By Mike Schiller and Anne Wallace
August 2008
This is the story of our visit to Lucka, Slovakia in the summer of 2008. We traveled to Lucka
to visit the birthplace of my Grandfather Duran and to meet his one remaining sibling, Teresa. Lucka is a small village about a 45 minute drive north of Presov in the eastern parts of the Slovak Republic.To understand the point and poignancy of the trip, you need to know Grandpap’s story, so here is the legend of my Grandfather Duran as I have heard it and remember it. I do not imply accuracy, except to the extent that it reflects whatever collective memories still exist in my family. I will gladly revise the story as family members can convey additional details and accuracy.
John Duran was born November 12, 1903, illegitimate, in the small eastern Slovakian village of Lucka . His mother was Anna Darakova. His father, Jan Duran (my great-grandfather), did not accept John as his own, even though he did marry Anna and have five more children with her. These five children were Frank, Andy, Steve, Sophie, xxx, and Theresa. Grandpap was apparently never included as a full member of the family, was made to live outside the main house (in the barn or some other outbuilding), never got to go to school, never learned to read, and was compelled to work in support of the family from the earliest age. At the earliest moment that he could find the money and the fortitude to leave, he left for the United States and never looked back.As most readers of this story know, John Duran came to western Pennsylvania and became a coal miner. He met and married Anna Van Dzura, who was born in the USA but whose family came from Kamenica , also a village in the Slovak Republic. Curiously, Kamenica is directly over the hill from Lucka, an easy one kilometer walk by trail across pasture and farm land. (The trip by car is about 15 kilometers, requiring a drive down the hill from Lucka to Lipany, north up the valley to the next drainage, and then several kilometers up the other side of the hill to Kamenica.
Grandpap Duran never had any interest in maintaining a connection with the Old Country. As far as anyone knows, he had no communication with anyone who stayed in Lucka. Several of his siblings eventually came to this country, and had various degrees of communication and even return trips to Lucka, but Grandpap Duran wanted nothing to do with the place or people of his origins. His children (my mother and her siblings) all seem to carry the same anathema for their father’s birthplace, never speaking of it, never visiting the place, and never expressing any desire to visit the place. The single exception was when John (Grandpap Duran’s youngest child, and so also my uncle) and Sally (his wife) traveled back to Lucka in 1973. Some of the stories and information retold here I learned from John.
The story I have about Grandpap Duran and his journey to the United States is a combination of stories I heard from my mom (Anastasia) and my Uncle John.
The story has Jan Duran leaving (running away from) home and hopping a train to the coast. When the conductor comes for tickets, he jumps off the train while it is in motion. He lands on a barbed wire fence and gets all cut up. Somehow he gets onto another train (freight train?)) and makes it to the coast.
He manages to get onto a ship headed to New York , but he gets violently ill during the trip (either dizzy and nauseous below decks in the bunks with a large number of fellow émigrés, or he is so weak and sick from the barbed wire wounds, that he is put into a cabin on a bed.) The ship's doctor is brought to examine him. The doctor says he is in such bad shape that he will not live through the night. To help him through the suffering, someone gives him a fifth of brandy, which he drinks throughout the night and passes out until morning, when his condition has improved considerably and he is able to manage better. Apparently, the high alcohol content in his body either killed the infection, or got him past the flu/seasickness and he recovered.
Jan makes it to New York , and enters Ellis Island immigration center, where they kept new-comers in quarantine for three days. He eventually makes it to the Pittsburgh area where his brothers, Frank and Andy, already live. He takes on the American spelling of his name, John, and goes to work in the coal mines, like most immigrants had to do. He meets Anna Van Dzura (grandma) who lived on a farm near Unity, PA at a picnic, walks her home in the rain under his umbrella, and eventually marries her. They live near Brownsville, PA for a while, then eventually settle back in Unity, PA. The rest of the story is us.
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The Durans, 1991
I left Seattle on the afternoon of July 31. Flew overnight to Frankfurt, then on to Vienna. I rented a car and drove to Linz, an hour’s drive west from Vienna to meet Anne and be part of her MFA graduation ceremony from the University of Krems. She was very excited and I was very excited for her. (The photo is Anne with her roommate, Samira, who is from Iran.)
The next morning, August 2, we drove in the direction of Lucka. Prior to leaving the USA, John Duran had put us in touch with his cousin, Steve Figura. Steve is the son of Teresa Duran Figura, the youngest sister of my grandfather, John. Steve was born in Lucka and currently lives in St. Clairsville, Ohio. It ends up that Steve was traveling to Lucka at the same time, to visit with his mother and brother, Emil, and family, as well as to later travel to Poland for a wedding on his wife’s side. We scheduled our arrival in Lucka to be during the time that Steve was also in Lucka. Steve was enormously helpful in making arrangements and then acting as guide and friend once we arrived.
The drive to Lucka was eventful and frustrating. We were pretty sure that Grandpap Duran’s ghost was haunting our journey, doing what he could to keep us from reaching Lucka. Leaving out all the gory details, it started with the four hour traffic jam to cross into Hungary – with no apparent reason since there is no longer any customs or passport control at this border. Once across the border, we realized that we did not have the necessary highway toll pass to drive the highway in Hungary, so we got off the highway to look for a place to purchase the toll pass, but being in the middle of farm country, there weren’t any such places. So we drove on into Slovakia, crossing with no fanfare at the town of Komarno.
Needing a break, we stopped to stretch our legs in Komarno and tried to call Steve in Lucka but neither of our cell phones could get a signal. So we found an internet cafe, ordered a beer and used the WiFi to Skype Steve’s brother’s wife’s cell phone and actually managed to talk to Steve and tell him the story. He suggested we drive on and try to get to Lucka that evening, so we got back in the car and started off on the secondary roads toward Lucka.
That’s about when it started raining. As we rose in elevation and the roads became darker and twistier through the hills of central Slovakia the rain turned to snow. Wonderful. Grandfather’s curse continues. We plugged on, eventually arriving at the town of Lucenec around 10:30 PM. Exhausted and tense, we found a hotel room (and the desk clerk thankfully spoke just enough English), found a WiFi signal in the hotel lobby, called Steve to let him know, then went out to find some dinner. But it was late and all the restaurants were closed and the pubs had stopped serving food, so we sat at the nearby outdoor bar, relaxed and had a few beers for dinner and went to back to the room and fell asleep.
Next morning, we drove several hours (with only a few missed turns, and passing the large US Steel plant outside Kosice – notable since I spent two summers of college working for US Steel) to finally arrive in Lucka about 1:00 PM.
It was not hard to find Emil Figura’s house number on the one main road through the village, but when we knocked no one answered and we were pretty sure that Grandpap was snickering somewhere around the corner.
This was the day of the annual folk festival in Lucka, so we followed the other cars to the top of the road and the site of the festival at the Community Center. We asked several people if they knew Emil or Steve Figura but no one we spoke to seemed to speak English nor recognize their names. Until we asked a fellow who was helping to direct traffic and park cars and he pointed at another fellow and said “That is Emil Figura.”
It ends up that it was Emil Jr., but that was sufficient. Emil Jr. walked us the half mile down to his father’s house, where we met Steve, his wife Jolanda and Emil just heading up to the festival. They took us back to the house where Emil and his wife, Viera live, which is the house BEHIND the house we knocked on – the house we knocked at is actually the house of Emil’s and Steve’s mother, Teresa. Hey had all been having supper in Emil’s house, so no one had seen or heard us knock on Teresa’s door. They were very kind and set out a meal for us even though they had just cleaned up their own meal, and offered us wine and some beer and some whiskey, which we drank, of course. The meal was delicious, the desserts were outstanding – all homemade by Viera.
Teresa is Grandpap’s youngest sister. John and Teresa never met. Steve said she is 82 years old, 23 years younger than Grandpap Duran who would have been 105 in 2008 . John had left Lucka before Teresa was ever born, and never returned. Steve said that his mother had visited the USA once when John was living in Florida, but through an unwillingness to travel and some misdirected and laggard communications, John and Teresa never met in person.
Neither Emil nor Viera nor Teresa spoke English, but Steve was an able translator. Since this was the weekend of the village festival, all six of Emil’s kids were home and we met them all. The older ones spoke good English, the younger ones were still learning. Martin is an engineer in Prague, Emil is an engineer in Bratislava, Paul and Daniel work in Kosice (the nearest large city and the center of activity is Eastern Slovakia), Antony is in high school and the youngest, Jacob is still in elementary school. Steve’s two daughters had also traveled with him and his wife, Jolanda. Stephanie and Monika are both in high school.
After lunch we walked up to the festival. We had several beers, met many people who lived in Lucka, or who had once lived in Lucka and were back for the festival, including some number of distant relatives whose names are already lost to my memory. The folk music was very good and very fun.
During the afternoon, Martin walked us up to the cemetery so we could see the graves of my great grandparents. I struggle to see the family resemblance for myself, but perhaps you will find a resemblance for yourself. Remarkably, these photos I brought back were the first time that my mother remembers seeing photos of her grandparents. My mom is 75 years old.
We had a very pleasant walking tour of Lucka. Apparently, the house where John grew up no longer exists, but this house was the same age and next to where the Durans lived. Most of Lucka, however, was very well-kept and a pretty little village with all the modern conveniences one would expect. Martin, and later Steve, pointed out the path over to Kamenica, where Grandma Duran’s family is from. Martin said that Lucka probably had about 700 full time residents, which seemed about right.
We had more beer and dinner of goulash, bread and stuffed cabbage at the festival. After dinner there was live folk music for dancing on the basketball court in the yard. Anne and I danced for a while, then the music changed over to a hip European techno rock hip hop mix that we found impossible to dance to (but which was not stopping the hundreds of teenagers and twenty-somethings now descending on the festival site), so we left with Steve and Jola and drove down to the town of Lipany where we had a hotel room for the night.
In the morning, Steve and Emil picked us up in Emil’s car and drove us up to Kamenica. It was very similar is size and character to Lucka and had no other outstanding features.
We went back to Lucka to Emil’s house and visited and had a big Sunday supper with the family, including several shots of Slivovitz as an appetizer. We shared (and left with them) the many photos of Grandpap Duran and his descendants that we had taken with us (Thanks, Mom). We also left a variety of wine, candies, dried fruit, t-shirts, caps and other gifts from Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. I think we were able to honor their hospitality properly, and lighten our traveling load considerably. We said our goodbyes after supper. It was just the right amount of time to visit, to enjoy the hospitality without being a burden.
It seemed that Teresa very much enjoyed seeing photos of her brother and many of her relatives that she had never gotten to meet. We told stories of all the relatives, and Steve would translate back and forth, and it was a very fun visit. We did not learn any specific stories about Grandpap Duran since no one who knew him was still alive, but it was wonderful to get a sense of the place and the people from which he came, even if the place had not been kind to him at the time .
We took one last walk along the main street, then drove back to Lipany and on to Stary Smokovec in the north of Slovakia. There we would spend two days hiking and exploring in the Tatra Mountains, and spending quite a few hours thinking and talking about our visit to Lucka. It was a special trip for us. It was special to see some of the family’s roots that had always been so hidden. I wish my mom had traveled with us, but at least we were able to share some of the photos and stories with her.
We hope that you enjoy our story and photos, too. Feel free to ask any questions or send us any corrections or commentary – we’d love to hear from you.
All the best to you and your families.
Mike Schiller and Anne Wallace
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Copy of the Noordam passenger manifest that includes Jan Duran (Line 8):
Anne Mike
One of our cats, named Macka (pronounced “MAACH – ka”, meaning “cat” in Slovak)
