Reclaiming Slovak citizenship became my way of mending the family story my grandmother refused to let end.
This story is part of a Global Slovakia project documenting the journeys of Slovak descendants reconnecting with their heritage through Citizenship by Descent and the Slovak Living Abroad Certificate.
On a cold winter day in 1920, a young pregnant woman boarded the Lapland in Antwerp and watched the horizon disappear. She and her husband had left their village of Falkušovce, hoping what lay ahead would justify the sacrifice. Four months after they settled in Mingo Junction, Ohio, my grandfather was born. That is where my American story begins, and where I came to understand that my Slovak story had not ended.
My grandfather, Michael, grew up in Lakewood, Ohio, the eldest son of Slovak immigrants. He served in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and during his training at Bowman Field in Kentucky, he met my grandmother, a young woman raised in rural Tennessee. Always patriotic, she served at Bowman as a civilian clerk for the Army. One evening, her friends talked her into attending a dance, and there she found my grandfather. After a brief courtship, they married before he left for the war.
