Everyone should appreciate each day
Jana Rokytová, maiden name Pektorová, was born on June 21, 1940 in Počenice in the Kroměříž region into a teaching family. She has been taught the ideals of democracy and humanity by her father Bohumil and her mother Marie since her early childhood. Her father had considerable problems because of his worldview, which he did not hide in any way, whether it was personal hatred from the officials of the communist regime, or a hopeless possibility of a better job than the inferior workers’ professions. Jana Rokytová was accompanied by her father’s stigma for decades. Where she entered, they saw her as the daughter of “the Pektor.” She was admitted to the grammar school, but after successfully passing the school-leaving examination she had no chance to go to university. Thanks to her acquaintance, she was able to start working in the Children’s Home for the Mentally Handicapped instead of the Single Agricultural Cooperative. Later she worked in the Deaf Institute. Then she managed to get a pedagogical minimum, and as a result, she finally got into education sector. However, she had to show some attraction for the working class by selling furniture for one year. Nevertheless, she continued to struggle because of her surname. The situation improved only after the wedding, when she, thanks to her husband, became Rokytová. During the sixties her son Mirko and daughter Pavla were born. Thanks to her employment in the Regional Cultural Center, she was able to travel to Greece and France as a methodologist for small theaters and recitals. In the post-November events, she worked shortly as a manager in the Civic Democratic Alliance, where she left again for dissatisfaction with growing opportunism. She returned to the education sector and taught literary drama at the Elementary Art School in Vsetín until 1995.
