Publisher's Synopsis
The story of Joseph Strunka is a window into the Czech immigrant enclaves of Chicago during the first half of the 1900s. Born in 1910, he grew up in a poor family beset by tragedies. Beginning at age 5, Joe was expected to work to help support the family by selling newspapers, delivering milk, and peddling coal. He came of age during Al Capone's gangster era when the criminal culture of the streets was a powerful influence. Nudged into a marriage with Rose Mary Fojtik at age 21, the couple struggled with contrasts in upbringing and focus. In 1932, the Great Depression gripped the neighborhoods hard, "There was no money." As an ironworker-welder during World War II, Joe's labor provides a glimpse into the important roles that civilians played in the war effort and the personal toll this work took on their families. Joe proved resilient to decades of hardship and grief, persevering to find good fortune and an ideology with which he formed a lasting bond. Late in life Joe fulfilled a long-held dream and accepted conditioned happiness that he summed up as, "A pretty fair life."
