When you want to achieve something, you usually fight for it
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Jaroslava Strážnická, née Mouchová, was born on November 5, 1956, in Přílepy in Moravia. The family of four children kept moving all the time. Her father, a soldier in the army, was shifted from garrison to garrison. In 1964 the family settled in Mladá Boleslav. Her father served with the tank battalion and was responsible for the political education of soldiers. Jiřina liked to read since an early age and enjoyed her school. Her performance was excellent and her parents entered her in an experimental grammar school after her fifth year. During the August occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 the garrison in Mladá Boleslav refused to surrender their barracks and Václav Moucha was reprimanded for having failed to understand properly the entry of allies into our country. After two years, in 1970, the experimental grammar school was closed. Jiřina completed her compulsory school attendance at the primary school and then went to the four-year grammar school. In 1974 her father was stripped of his membership in the Communist Party and sacked from the army. Jiřina graduated of the grammar school but was banned from studying at the university. She passed the state exam in English and Russian and found a job in Czechoslovakian Ceramics, a detached office of the Foreign Trade Company in Benátky nad Jizerou, where she was responsible for dealign with foreign mail. She married and while working and taking care of a young son she managed to complete extra-mural study of foreign trade economy at the Economic University in Prague in 1978 to 1983. In the 1990s she launched a successful private business.
