We still have to learn about liberty
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Tomáš Holenda was born in Havlíčkův Brod on October 23, 1956. His father was a laborer and his mother was a clerk. Tomáš Holenda was eleven years old during the time of the Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968. He partook in the wild victory celebrations of the Czechoslovak national ice hockey squad beating the Soviets a year later. Three players from this squad were from Havlíčkův Brod. He began with Scouting at a resurrected troop starting in 1968. With the ascent of normalization Scouting was not permitted. Later he was in local Competition aerobatics club. He was national junior champion in 1979. At the end of the 1980s he befriended Jan Schneider, a dissident, Charter 77 signatory and former drummer of the band The Plastic People of the Universe. Holenda began going to demonstrations in Prague after one of which he became a Charter 77 signatory. He also signed the petition titled A Few Sentences (Několik vět). He was fired from Aero Vodochody and lost his pilot’s license. During the Velvet Revolution he co-founded the Havlíčkův Brod chapter of the Civic Forum and he was co-opted to chair the local national committee. In 1990 he was elected mayor of Havlíčkův Brod, and during the following election cycle he was voted in as deputy mayor. Later, he worked at the Ministry of the Interior on public administration reform. Today he works at the State Administration of Land Surveying and Cadastre. He is a flier once again and his other interests include astronomy. He is a member of Budoucnost, a beautification association in Havlíčkův Brod.
