The Filipek Story

Acknowledgements

By Dave Jordan
Many people were instrumental in providing research, stories, recollections, letters, memorabilia, and enthusiasm for The Filipek Story. Without their efforts, we would not have such a comprehensive story. In particular, I would like to acknowledge and thank the following for their contributions.
  1. I wish to thank Miroslav Kandl for his preservation of the original Filipek home in Kolence where he still keeps some of Antonín and Katerina Filipek's furnishings and paintings.
  2. I wish to thank Vladimir Kandl for his extensive genealogy work. His work provided key information in identifying our distant Bohemian relations, including names, dates and who immigrated and who stayed. I also wish to thank Vladimir for his extensive research of the ownership of the Filipek Farm and genealogy going back to the late 1500s.
  3. I wish to thank Cindy Filipek Johnson for her research and connections with the Filipek family in Kolence. She had an interest from a very young age and was thus able to preserve many stories and pictures that would have been lost if she had waited. Through her visit to Kolence in 1991 we know so much about the origins of the Filipeks and what the farm looks like. I also wish to thank her for sharing her Jan Filipek Picture Collection, writing stories, searching Czech history books, and her enthusiasm for all things Filipek.
  4. I wish to thank Janice Filipek, Cindy's mother for her patient help in translating recent letters and old Filipek letters from the 1890s. Through her work we can see their words and get a feel for what they were like.
  5. I wish to thank Tom Johnson, Cindy's husband for letting Cindy share with me numerous items in his grandmother's Wendell Phillips Scrapbook. Without these pictures, I would have had no idea of the immense size and everyday goings on of the school around 1910.
  6. I wish to thank Terry Nelson for her intense interest in the Filipek and Nemec families. She has done extensive document research both in Czechoslovakia and the USA and has brought out the detailed data we so badly needed to put together our Filipek story together. In this effort she looked beyond her own line to search for the roots and connections to the Sokolik, Jana, and Palecek families. I would also like to thank Terry for sharing her Grandfather Filipek's extensive picture collection and insightful old Filipek letters. Without these pictures and letters we would not know their faces or their thoughts. I also wish to thank Terry for her decision to invest in a careful restoration of Vaclav's Agronomic Journal.
  7. I wish to thank Rose Skoblik for sharing stories with me in 1977, and allowing me to photograph her two Filipek Watercolors. She graciously offered to take them outside where I could see them better and to take better pictures. One of these photographs is now the opening Filipek Entrée Web Page. It is a beautiful watercolor, full of detail and a fitting image to our Filipek history.
  8. I wish to thank Rosemary Larson for sharing her Filipek stories and remembrances and for her continued preservation of the famous Filipek watercolors.
  9. I wish to thank Jeanne Jordan for sharing with us stories about the Filipek past and for her preservation of the 3rd Filipek Watercolor and Katherine's salt and pepper shaker.
  10. I wish to thank Virginia Leonard for her stories and hints over the years. Long ago she shared the fascinating, My Life as I Live It, a personal story by her father Theodore Sokolik which has done so much to sort out the early years in America of the Sokolik, Jana and Filipek families. Without this story we would be at a loss to know that the Janas and Sokoliks went to Minnesota and that the two Filipek sisters had untimely early deaths that changed their family history forever.
  11. I also wish to thank John Leonard, Virginia's husband for his genealogy interest in the Sokoliks and being the e-mail link with Virginia.
  12. I wish to thank Ted Curtis and his wife Celia Bouchard for sharing their Kolence pictures and stories with us. Without their photo of the church at Novosedly, I might never have realized the true location of the scene in the third watercolor.
  13. I wish to thank Mary Fritz for sharing with us that she has a fourth watercolor and that she is the repository for numerous old letters and photos from JK Sokolik.
  14. I wish to thank Marge O'Dette for her January 1977 letter explaining early Filipek and Nemec history in Chicago and also hinting at the reasons that they came. Without her letter and setting up a visit with Rose Filipek in 1977 I would know far less about our Filipek heritage.