Hide Article Text (OCR)
ntII.idBy WARD CANNELf Newspaper Enterprise Assn.I | NEW YORK tNE A —According to the dossier, the small, redcheeked man blinking in the early morning sun was Janus Pavelka (Czech, truck driver, age 39. mar-r- ried, two children. Tentatively he y, I began to descend the steps from the giant transport plane toward the snowy U.S. soil of Idlewild Airport and the outstretched hand of Ruth Tropin.For almost all of the 800,000 ref-lt;s ugees from European tyranny brought into this country under of-jjficial U.S. auspices since the end0 |of World War II, Mrs. Tropin has been the lady with the lamp It is a by-product of her job as New York officer in charge of the In-Committee for Migration that she can a welcome in almost every language spoken in this coun--1 try today.*1 Good day, Pavelka said. I speak a little English. I was in the RAF for part of the war.j While the great crush of European migration is over, and most —c!of those leaving nowadays go ei-j RUTH TROPIN meets some of the 800,000•!ther to Australia or Latin Ameri-j * * * * i * * * *\ ca, Mrs. Tropin still meets about J Until the war broke out in to greet the first ship of refugees, 400 refugees here each month,; 1941, Mrs. Tropin was working the General Black, people who still manage to escape j with the Emergency Rescue Com- j I don't know how I survived the grinding cruelty of their; mittee. When it could no longer i work in those mines, Pavelka1 homelands. :operate, she went to work in the said. But in 1953 I was releasedI tried to get out of Czecho- War Shipping Administration. And and began again to plot an es-slovakia in 1948, Pavelka said, as soon as peace was proclaimed, cape.Eleven of us were going to com- she signed on with the U.N. Re- Ten years ago. when ICEM took mandeer a plane. But somebody lief and Rehabilitation Agency, the place of IRO. Mrs. Tropin was told. I was sentenced to work in!and on its dissolution with the In- at work in New York greeting andthe uranium mines for five ternational Refugee Organization, processing refugees. On moderate-1,syears.In 1948 she was sent to New Yorklly busy days, she had five plane!Dougie Davis Honored Centennial Showboatarrivals in New York, another five in New Jersey and very likely a shipload as well.Nothing seemed to work, Pavelka said. It looked as though I could never get out. Then suddenly, two years ago I hit on a plan. I sent my brother-in-law, who was 13, to hang around the airfield in our section of Bohemia to pose as being tremendously interested in flying.If Mrs. Tropin has missed meeting a few of the refugees, it has been for good reason. On the day that she gave birth to her first child, she was scheduled to meet two planes. On the ride to the hospital, she briefed her husband on what had to be done at the airfield. While she was taken to the maternity ward, he went to grg?t the refugee planes.Actually, Pavelka said, the boy was getting to know the airfield guards and learning about what their routines were. Then,last autumn, we got our break. There was to be a big fair and all the guards were going, leaving only the local police to watch over rhe field and the planes.Actually, Mrs. Tropin's only begins at the airfield,of her time is taken withwork among church and civic refugee organizations, checking on sponsors for migrants, conferring with U.N. refugee officials, and making sure that the refugees themselves move easily to their new homes. It is not unusual forMrs. Tropin to be awakened at 3a.m. by the police who have found an ICEM refugee lost and unable to remember the name of his hotel or sponsoring agency.itsoon as tho guards wore gone, Pavelka said, I took my wife, two chi Wren and brother-in-law to the airfield and put them in a single-engine, two-seat plane, started the engine and taxied down the runway, waving happily to the police who had no idea of what was going on.In the course of the years, Mrs. Tropin says, a few refugees have turned out to be troublemakers. But she can count, she says, disillusionments like them on the fingers of one hand. The hundreds with whom she corresponds are without exception wonderful people.I had not counted on cloudy weather, Pavelka said. But it was not mine to choose the day. I was forced to crash-land, injur ing the baby's leg in doing so But it did not matter. We were in Austria and safe.Why has Mrs. Tropin stayed so long with a job forgotten by the rest of the world? In part, obviously, because of the thrill in greeting people with an eagerness and enthusiasm for the U.S. In part, too, because of the renewing wonder of helping people discover they are free. But also in large because Mrs. Tropin was her-orphaned at the age of four. It is a wonderful thing to be Pavelka said, after hav-tried to come for so long.I do not have any friends relatives here, except for Mrs.I once knew an American from Chicago during the . But I don't think he would remember me. That was 20 years ago and he has probably been through a lot since then.
Newspaper Details
Raleigh Register
Beckley, West Virginia, US
Wed, Feb 13, 1963
Page 12
Full Page
Clipped by
Yannah P.
USA 19 Nov 2022
Other Publications Near Beckley, West Virginia
Messenger
Beckley Messenger
Beckley Post Report
Daily News Digest
Post Herald and Register
