The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project
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The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral history Project JOHN J. TKACIK, JR. Interviewed by: Charles Stuart Kennedy Initial Interview date: March 23, 2001 Copyright 2018 ADST [Note: this interview was not completed and was not edited by Mr. Tkacik.] Q: Today is March 23, 2001, this is an interview with John J. Tkacik, Jr. This is being done on behalf of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and I am Charles Stuart Kennedy and you go by John, is that right? TKACIK: Yes! That is right. Q: Could you, let’s just start at the beginning? Could you tell me when and where you were born and something about your family? TKACIK: I was born on May 13th 1949. It was a Friday the 13th at the University Hospital in Urbana, Illinois. My father was at the University of Illinois getting his Masters in Engineering. He was an Army Captain at the time. Q: This was what year? TKACIK: 1949. Q: 1949, So, this was just before the Korean War? TKACIK: It was almost a year before, just a little bit more before the Korean War. My father was headed out to Germany to take over an Engineering Battalion, actually a Construction Battalion in occupied Germany. And we lived in three different places. But, we left in August of ’49. Sailed across the ocean. And returned from Germany three years later in ’52. Q: Let me go back just a bit. Can you tell me something about sort of the background of both your mother and your father? First place the name Tkacik is a hard one to pronounce. TKACIK: My father was born in a little village of in Northern Slovakia on October 26. At least he was baptized on October 26, 1919. So we all count that as his birthday. His father had just returned from the First World War. He was in somewhat of a fight with his older brother about who was going to get the land. In those days it was under the Austrians. 1 Q: Your grandfather had been an Austrian-Hungarian? TKACIK: Austrian-Hungarian and was in the Austrian-Hungarian Army. His older brother had stayed behind while he and his younger brothers went off to war to actually fight the Russians. They did not really see too much action. They stumbled back and by the time the war was over the older brother had taken over matters. So what had happened, as I understand it, my father has written his own biography which is eminently readable and fairly short but nothing of great historical significance except it is also a good view of what life was like in those days. He describes his father coming back. The war is over. The Slovaks and the Czechs have been forced together by the Versailles Treaty in this new country called Czechoslovakia. After a period of time, and I have forgotten exactly what year it was, he left for the United States. Eventually arrived in Pittsburgh where they had a big Slovak community at the time and worked as a laborer in the shop and as a shop foreman of Pittsburgh Plate Glass. And was at Pittsburgh Plate Glass until well into the Depression. Although there were some months when nobody got paid even if you were working. My father was the second oldest of four boys. Three boys at the time stayed behind and grew up in rural Slovakia in the Tatra Mountains, a beautiful area as he describes. And in 1929 he then came with his mother and younger brother. They arrived in New York and then took the train down to Philadelphia and then took another train to Pittsburgh. The oldest son who stayed behind was Antoine. He stayed behind and I guess it was in the early 30’s he was killed in an accident. At any rate the family showed up several years after my grandfather arrived. My father was ten and went to school in Tarentum High School in the town of Tarentum right outside of Pittsburgh and graduated in 1939 at the age of 20. He was number two in his class. The only job you could get in those days was joining the Army. So he joined the Army. He was shipped immediately out to the Canal Zone. And while he was in the Canal Zone I think one day the top Sergeant came around and said, “Anyone want to take the West Point Exam?” So, everybody ran off to take the West Point Exam, because evidently everyone got a day off to take it. Came back a couple of months later to find out that he had passed the exam and was there a way of finding out if he could get an appointment. He managed to get one. I’d forgotten how they did it in those days. Got an appointment from a Congressman in Illinois. And in his book he describes in great detail his last day in the Canal Zone. The entire company came out. He was the only one in the division that passed the exam. They took him down to the boat and got him a new uniform and sent him off to West Point. He arrived at West Point in 1941 right before the war started. He graduated June 6, 1944. After he graduated from West Point he came down to Fort Belvoir to take a month of Combat Engineering Training before being shipped off to Germany. He managed to meet my mother in Washington, DC at the time and then went off to Germany. He was on the periphery of the Battle of the Bugle with Patton’s Third Army. And he describes being very grateful that he wasn’t in the thick of the Battle of the Bugle because that was a pretty grim winter. That was the coldest winter that he could remember. 2 I think he was there for roughly another year right before June of ’45. They took them all down and put them on a boat and shipped them off to the Philippines, through the Suez Canal to the Philippines, where there was still a lot of mopping up going on and arrived at the Philippines in the heat of the battle of Okinawa. Then when the war was over by August, I guess he came back from the Philippines in late ’45 or early ’46 for more Engineering Training at Fort Belvoir where he and my mother got themselves reacquainted and eventually arranged for an engagement and a wedding in 1948. Q: What was the background of your mother? TKACIK: She was a fourth generation Washingtonian on her mother’s side. Her great, great grandmother came over from Ireland in 1848 and worked as a maid or a governess or something for a well to do Irish family in Washington, DC which then married her off to an Irish dentist in Washington by the name I think of O’Donnell. The O’Donnell family had several children, boys and girls. A daughter married a P.T. Moran who owned a chain of feed stores in the Washington area. The feed stores were like gas stations. When your horse got hungry you went down to the feed store. P.T. Moran was very prominent in the Irish Community in Washington. Then P.T. Moran’s daughter Mary Moran married my grandfather, my mother’s father, whose name was Oswald Schuette from Chicago. And Mr. Schuette was in town in Washington as a journalist for a Chicago paper. He arrived in Washington from Chicago in 1906 and became a fairly well known international journalist. He spoke fluent German. In 1913 became the third President of the National Press Club. In 1915 his newspaper which then became the Chicago Tribune sent him to Germany and he was one of a couple of American War Correspondences in Germany from 1915 through 1917 until the United States entered the War. Wrote probably 800 dispatches from Germany and both the Eastern and Western Fronts. When the United States entered the War, he went to Zurich, Switzerland and covered the balance of the war from there and then returned to Washington. I understand the he was very anti-Wilson. Wilson had promised to keep us out of war and then got us into war. My grandfather was an ethnic German speaking fluent German. I was told by somebody at Princeton University, who said when I was reading my grandfather’s memoirs to her, I said, "Oh! it looked like my grandfather did not like President Wilson too much.” And she looked at me and said, “Oh well, President Wilson did not like your grandfather too much either.” Evidently he was quite a thorn in the side at those times. He was a prominent journalist in Washington and became a lobbyist for the Independent Radio Association. I guess this was late 1920’s. He launched a campaign against RCA (Radio Corporation of America) which was a monopoly like Microsoft. Managed to break the monopoly and forced RCA to come to a settlement with the independent radio producers or radio broadcasters and then he was hired on by RCA as a lobbyist. So he was a prominent radio lobbyist in Washington through the 30’s and 40’s and died in 1952 or 53 actually. 3 Q: Now, did your mother go to school here in Washington? TKACIK: She went to Wilson High School, Class of ’42 and then went to Trinity College Class of ’46. Q: Which was a girl’s Catholic School in Washington? TKACIK: Still is.