by Robert Stewart

    It began in Seward and on June 25 that's where it ended. Last Sunday the Vondra family gathered more than 200 strong to celebrate their 66th and final family reunion.
     "We're pretty sure it's going to be the last one," Ray Duffek of Lincoln said.
     Duffek cited the increasingly large disbursement of the family as the primary reason for the decision to stop having the reunions.
     "Generations get scattered all over," he said.
     The first reunion was held in 1926 and although they have not held a reunion every year since, Duffek said the family has always been close.
     "This is really a fun group," he said. "They stuck together. Even though this was the last fling you can see everybody came."
     Relatives came from as far away as California, Maryland and Florida to spend time with family at the reunion. All of the first cousins were present at the event, save one.
     "They all showed up but one and he was in Arizona and couldn't make it," Duffek said.
     Fred Vondra organized the event and compiled family histories to distribute to the eldest family members. The histories included names and personal information on all the members of the family, amounting to more than 6,000 entries spread across 222 pages.
     "There are eight brothers and sisters and they all got a copy," Vondra said.
     "It took Fred a long time. Fred worked really hard on it," Duffek said.
     With so many family members there are bound to be stories and those attending the reunion could peruse old newspaper clippings, photographs, slide shows on laptop computers and artifacts passed down through generations in order to deepen their knowledge of family history.
     One clipping told the story of Stanley "Sport" Vondra who holds the Nebraska state record for most points scored in a high school basketball game, 102, 100 from the floor and two free throws.
     Duffek recalled an earlier reunion attended by Stanley, now deceased, in which he closed the books on the record.
     "He picked up a basketball and threw it and made a basket. He said, 'That's the last time I'm ever going to shoot a basket,'" Duffek said.
     Also on display were a pair of wooden shoes that Josef Vondra, the clan's patriarch, brought over when he immigrated from what was then Czechoslovakia.
     "They were too poor to have leather shoes," Duffek said.
     The shoes were passed down to Millie Vondra, Ray's mother, before making it into the hands of his youngest daughter Rebecca Duffek-Campbell.
     This passing of knowledge of the family's history and heritage extends throughout the Vondra family and serves as a way of staying close, even when they are geographically distant.
     "The Vondra family was the greatest family in the world to grow up with," Eldine Maixner, who attended the reunion, said. "Some of us have drifted away like I have, but we always keep the heritage."
     LuAnne Anderson, whose mother was Viola, one of the original Vondra children, tapped into the family's heritage by studying traditional Czech dancing. She studied the dances at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and travelled to the Czech Republic to study them further.
     "I brought back these dances (and) one of the charges that the government gave me was to the teach the dance," she said.
     Some of that teaching took place at the reunion. Anderson and husband Brad led gathered members of the family in learning what she described as the "woman's shopping dance."
     Apart from artifacts and dances from the homeland the family also enjoyed traditional Czech dishes like kolaches and sauerkraut with pork. Duffek said the reunions offered family members a way to connect with their heritage and each other, to keep the Vondra family history alive, both physically and vocally and to enjoy each other's company.
     "We all get together, relax, it's a happy time. The Vondras are a happy people. We like to get together and visit and eat," he said.
     The family bonds that drew the group to Seward for the gathering are what the Vondras were really celebrating and Duffek said those bonds will continue, even though this is their last reunion.
     "It's just something that will go on forever," he said.
     "We taught our children well, they know what their heritage is," Maixner added.