Word: vlasta
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
August 1968 was a traumatic month for all Czechs, but it was piquantly and privately so for Vlasta Gabriel, the young mother of two small children. Ten days after Warsaw Pact armies rumbled into Czechoslovakia. Vlasta's husband Bedrich, an electrician and occasional truck driver in Decin, bundled the couple's children into the family car and defected to the West. He eventually settled with his émigré mother in Yucaipa, Calif., (pop. 26,000) and died of lung cancer not long after. Vlasta plunged into a lonely, uphill custody battle for her son and daughter...
...Vlasta refused to go along when the rest of her family fled or to join them later because, she now says, she did not want to leave her home and country. She also claims she was advised by Czech legal authorities that she would be able to get her children back. Vlasta filed for divorce in Czechoslovakia, sued for the custody of the children, and asked the International Red Cross to help her get them back...
First Round. The divorce and decree theoretically awarding Vlasta custody were granted in October of 1968, and she later remarried. There the matter would probably have rested had not Bedrich died, since it is unlikely that a U.S. court would have ordered the children home while their father was living. But his death left the children wards of the court, since his mother was unable to care for them...
During Gabriel's illness, the children-named after their parents, Bedrich, now 7, and Vlasta, 8-were often cared for by a local couple, Mr. and Mrs. Roy Smith. Smith, an Air Force Reserve sergeant, and his wife, a nurse's aide, eagerly added them to their own household of three children upon Gabriel's death and filed suit for legal guardianship. The couple's claim was based on Gabriel's deathbed wish that the children remain in the U.S., and also on the argument that they were too Americanized to return home. Vlasta pressed...
...Good Home. The Czech press headlined Vlasta's setback and for three days blasted away about the "kidnaping." Then the Czech government apparently decided to cool the publicity and generate some diplomatic heat instead, even though the State Department is powerless to intervene, or even comment, while the case is in a U.S. court. If the court ruled against Vlasta, a Czech Foreign Ministry official warned, "Czech-American relations will be disturbed for a long time to come." The Czechs also say that they are prepared to put pretty Vlasta, 31, on display at a press conference...