Jitka Horcickova
Alias: Volavka-Illner
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| Bio | Jitka was born in Prague in 1939. Her father Václav was a successful businessman who owned two coal mines while her mother Vera, who had studied law, stayed home to raise Jitka and her three siblings. Jitka's parents were avid art collectors and she remembers walking to museums and galleries with her father each week. Her family often went skiing in the Krkonoše mountains and, at the age of 14, Jitka won the junior national championships in giant slalom and downhill. That same year, Jitka was the national singles champion in tennis and she says that she had to decide between the two sports. Her father eventually steered her towards tennis and she went on to have a successful career on the international circuit; she first played at Wimbledon at age 16 and several times was ranked in the top 20 in the world. Jitka studied linguistics at Charles University, focusing on the English and Russian languages. She was a three-time Czechoslovak tennis champion in singles, doubles and mixed doubles and a gold medalist at the World University Games in Bulgaria and Brazil. She played at Wimbledon seven times having reached a round of 16 several times. For five years she was ranked among the world’s top twenty players. She was inducted into the Czechoslovak Tennis Hall of Fame in 1990. She came to the USA in 1969. She became an interpreter for the UN in New York. To get in touch with the Czechoslovak émigré community she joined the Society of Arts and Sciences and became an active member. She taught tennis at prestigious Manhattan and Long Island clubs where her students included Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Dreyfuss, Walter Cronkite, Frank Stella, Barbra Streisand and others. These contacts proved to be extremely useful later in organizing fundraisers for Czechoslovak charities. At her house she accommodated many Czech students and tennis players coming to play at the US open, among them, early on, Martina Navratilova. Jitka is currently the President of the SVU New York Chapter and organizes lectures, art exhibitions, film screenings and book publishing at the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan. She is married to Pavel Illner and they have six grandchildren. |
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