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BETH N. GRAYThe heritage festival begins at 11 a.m. Sunday featuring traditional food and dance and a dedication of a monument.
MASARYKTOWN - While more and more of Florida's landscape is being paved with asphalt and reshaped with golf courses and condos, this small community is holding on to its Old World roots and celebrating them as well.
The town founded by Czechoslovakian immigrants will mark its 80th birthday with a heritage festival beginning at 11 a.m. Sunday at the Masaryktown Community Center on Lincoln Avenue, east of Route 41 just north of the Pasco County line. Traditional food, folk dancing and native costumes will be among the attractions.
A highlight of this year's festival will be the dedication at 1 p.m. of a heritage monument, donated by Brewer & Sons Funeral Homes.
The marble structure, to be erected in front of the community center, bears the inscription, "Masaryktown Heritage Memorial dedicated to honor our heritage and the dedication and commitment upon which this Czechoslovakian community was founded."
On the reverse side of the memorial is an etching of Tomas G. Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia when it was proclaimed an independent republic in 1918.
Masaryktown was established in 1924 after New Yorker Joseph Joscak touted the idea of a Florida settlement in his Czechoslovakian newspaper.
Anna and John Cimbora were among the first Czech immigrants from New York and Pennsylvania who settled in the area in the 1920s after the federal government granted them 20-acre farming plots.
The Cimboras built the three-story, wooden Masaryktown Hotel, which after a succession of owners, now houses a Cuban restaurant, the Masaryktown Cafe.
The dedication ceremony will include the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner and the national anthems of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
"The last Sunday in October is like our Fourth of July," said Sidney Romine, an organizer of the festival that attracts visitors annually from throughout Florida.
Dinner will be served from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., said Linda Lovelady, secretary of the community center. The $10 meal will include a choice of marinated baked chicken or kielbasa with sauerkraut, plus baked rice, vegetable and traditional pastries of nut roll and poppy seed roll. Pastries also will be sold individually throughout the day.
The American recipe chicken is not only a tribute to the community's United States founding but harks back to the Depression era when poultry production supplanted citrus groves in Masaryktown. Over the years, the number of the community's chicken farms has declined.
Where hen houses once stood, homes have been built, Romine said. The community's population is about 1,200.
The influx of newcomers has diversified the close community, however.
"Everybody here was of Czechoslovakian descent (during the early and mid years)," said Romine. But even recent residents are willing to tap into the community's heritage.
At the festival, they will see the Beseda Dancers, a troupe of local folk dancers in authentic costume performing directed by Ann Matatall.
Most of the costumes are antique, handmade and abundantly embroidered, Lovelady said. The women's wear includes knee-length pleated skirts in red, embroidered with roses on each pleat, puffy-sleeved white blouses and lavishly embroidered aprons.
Among the skirts is one fashioned clandestinely from a Nazi flag, Lovelady said.
"The flag was actually confiscated when the Nazis invaded (Czechoslovakia in 1938). The people kept it as if they were proud to have a Nazi flag, then made it into a skirt."
The male folk dancers will wear the traditional embroidered white shirts under vests of bright blue or green over pants of black and navy blue.
The folk dancing is four-square couples, but it's more like traditional polka than square dancing.
"It's going to be quite a celebration," Romine said.