SORRY ABOUT THE GIFT WE GAVE YOU IN '45...:

A Child's Special Gift (Dr. Paul Kengor, December 25, 2007, Townhall)

Among the more egregious communist affronts on religion in Czechoslovakia was the state's notorious anti-religious indoctrination of school children, which was in full swing well into the late 1970s. Karl Marx was hailed as the new messiah. Vaclav Havel, who went to jail in protest of such nonsense, dubbed this unceasing campaign of mendacity "the communist culture of the lie." It was what Mikhail Gorbachev had in mind when he acknowledged that "atheism took rather savage forms" in the communist world.

As for Joseph Pekara, however, he lived to see better times. He watched communism's collapse, and lived long enough to import some of his own ideals to America, including a little something to remember fondly this special time of year.

Like the man who made him that prize possession, Joseph likewise grew to make wooden crafts, wanting to harness the joy of his childhood and share it with other children. Ultimately, among his final signature, masterpiece works is an intricate, animated, wood-carved village, 17-feet x 6-feet x 8-feet, with 82 life-like moving figures, that today rests at the Slovak Folk Crafts (www.SlovakFolkCrafts.com) shop in Grove City, Pennsylvania, owned by Anne and Dave Dayton. The remarkable old-time village-a marvel of old-time engineering-depicts folk life as it existed in Western Slovakia for centuries. It was carefully transplanted to Western Pennsylvania in sections, and is believed to be the largest animated woodcarving in the United States. The final section was completed just six weeks before Joseph died in April 2005.

Joseph today lives on in that model, and does so especially at Christmas. That's because the genesis of the display was Christmas-a crèche. The village was constructed around a rightful centerpiece: a manger scene-an image once verboten in many villages in Joseph's country during the communist occupation.

But there's more to the story.