Former Czech President Vaclav Havel dead

CEDAR RAPIDS - The visit of then-Czech President Vaclav Havel, along with then-U.S. President Bill Clinton and then-Slovak President Michal Kovac, was the top story of 1995, according to Gazette staffers' votes that year.

“In his devotion to democracy and through his courage and sacrifice, Vaclav Havel helped to make the dreams of those young people a reality. And the world is in his debt,” Clinton said in Cedar Rapids of his Czech counterpart, who died Sunday.

The three presidents spoke at the Oct. 21 dedication ceremony for the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library. Havel brought a gift - a 16-inch-tall, three-fourths-inch thick lead crystal cut-glass vase that was especially hand-carved in Bohemia for the museum.

“I hope you will excuse me for speaking in Czech, but I really do think that the occasion warrants it,” Havel said at the start of his remarks. He went on to discuss his country's progress “after decades of oppression and absence of freedom.”

“We are united by the same ideals,” he said of the Czech Republic and the United States. “We believe in the same values. And we share the desire to cherish and protect them.”

Havel quoted Iowa's motto, “Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain.”

“It is these words that guided the steps of the Czech travelers here to Iowa,” he said. “They might as well have guided our own steps on our own journey.”

In 1969, Havel planned to attend the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in Iowa City, but the Soviet invasion of the former Czechoslovakia resulted in his being detained as a political prisoner.

“I think he's a great president. He's not a politician - he's a playwright,” Alena Kralikova, 23, a Coe College student from the Czech Republic, said ahead of Havel's visit. “I'm really suspicious of most politicians, but not President Havel.”

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