I thought about where my carelessness could get me
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Miloslav Vítek was born in Horní Měcholupy on 13 April 1939. He lost his father Bohuslav Vítek early; he died in 1943. Mother Růžena Vítková remarried and her new name was Simonová. Miloslav grew up with the Dušeks, his grandparents, in Horní Měcholupy. After the war, he went to school in the nearby Petrovice, but by third grade he went to school in Prague’s Žižkov. This is also where he was a member of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, and he took part in two youth camps with the congregation members as guides in the Orlické and Jizerské mountain ranges. He went to study at the mining high school in Příbram in the mid-1950s. He revived a Hawaiian-style student band at the local school dormitory and experienced success. Right after his high school graduation in June 1958, he joined the Příbram enterprise known as ÚZO 02 that inspected and shipped ore to the USSR. He completed his military service in Uherské Hradiště. After he got married, he and wife relocated to Ostrava and he got a job at the local mining enterprise, SOKD. Over several years, he completed part-time studies of a mining university. He held multiple positions at various sections of the company’s headquarters, including the Mining Inspection, the newly established computer centre, and the control centre on an ongoing basis. He was on duty at the control centre on 21 August 1968 and managed to distribute a stash of leaflets inciting a strike throughout the mining company’s cloakrooms. He was ‘crossed out’ of the CPC at the beginning of the normalisation period. The witness’s name is written in the StB registration document in the ‘confidant’ category. The surviving torso of his StB file covers the period from 1974 to 1989 when he was under surveillance because he worked as a mining inspector and the head of the control centre, and as such was in charge of addressing disasters and emergencies in OKD mines and filed reports with the SNB (the police). The witness has authored multiple innovations and patents. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was involved in the inception of the Haldex Ostrava international venture. After the Velvet Revolution, he started his own business (Agricola, a private mining firm) and founded OKD’s marketing and PR department. He spent a big part of his life as a hiker and conservationist (as a member of the Tis [Yew] group); was a member of the mining section of the Czechoslovak Scientific and Technical Society and its chair after 1989; co-founded a conservationist group in Havířov; and in retirement, he became a respected personality of the public and cultural life in the Zlín area. He organised a festival of amateur hiking films, is the chronicler of the town of Vizovice, and wrote memoirs focusing on his childhood (Horní Měcholupy Yesterday and Today) as well as on his career with OKD (Mining and OKD – My Love; 2022). The witness was living in Vizovice in 2022.
