By Arin Gencer
Members of Gulfport's Czechoslovak Cultural Center remember a time when hundreds of Czechoslovaks filled the center on Sundays for authentic Czech food, music and dancing.
They remember women meeting for midweek lunches and canasta while men talked politics on the other side of the room. They remember three- and four-piece bands and circles of four couples dancing the beseda, the Czech national dance. They remember a 40-member choral group that put on skits and programs in Czech.
"We had a waiting list to join," said Gloria Lomicka, 77, referring to the club's earlier days, when it boasted as many as 500 members. "We actually had to turn people away."
Now the building on 49th Street South that once was brimming over with life is gradually emptying, leaving echoes of its fuller days when local Floridians and out-of-towners from New York and Illinois, among other states, would flock together to celebrate their Czechoslovak heritage. Bands cost too much. Volunteers are lacking. The choral group disbanded.
"It kept getting smaller and smaller," said Matilda Hanacek, 75, known as Tilly to her friends. "We were down to people who didn't have voices."
Because of Florida's small Czechoslovak population, Gulfport might seem an unlikely spot for the Cultural Center. The 2000 census showed that less than 1 percent of Floridians identified themselves as having Czechoslovak ancestry. But former club president Frances Podlena easily explains how this gathering came to be.
"We're Czechoslovakian," she said. "We look for a Czechoslovakian place." The small, quiet beach community of 12,500, made up of artists, retirees and commuters, is not the first place one would think to look. But in Gulfport, Czechoslovaks found a way to preserve some of the most cherished aspects of the Old World, even as they became part of the new one outside the walls of the hall.
Lomicka attended the club's first meeting in March 1953. The group met at various locations, one on Park Street and another on Burlington Avenue, before buying the 49th Street property in the late 1950s, she said. A bus stop right in front of the building, formerly a factory, made it easier for those without cars to come. As news about the Cultural Center spread by word of mouth, the club grew. The membership now consists of ethnic Czechs, Slovaks and Moravians and ranges from first-generation Czech-Americans whose parents came to the United States when Central Europe was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to World War II refugees and those who fled after the Prague Spring in 1968.
Member Helen Kakulia, 78, recalls the days when the fire department would demand the club not exceed building capacity.
"We had 300 people," said Kakulia, who managed to escape Czechoslovakia with her family shortly after the Soviet army liberated the country from Nazi rule in 1945. "My husband and I came every single Sunday. We used to take the bus here."
But some members died. Others moved closer to their children. On the once-full wooden dance floor, two or three couples move in rhythm with the bouncy, cheerful beat of a polka or the dignified cadence of a waltz as soloist Stefan Matuska plays the accordion and sings.
Dancing the beseda seems out of the question.
"I don't even think we'd be able to put a circle [of four couples for the dance] together now," said Tilly. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is another matter. Strokes, arthritis and other ailments hold them back. Even the music has changed. "Bésame mucho" and "De colores," among other popular tunes, have infiltrated what used to be a primarily Czech repertoire.
Rose Depinto, 88, who has been part of the center since 1978, said this decline in membership has developed only over the last few years. She, her mother, her husband and other family would fill one table by themselves during Sunday lunches.
"I think all that's left is about three of us—and there were eight of us," she said, referring to her family.
Besides the number of members lost to age and illness, the center also lacks the younger blood of many current members' children to revive it and ensure its continuity.
"It's not their thing," said Raymond Lomicka, 84, Gloria's husband. "It's polka, waltzes, fox-trot. It's not their type of rhythm." He turned toward the dance floor and looked to the side of the room where empty chairs and tables stood as though waiting for the crowds that once came. And there's just no time, added Gloria. Her kids have their own kids, jobs and lives.
But this Sunday's count of 47 does not include the "snowbirds" who've headed north for the summer, Ray explained. The club still has more than 100 members, and those who remain are a tightly knit group of old friends who meet to exchange jokes, enjoy good food and speak the mother tongue.
"To me, there's nothing like Czech music," said Gloria. For her, Hanacek and many others, this is the music they were raised with, the dances they saw their parents dance and which they later learned themselves. They find it hard to describe "the overall feeling" of the culture, as Hanacek calls it, that permeates their lives and brings them back each week.
For others, the chance to socialize is enough.
"To me, coming here on Sunday is wonderful," said Depinto. "When I come here I'm with people." Kakulia agreed.
"It's lonesome at home alone," she said.
The fellowship motivates Millie Horak, 77, the club's recording secretary, to drive more than 50 miles from Plant City every weekend to run the bar stocked with Pilsner from the tap and cold bottles of Staropramen and Czechvar beer.
And people are still discovering the club, the warmth and camaraderie among its members drawing them in.
Balsam Fanous, visiting for the first time from Tampa, was delighted by the music and food, which reminded her of her native Egyptian cuisine. She heard about the Cultural Center from her boyfriend and from reading the center's weekly ad in Gulfport's local paper, The Gabber.
"People obviously have a lot of reason to come here," she said. "This is a very cohesive group."
Ladislav Urban, 69, who escaped Czechoslovakia after the Soviets occupied the country in response to the Prague Spring in 1968, joined the group in 2000. He marvels at finding a place to hear his native tongue, even from people who have lived in the United States their entire lives.
"Somehow they still speak the Czech language," he said. He sometimes leaves his table to take up a microphone and sing along to the old Czech favorites played by Matuska, like "Zelene Haje" and "Skoda Lasky," otherwise known as the "Beer Barrel Polka."
As he and others sang of lost loves and green meadows, smiles on their faces as the familiar words rolled off their tongues and reverberated through the hall, it was not difficult to understand what kept them coming.