the national medal for Museum and Library Services is the nation's highest
honor for libraries and museums that are serving their communities in exceptional
ways National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library president and CEO Gail n and
Community member Bob schaer traveled to Washington from Cedar Rapids Iowa to
receive the national medal and spoke to ymls about how the museum impacts the
community the national Czech and Slovak Museum and library was founded in about
1978 we serve a broad based community of course we have the Cedar Rapids
Community we have the founders the the people of Czech and Slovak Heritage but
in a city of Cedar Rapids size which is about
125,000 maybe a larger metro area of about
250,000 we're very important um part of the cultural Community we are an anchor
cultural institution but then we're a national museum and so we we have a
national con audience across the country Jack Village is an ethnic uh
commercial District where all the the people would come into town to do their
uh business they'd come in to bring in their things to sell and they would come
in to buy the things they needed for the next week they'd probably stop in and
have a little drink they'd meet their friends so it was a commercial area and
it was also I think a social magnet well that little uh commercial District in
Cedar Rapids the Czech Village uh had kind of fallen on decline as the heavy
industry of Cedar Rapids declined jobs went away that first generation of
immigrants aged their kids went off to school often times didn't come back um
and that's when we bought our little building that used to be a pharmacy from
1901 so we U bought that in 1975 opened up the store pretty quickly got drafted
into the effort to revitalize the this Czech Village well Czech Village was
really part of why the museum exists this is the area this is the base this
is why they built a museum so it's a very close relationship uh you know we
work together on things and uh try to you know improve both of us try to
improve each other the flood of June 2008 uh came about from a a terrible
winter we knew that be flooding but there had been flooding you know when
you have a river running through town oh that flood was one of those amazing
events uh you know uh they had talked about the chance of flooding but you
know weren't quite sure how bad it would be and sure enough it inundated the
whole neighborhood know multi-block area and uh you could
imagine that jumble after we came back into the building it was very surreal
image with shelving kind of tilted at odd angles and but strangely some things
through you know the surface tension of water were just stuck to the shelves at
an angle about like this there were very difficult times in
the very beginning and uh getting back into the building checking on artifacts
that we hadn't removed to see if you know what was safe what was damaged the
building needed to get cleaned out so that mold didn't get in you know into
the building that was our big concern it was obvious quickly that we had you know
massive damage that was going to cost millions of dollars to fix and uh I say
that on one side but on the other side we never hesitated we never hesitated we
were always going to come back there were lots of decisions to make to get
there but we were always going to come back we found very found out very early
that it couldn't be a Museum again where it stood we couldn't ensure our
artifacts we couldn't ensure anyone else's artifacts that would come from
another Museum and in the end we actually moved it we lifted it up and we
moved it about 480 ft and lifted it up uh 11 ft higher than it sat when it was
flooded the relationship I think between the check Village and the museum has
always been a great one and and one that's I think has been not only an well
self-supporting and we always felt that and that was one of the main reasons why
it was pushed to open up a museum was not only to preserve that culture but
also to give visitors to the area something more to do than just shop
People Want it All you know they want the full experience they they would like
to see a museum but they also want to shop they want to eat they want to taste
every facet of the culture the flood of 2008 changed the museum in in dramatic
ways our mission had been more about being the premier Museum and Library you
know about history and culture of the Czechs and slovaks in the United States
but we dug down deeper into coming with a mission that was to inspire people of
all backgrounds it's about Czech and Slovak history and culture but it's
about American too it's about being an American so we want people to take the
stories to get the lessons and the values out of the struggles for freedom
and identity and family community human dignity that these people have had and
uh learned from it