No Regrets: Growing Up American In An Era of Globalization

By Robert Tomcho

No Regrets: Growing Up American in an Era of Globalization follows the author’s life from his earliest days as the child of Czechoslovakian immigrants to his twilight years. Along the way he introduces us to improbable meetings, amazing coincidences, and fascinating individuals and events, all presented in a clear and, at times, humorous first-person narrative.

Against the backdrop of major demographic changes in America since his ancestors’ immigration in the early 20th century, we follow the author’s journey from homogenous neighborhoods populated by first and second generation Central and Eastern Europeans to a life which embraces the rich racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity of America. Part economic, political, and personal history and part social commentary, the author makes a persuasive case for maintaining an open and tolerant country and society made more important given the recent growth of nativist, anti-immigrant, and racial bias in the United States.

During his life, the author introduces us to important historical figures personally connected with his relatives including the last emperor of China; the Granddaughter of the founder of the Mitsubishi Corporation; and Josephine Baker, the black American performer and World War II spy for the French resistance. Personal and funny anecdotes abound such as a chance meeting and almost tennis challenge to one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Interspersed with these, the author provides valuable advice on such practical matters as buying a house and how to lead a rich and full life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886934281

Robert Tomcho

Robert Tomcho is an American citizen living in Portland, Oregon. He is a graduate of Ohio University and has a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from George Washington University. He is currently retired having spent over 30 years with the U.S. Government. His career included stints with the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C. as well as with the Government Accountability Office in both Washington and San Francisco. He has been married to the same woman for over 48 years and has two children and two grandchildren.

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About the Author

Robert Tomcho is an American citizen living in Portland, Oregon. He is a graduate of Ohio University and has a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from George Washington University. He is currently retired having spent over 30 years with the U.S. Government. His career included stints with the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Washington, D.C. as well as with the Government Accountability Office in both Washington and San Francisco. He has been married to the same woman for over 48 years and has two children and two grandchildren.

Dedication

This memoir is dedicated, first and foremost, to my wife, Lisa, who has been the best wife and partner one can ever expect to have. Secondly, to my parents who taught me many valuable lessons, not the least of which, is the importance of hard work, self-reliance, and assuming responsibility for all of one’s actions. Finally, to my children, grandchildren, and all those to follow who now will have a record of who their ancestors were, something I’m sure most of us would like to have.

Copyright Information ©

Robert Tomcho 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable for criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Tomcho, Robert

No Regrets: Growing Up American In An Era of Globalization

ISBN 9798886934274 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886934281 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912526

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

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Acknowledgment

I would first like to acknowledge my wife for her patience during the writing of my memoirs and for agreeing to listen to my many readings of it. I would also like to acknowledge my friends, Joe Allerdice and Dave Martinez, for their helpful advice and suggestions. Finally, I would like to recognize my cousin, Louise Melnik, who, as a former English teacher, provided me with a very detailed and excellent critique of my writing. Needless to say, any errors and omissions that remain are my sole responsibility.

Introduction to the Life Story of

Robert R Tomcho

This is the year 2020 and I am now writing my life story. I am doing this, in part, to document what I believe is a fairly interesting life, but also to pass onto my children, grandchildren, and all those to follow some insight as to who I am as a person. I only wish that I had more information about my father, mother, grandparents, and those that came before me. Only by knowing our heritage can we fully understand who we are.

Today, I am a 74-year-old man with a wonderful wife of 46 years, two beautiful daughters, and two lovely grandchildren. I live in Portland, Oregon and we are now in the midst of a pandemic where thousands of people have been dying every day. Fortunately, everyone in our family is safe. The cause of the pandemic is the Coronavirus which purportedly originated in China. Needless to say in my 74 years I have never witnessed something as horrific as what I am experiencing now, although that D I received in my college calculus was also pretty bad.

America has changed dramatically over my lifespan. Major changes have taken place in American society, culture, economy, and way of life during this period. I hope to clearly capture those changes and how they affected me as a person. It has been a wonderful journey and I hope that you find it as interesting reading about it as I have had living it. I will start at the beginning where everything should begin.

Childhood Years

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 4, 1946. I was the fifth child with two older brothers, Rich and Paul, and two older sisters, Fran and Mary. I really think that this family position benefited me greatly as my older siblings, by two to ten years, fostered a feeling among them of looking after their little brother. I could learn from their mistakes and from their successes. I am truly grateful for the kindness and affection they bestowed on me.

My paternal grandfather moved from Czechoslovakia in the early twentieth century and purchased a farm in Pennsylvania where he settled with his wife, four sons, and two daughters. I was never able to find out how he was able to move to America and purchase a 220-acre farm. But his move was truly fortuitous given what happened to Czechoslovakia over the ensuing years with the invasion of first, the Nazis, and then the Russians.

My father did not stay long in Pennsylvania and wound up moving to Cleveland, Ohio, with his older brother and sister. I’m not sure why he moved, but I suspect it was for better job opportunities. He found a job as a machinist with his older brother where he worked until his death at 56 years. As a child, our family would regularly visit my dad’s parents on their farm in Wattsburg, Pennsylvania. It was a lot of fun for me because, despite not being of driving age, I was able to drive a tractor on the farm and perform a lot of farm duties such as bailing hay and harvesting vegetables. However, I was a city boy and my country cousins would regularly tease me about my inexperience with farming matters. But it was all in fun.

As with my father, my mother’s parents moved from Czechoslovakia and settled in Cleveland in the early twentieth century. They did not know each other in Czechoslovakia, having come from different villages. The name of my father’s village was Hazlin and my mother’s was Olsov, both in the northeast part of the country close to the border with Poland. My mother was the oldest in a family of six, three girls and three boys. I can’t remember my grandfather and I’m not even sure what he did for a living since he died when I was very young. I sometimes sadly think that, if I were to die today at my grandson’s current age of eight, he probably wouldn’t even remember me as I cannot remember my grandfather. My mother and father took us to visit my grandmother almost every Sunday where my sister Mary and I played with our two cousins, Elaine and Patsy, who were our age and who lived with their parents at my grandmother’s house. My grandmother was a petite, kind lady who always seemed to be in the kitchen cooking some delicious ethnic dishes and chicken soup. The other vivid memory of these visits was the severe alcoholism of my uncle Stanley who was my mother’s sister’s husband. It was not unusual to find him passed out on the couch in the middle of the afternoon, and eventually, my aunt and uncle divorced. Sadly, our family lost track of Uncle Stanley, but my cousin, Elaine, was eventually able to locate her father living on the streets in Southern California. I really felt sorry for her, but her experience made me all the more grateful for having stable parents who did not succumb to such addictions as alcoholism which I’m sure ruined a lot of lives.

The first house I have a memory of living in was located next door to a Catholic Church and rectory. It was in a lower-middle-class neighborhood populated primarily by Czechs and Slovaks. Some of the families came from the same neighborhoods in Europe. I lived in this house which was rented by my parents until I was about eight years old. No African Americans, Asians, or Jews lived there. In fact, not even other European nationalities such as Greek or Italian. I guess one can say it was very homogenous. During this period recent immigrants settled in areas where everyone was basically like themselves. I’m sure this provided a degree of comfort and security for them.

Our family was strictly Catholic, so it was very convenient living right next door to the church. I only have positive memories of this time. I was very close to the Monsignor of the church who raised honeybees. For some reason, priests were fond of raising honeybees. He was a very kind man, and I must say that then and in the future, I have never experienced any of the priestly abuse that has been alleged over the years against the Church. Nothing, but positivity have I had with the clergy of the Catholic Church. During this period, my sister Mary and I played with all the kids in the neighborhood. Unlike today, no need to drive anywhere as everyone was probably within a five-minute walk.

Move to a New House and

Neighborhood

When I was about eight years old, my parents had saved enough money to buy their own house. It was probably about ten miles from the previous house, and in some ways, very similar. It was also in a working-class neighborhood close to a Catholic Church and school. But the area had differences because it was slightly more diverse; still no African Americans or Asians. However, in addition to the Czechs and Slovaks, I was familiar with, I now had classmates who were German, Italian, Polish, and other European nationalities. They were probably, like me, the children or grandchildren of first to third-generation immigrants. To my knowledge, none were French which is curious, because, over the years, I have become enamored with the French language and foreign languages, in general. I am still studying French and hope someday to achieve a degree of fluency.

Of course, even though we were of different nationalities, I’m sure we were not, for the most part, aware of the differences. We basically thought of ourselves as Americans, since most of us were born here. Our parents or grandparents immigrated here years ago, most likely through Ellis Island in New York, which was the immigration gateway to America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. But Europe was the old country about which we knew very little. One exception was my best friend at the time, Mario Martinis. He was born in Italy to a Croatian father and an Italian mother. He was very proud of his ethnic heritage and liked to talk about the Carabinieri who were the elite domestic police force in Italy. I still remember hearing his father’s booming voice singing Italian songs in an operatic fashion. Aside from Mario’s identifying with the old country, this was 1950s’ America before ethnic pride became a big deal. The objective of the times was to blend in and be an American. I’m sure that the children of immigrants today feel the same way. Even though I was only an adolescent at the time, I can remember noticing the attractiveness of Mario’s mother. She was unlike a lot of the other mothers of my friends. For one thing, she looked younger than most of my friends’ mothers and was quite slim and petite with jet-black hair and very fair skin. She somewhat resembled the famous Italian actress at the time, Gina Lollobrigida. It was not surprising that Mario was quite good-looking as he inherited his mother’s good looks.

While living in our new house, we also had my cousin, Louise, from Pennsylvania living with us while she was teaching school. She had recently graduated from college and apparently, there were more job opportunities in Cleveland than in the small town where she lived. She was the daughter of my father’s younger sister. She was also one of seven sisters and one brother. I remember visiting them on the farm and noticing that there were certainly a lot of girls! I often wondered how the one boy managed to get along with all of them. He was also second to the last to be born. He must have learned a lot of valuable lessons on how to deal with the opposite sex. The one memory I had of our visits was how all the girls liked to play who was the fastest in looking up words in the dictionary. This led me to think that this was a fairly literate family. In any case, Louise lived with us for about a year and during this time, she met and married our next-door neighbor, George Melnik. He was a very nice guy, and I was happy that we were responsible for their meeting. Louise was an attractive young lady and used to like to sunbathe in our backyard. I guess that is when she caught George’s eye. Up until now, I have been emphasizing the lack of diversity in my neighborhoods, but I later found out that it wasn’t as homogenous as I thought. Turns out George was Jewish. Little did I know. In any case, he was an electrician and they wound up having quite a large family, four boys and two girls. At the risk of stereotyping Jewish people as being super achievers, the children were all very successful including one as a partner in a prestigious law firm and another as an aerospace engineer. I guess looking up those words in the dictionary and being a schoolteacher must have helped Louise to raise smart kids. I really believe that my father’s side of the family was quite open-minded. Turns out that one of Louise’s sons married an African American woman and another, like myself, married a woman whose family was originally from Japan.

Brief Exploration of

My Ethnic Heritage

Only in the last few years have I started to explore my ethnic heritage. As I noted earlier both of my parents hailed from Czechoslovakia. But what kind of country was Czechoslovakia? I discovered it was a land-locked country literally in the middle of Europe, neither East nor West, and surrounded by Austria, Poland, Hungary, and the Ukraine. It actually became a country only after World War I by combining the former Czech lands of the Czech Republic and Moravia with Slovakia. These former entities were minority subjects under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Czechs and Moravians were under the authority of Austria and Germany, and the Slovaks were under the control of the Hungarians. As minorities, Slovaks were often mistreated and faced discrimination from the Hungarians who tried to snuff out the Slovak language and force the populace to only speak Hungarian.

The allies defeated the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, and Czechoslovakia was created in 1918, when these former persecuted minorities used their self determination to achieve freedom. I discovered that the primary architect of this new country was Tomas Masaryk. I was proud when I found out that his father was actually Slovak. Although born poor, the son of a cook and a coachman, he became a professor, statesman, humanitarian, and first President of Czechoslovakia. Under his leadership, Czechoslovakia became one of the most democratic, progressive, respected, and successful countries in Europe. By the mid-1930s, Czechoslovakia had the tenth highest standard of living in the world and Masaryk championed all faiths believing that the loss of religious faith was a factor in Europe’s decline. He successfully defended Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish man, who was accused of the ritual murder of a Christian woman in 1899. A widespread anti-Semitic trope at the time was that Jewish people killed Christians to use their blood for the purpose of performing a blood ritual. To this day, he is often cited by the Jewish people as a force against anti-Semitism because of his strong stance against such bigotry and discrimination. Viennese-born British philosopher Karl Popper, who died in 1994, said that Masaryk’s Czechoslovakia was the most open of all societies ever to develop in Europe.

Unfortunately, this did not last long. Luckily, since Masaryk died in 1935, he did not witness the authoritarian control of his country: first, by Nazi Germany in World War II, and then by the Russians from 1945 to 1989. Finally, Czechoslovakia regained its independence after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. But Czechoslovakia, as a country, was not to last very long since the Slovaks, out of what I believe was ethnic pride, decided to separate from the larger Czech Republic. This became known as the velvet divorce. The Slovak people, having only half the population of the Czechs, always felt that