I did not want what comrades ordered me to do
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Miloš Chaloupka was born on July 5, 1946, in Pilsen. As a child he suffered from pneumonia, serious meningitis, asthma and hay fever, which he suffers from still today. His parents pampered their only son and, in order that he had enough of damp air, they bought a cottage with a plot of land over the river in Litice near Pilsen. He cycled there every day with his grandfather and father. He was interested in music since his youth and started playing piano and organ. During the unrest after the monetary reform, on Monday, June 1, 1953, he and his mother walked through the city and watched the disturbed crowds. On that day, his mother’s father, František Holub, did not return from work. He was arrested on the way home, thrown on a wagon where he broke his leg. He was subsequently arrested and he served fifteen months in the Pankrác prison. Miloš Chaloupka graduated of the primary school and apprenticed as a mechanician of office machinery. On completing his training, he worked in Kancelářské stroje Plzeň [Office Machinery Pilsen] for the next twenty-eight years. He extended his education by evening study of Technical School, of which he graduated in 1970. During the 1968 occupation he took part in the demonstration at the radio building, the Mír Square. In the mid 1970s he married and the pair had a daughter in 1976. Miloš Chaloupka took part in the demonstrations for the fall of the communist regime but today he is disappointed from the course the events took after 1989. In 1992 he left his company and took up several other jobs. In 1998, he became the production manager of the Pilsen Philharmonics. He enjoyed the work, which he found fulfilling, and left it only on retirement in 2012. Even today, his diary is full and he has to refuse work. He plays piano and organ both solo and in three ensembles. He takes care of his garden and looks forward to another harvest of his favourite tomatoes.
