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Our dear Parents!
Brothers, Sisters-in-law and Nephews,
We all beg you to accept our heartfelt greetings along with a humble bow to the ground and a warm kiss.
Dear Parents and Brothers,
In the first lines of my letter I haste to inform you that we, thank God, are alive and well, wishing you all to be safe and sound and get every success from God in your undertakings now and ever.
I wonder why you are not receiving my letters. I have sent you two letters and received no reply to either of them yet. And I have no idea what is wrong with them.
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As regards the letter that Stephan had sent to Vasiliy, Vasiliy forwarded it to me, and from it I learned that all of you are safe and sound, thank God, so it was a great joy for me to get to know that.
Dear parents,
I sold the workshop I had owned, and now I work in Du-Bois in a place where the straitsstraits) (the word in the letter that we put in italics looks like was located, and I make $100 a month. But soon, I will earn even more, as we are about to move to a new workshop. My life here is quite good: I work as I like and do what I want to do. I work 8 or 9 hours a day.
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Dear Parents and Brothers,
In my previous letter which I sent to you I explained everything in detail about how I had got married, etc. But in case you have not received it yet I will once again describe the circumstances and how it happened that I got married. (The following sentences of the letter are somewhat unintelligible having being written in a simple and ungrammatical language making them difficult to understand). During this world war, everything has become so expensive that for two it is perhaps easier to subsist than to live alone. In those inns they used to do whatever they wanted… Therefore we got angry for that, and some of us got married, and now we have a new life.
(Page 4 translated from Czech by Dr. Miroslav Koudelka:)
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Dear and beloved parents:
Secondly, when I was sick, no one cared about me, and then I remembered you, dear parents and dear mother, how you had taken care of us when we had been sick, how you did not sleep all nights long. No one compares to you, dear mother. Anyway, things then brought me to a decision to make a big change and I got married.
I do not know what else I should write you. Vasil is sending you his pictures, one for you and one for Mr. Ropernicky, and if he has any spare ones, he will send them to the brothers and the sister.
Here is my address:
Mr. John Zvolanek
Du-Bois, Neb.
Pawnee Co.
America
For now, stay with God,
Sincerely,
Your son
Jan Zvolanek
When you get the letter, write soon.
Page four's reference to the fact that Uncle Jim is sending his photos indicates that this letter was part of Uncle Jim's returned letter of October 1917. Mabel and John would have been newlyweds and (I assume) unaware that they were expecting my mother Marjory in early May. Otherwise, I feel sure John would have mentioned it to his family.
I don't know how my Grandma Mabel would feel about the less-than-romantic explanations of why John decided to marry! However John's message to his mother, my Great-Grandmother, about her tender care is quite touching.
And so -- this letter proves that both my grandfather John and his brother Jim contributed to the 1917 letter to Russia that came back "Return to John Zvolanek."
