A chronicler should make an effort not to leave out anything important, write truthfully and in such a way that people would like to read it even many years later
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Karel Větrovec was born June 25, 1932 in Kadov in the Blatná region. His father was a teacher in Bezděkov, where the family moved soon after Karel’s birth. His mother Barbora, née Kohelová, was a housewife and she took care of Karel, his brother Josef (*1936) and his sister Marie (*1942). Karel Větrovec attended a higher elementary school in Kasejovice, where he experienced the end of the Second World War. He witnessed the air raids of American ground attack planes on the railroad from Blatná to Nepomuk. During one afternoon break in school he saw Americans shooting down one of two German airplanes which then crashed near the village Řesanice. The American army arrived to Bezděkov on May 5th and May 6th 1945, and the demarcation line ran through Lnáře, about six kilometres away from Bezděkov, and it followed the state road Pilsen - České Budějovice. On May 11th in the morning, members of Vlasov army arrived to the demarcation line from the direction of Prague and Brdy with the intention of becoming captured by the Americans, but the Americans made them turn back towards the villages Nezdřev and Řesanice. A shoot-out with the Red Army then occurred there. Immediately after the end of the war, Karel began studying the grammar school in Příbram, from which he graduated in 1951. Then he submitted his application to the University of Chemistry and Technology in Prague but he was not admitted for political reasons. He thus went to study to Kutná Hora at the Institute for Ore Research for one year. Thanks to his uncle’s connections, at least he got admitted to the Faculty of Pedagogy of Charles University in Pilsen in 1952, from which he successfully graduated three years later. He was promised a teaching post at schools in Sušice or Horažďovice, but after many complications he eventually began teaching at the Eight-Year Secondary School of Zdeněk Nejedlý in Kašperské Hory, where he continued teaching until 1975 much to the dislike of the political regime. While teaching there, he met Jarmila Šmolová, a teacher of Czech language and history, who became his wife a year later. They had two daughters. Karel was also engaged in extracurricular activities: he led a cycling and hiking club, he helped out in the Svazarm organization as a referee and timekeeper, and in 1968 he began working as a storekeeper in the recently restored Junák organization (Czech Boy Scouts - transl.’s note), which made his personal profile even worse in the view of the school authorities and the Communist Party. In 1975 he thus went to work in the Mykoprodukta company in Sušice where he was gradually promoted to the post of the food inspection laboratory manager. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the city office in Kašperské Hory convinced him to return to school and become the principal’s deputy in Kašperské Hory. Karel then held this post for the following four years. From 1992 he has been following on the work of Mr. Bártík and writing the municipal chronicle of Kašperské Hory.
