Looking out the large living room windows of their South Whidbey farmhouse — across green fields and an old apple orchard — Dr. John Palka, with his wife, Yvonne, began relating a fascinating story about his grandfather, himself and three funerals.

Though ready for retirement, Palka still works two days a week at the University of Washington department of zoology. Yvonne Palka considers herself “somewhat retired” from her work as a professor of psychology at Antioch University.

Palka, however, is not a native of Whidbey, nor of the United States.

“I was born in Slovakia, where the families of my mother and father had lived for many generations,” Palka said. “In 1939, my family was forced to flee in order to escape the oncoming Nazi invasion of the country. Though only a young child, I vividly remember walking long distances through remote areas at night and climbing through barbed wire fences.”

The family reached Paris safely, only to have to keep moving to stay one step ahead of the S.S. troops. Finally, after two years, they were able to board a boat for America.

“After arriving in New York, my family went straight to Chicago to join the large community of migrant Czechoslovakians living there,” Palka said.

“During the mid-1800s the Czechs and Slovaks joined together because of the ethnic repression and suppression from Hungary, which had ruled over them for a thousand years as a feudal fiefdom,” he said. “Many of the migrants were drawn to the centers of heavy industry, such as the Pennsylvania coal mines and Illinois steel mills, while others found a home in the farmlands of the Midwest.”

Palka noted that their migration continued from the eastern coal mines across the country to the mines of the west and, in particular, to the coal mines in Roslyn, Wash. To this day, cluster cemeteries can be found in Roslyn for the Slovaks, Ukrainians and Romanians. There is also a small museum that has excellent coverage of this period of Roslyn’s history and the migrant Bohemians.

These communities vigilantly preserved their language, customs, heritage, and religion — either Catholic or Lutheran — and built their own schools. Before and during the early days of World War II, more waves of migration joined the already established Slovak and Czech communities.

“As a result of the agreements after World War I, the Slovak and Czech countries were officially united into what we know as Czechoslovakia,” Palka explained. “The period to follow, between the two World Wars, was very important to these countries and to the Palka family.”

What happened in this family is the crux of the present story.

“My grandfather on my mother’s side, Milan Hodza, played a large role in the history of the unification of the Slovak and Czech people,” Palka said. “He became an honored statesman, much loved by his countrymen. He assisted in forming the first government and in setting up a homeland for his people. He held every ministerial position until becoming prime minister.”

Hodza’s ideas were very progressive for that era. Slovak historians have referred to him as the father of their country, comparing him to George Washington in the United states. One historian, a Mr. Wlachovsky, wrote: “Mr. Hodza believed in the ability of the Slovak people to be equal with other nations in the international arena. He always emphasized the need to improve the education of the Slovak people, as well as the need to strengthen their economic power.”

Palka said many of the hundreds of schools his grandfather established across the country as minister of education are still in operation and now often bear his name.

But after World War II, Czechoslovakia fell under the influence of the Soviet government. Hodza was declared a persona non grata and deleted from history books.

His people, however, have never forgotten him.

“When my grandfather arrived in Chicago, he was ill and exhausted from his efforts to save his country,” Palka said. He died in 1944, not long after arriving here.

“The community was deeply grieved and at his first funeral service filled the Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church to overflowing and had flowers from floor to ceiling,” Palka said.

Because the statesman’s last wish was to be returned someday to his country, the body was not at first interrred. The plans were to have another funeral in Slovakia.

Political considerations prevented this from happening. A second funeral took place in 1949 when Mr. Hodza was laid to rest in Chicago’s Bohemian National Cemetery. In 1952 local exiled Bohemian groups placed a monument on his grave.

“For several years, my father had been eager to return to Slovakia and try to save the family business, which had been in operation for four generations,” Palka said. “We did return and lived there for a number of years, but finally gave up the economic struggle under the Soviet government and returned to the United States.”

But, as Palka related, the story doesn’t end there.

“A third funeral took place for my grandfather. I became thoroughly involved a year and a half ago, as grandfather’s only living grandson and relative, in plans for his return to Slovakia.”

In late June of 2002, Palka said, an official plane from Slovakia arrived at a Chicago airport filled with a delegation to reclaim his grandfather and take him home. Another small ceremony took place in Chicago, and then all the delegates and the Palkas boarded the plan to Slovakia to fulfill a grandfather’s wishes. Palka would be participating in the approaching ceremonies, speaking at the funeral and at several other gatherings.

On the 58th anniversary of his death, Mr. Hodza was laid to rest in Martin, Slovakia, next to his wife, Irena, amid appropriate pomp and circumstance. He was eulogized as the “most interesting and picturesque figure in Slovakian history in his fight for a federal structure similar to the European Union of present day.”

“I was very touched by the words of the Slovakian officials praising the aliveness of Grandfather’s ideas,” Palka said. “One of them said, ‘Because of Mr. Hodza’s efforts, today Slovakia is a close partner with the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, and is ready to step on the world stage by joining the European Union and the NATO Alliance.’

“I’m sure my grandfather is very pleased and finally at rest,” Palka said. “And it was a beautiful third funeral.”