its origin in 1907 already. The restaurant constituted the centre of Sokol and its hall served as the gymnasium.

Sokol in my life

I was a Sokol member from time immemorial. I grew up in the gymnasium and always tried hard to do what the other gymnasts did. Movement is a natural need to me. The community with the others and sharing of the ideas of the Sokol movement was a deposit for all of my life. I adopted the Sokol movement as opinion trend and life style. I will stay a Sokol member till the end of my life, in spite of all the life peripetia. The fact that Sokol stopped existing twice, when it bothered the German occupants and then the communist regime, couldn’t change anything on it.

I was a Sokol member at Borovany till the beginning of the war. After the war, the Sokol activity was restored and I started exercising in Sokol České Budějovice I. First as pupil, then as junior. I was a member of the junior self-government and helped to lead younger gymnasts from the beginning. After moving to Jindřichův Hradec, I was shortly engaged there too. Unfortunately, Sokol was dissolved as an organization soon after that.

After the downfall of communism in 1989, Sokol was restored. I was engaged in its restoration as a gymnast, a trainer, but also as an official and employee of Hus regional organization. I have been active in different functions since then. I was a secretary of the regional organization, chief of the České Budějovice Association, and last ten years I have been working as a member of the control commission of the Czech Sokol Association in Prague. I was engaged in organizing and training the compositions of the three festivals that have taken place since Sokol was restored. And not only of the festivals but also of a lot of other events organized by Sokol alll over the republic. I have been still exercising and I will certainly be present at the training for the next, fifteenth, Sokol festival next year.

I was interested in everything related to sports, and when I was going in for any of them, I always did it at full blast. I loved aviation. I piloted gliders and was aviation instructor, I played tennis with success and I achieved the first performance class in sledging.

A childhood experience

I have a childhood experience stored deep in my memory. It comes from the end of the war. We lived in České Budějovice near the railway station then. The first air strike on the town was directed just there. My parents decided that we could not wait for next air strike and that we would be safer at Borovany. The railway station was out of operation, no trains ran, and so my mother had to set out on foot with two daughters and baggage. In Suché Vrbné quarter, an unknown willing woman invited us to her house to wait the air strike announced by the sirens out in her house. We accepted her offer. But when we talked to her for a while, we learned that mum’s friends from Borovany lived two or three houses further. We quickly thanked and ran to the friends to wait the air strike out with them. When everything ended and all people left their hiding places, the house that had stood there was not there any more and people pulled our host out of its ruins. She did not have legs. We finally got to Borovany.

Soon after that the retreating Hungarian army passed through the village and occupied our restaurant to stay there overnight in spite of grandfather’s protests. In the morning one of the soldiers fired when cleaning his gun; the shot perforated the ceiling and set fire to the straw in the loft. “Sýmalka” was destroyed by the fire. That was actually the beginning of the end of our “Sýmalka”. When my parents rebuilt it with maximum effort and minimum funds they had got, the communist regime expropriated it and then it fell into ruin because of bad care and finally ceased to exist.

In father’s footsteps

I studied humanities at a grammar school in České Budějovice. As my father who had

achieved a leading position at JČE, South Bohemian Power Station, fell out of favour with the regime of then, he was transferred to Jindřichův Hradec. We moved to that town. I started studying at a technically oriented grammar school that corresponded to my nature much better. I had inherited my father’s technical talent and skills, which I could often use later in my life both in my job and in common life when I had to care for my family alone. I was able to manage technical issues better than many men. I followed my father’s footsteps even in my professional life. I worked in power engineering all my life, first in the JČE headquarters, later in the heating plant in technical functions.

Return to České Budějovice

In 1957 I was transferred to České Budějovice where I am living till today. I married here and gave birth to two children, a son and a daughter. Unfortunately, my marriage failed and ended with divorce. I was 36 then, and my children ten and eleven. I brought them up alone, and in order to provide corresponding living standard to them, I was not afraid of taking any other work additionally to my job. The care for my children and hard workload were very demanding, often exceeding my forces. But I always found time to go in for sports with my children. Winter and water sports brought us to the Lokomotiva sporting organization.

My children grew up, graduated and became independent. Today they have their own families already and are well anchored. My grandchildren are adult too. They give me joy and I am happy about their success.

My plans for the future

Only this year I decided to stop working and to engage more in my hobbies. I want to enjoy my country cottage. I will have the cottage plastered and arrange a lot of other improvements. Now I am experiencing huge joy about having restored a beautiful styled tiled stove. Imagine that a fox came to see me to my cottage. She looked in through the open window of my bedroom in the night, watched me for a while and then left. She came to bid me good night.

I want to go on exercising and staying among people, to engage in the preparation of the Sokol festival and then experience the beautiful atmosphere of the meeting again. I help everywhere people need me – in my son’s company, in Hus Association of the Czechoslovak Church and in the committee of the Association of Owners of Housing Units.

A wish in conclusion

I wish robust health and sufficient forces to complete my plans. My life was not easy but I

would not change anything on it. I experienced both hard and happy moments. I have done a lot of work and I have a family I can rely on. I think it was a honest and good life that allows me having joy and always looking forward to something.

Miloslava Kruchňová