"When it was the '89, I really knew right away in November what I wanted to do and what I was going to do. That was interesting, nobody in the family knew, I didn't tell anybody, I was very clear about it and in April the following year I was in Switzerland where I had a friend and he put me through a big exhibition. When I saw it, it was something terrible. That was the beginning, we were starting from scratch. My dad gave them a store full of merchandise, I have the inventory at home. And when I took it over, I kept some of the merchandise that was there for the committee. I sold it and paid them everything. So I thought it would be kind of interesting if I didn't pay them and gave them the inventory in return. They'd still make a profit on it."
"They were going to evict us, a mother with four children and a fifth on the way to the brickyard to get water in some little house that had nothing but smothered dirt on the floor. We kids probably wouldn't have cared, but it must have been terrible for her to drag those kids away. I don't know what we would have done, Mom, Grandma and us four kids. It didn't happen because our mother went to Prague to intercede for General Čepička. General Čepička was a pupil of my grandfather in Kroměříž. My grandfather even wrote him a letter - we have a copy of the letter at home, about two pages long - he was also a writer. And he addresses him, I think he even teases him in the letter. My mother went there, but it didn't get to Čepička, apparently it got to him, because then it stopped. It was the initiative of the National Committee here at that time, and our mother found out about it by the fact that supposedly some person on the National Committee ground by the stovepipe was listening to what they were plotting. And then he circulated it among the tradesmen and it became a bit of a revolt. And I think our mother probably helped a lot."
"When they were poking around our place like that, they must have really been there more than once, because I have a memory of standing by my locker during the inspection, I must have been a little bit bigger then, but maybe my younger brother was in that crib. My mom said that the baby had a box of rhinestones in the crib, jeweled rhinestones, and it was playing with it and they didn't notice. And there's one other thing I have left, a little medicine jar full of Bohemian garnets. These are the kind of garnets that were cut by hand, each one is a little different, the cut is not very good, but they are beautiful and relatively large. So the jar has been preserved and every year I take six garnets from it and give them to the Golden Helmet. It was my idea to have one grenade in there for every rider that stayed on the course. There's six of them and I'm hoping there won't be any more. So those six grenades are always hidden somewhere. Sometimes in the front, now the model was such that they fit a little bit on the side, but they're always there. I've got to rebuild it again, not every stone is right for this, but whatever it is, it has a history, a spirit. These people may not even know what they're getting, but I'm glad they appreciate it, the trophy."
Pavel Lejhanec was born on 3 December 1947 in Pardubice as the third son into the family of Jiří Lejhanec. They had a jewellery and watch shop on Pardubice main street since 1924 and lived in an apartment above the shop. After the communist takeover, the shop was nationalised and a year later the Lejhances lost the ownership rights to the house. In 1953, his father, Jiří Lejhanec, was arrested and convicted, and part of his sentence included confiscation of his property, including his car. The last of the Lejhanec‘s five sons was born while his father was already in prison. He served his sentence in Jáchymov and returned to his family a year later before Christmas 1954. A trained commercial engineer, he worked as a labourer after returning from prison. The Lejhanec‘s five sons had a difficult journey ahead of them. All of them were educated and earned their living by trade. Only the middle brother, Pavel, passed his evening school-leaving certificate and in 1967 entered the engineering department of the Czech Technical University in Prague. After graduation he married and worked at the Plynostav company. He and his wife Nadia gave birth to a son David and a daughter Markéta. After the coup d‘état in November 1989, the family received the house and the shop in restitution and Pavel Lejhanec decided to resume his trade. The main symbol of the reborn family business became the return to the Golden Helmet. The winning trophy of the motorcycle race was produced by his father and grandfather and since 1992 it has been produced again in Lejhanec‘s jewellery shop. Pavel Lejhanec lived and worked in Pardubice in 2024.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
