The history of the Czech diaspora in America is a story of resilience, craftsmanship, and a deep instinct for preserving community. In the small village of Bohemia, New York, few surnames carry as much weight as Kovarik — fittingly, since the name itself comes from the Czech word kovář, meaning blacksmith. From the moment they arrived, the Kovariks lived up to it.
A Family Anchored on Ocean Avenue
The Kovariks have maintained a presence in Bohemia for more than seven generations — a remarkable run, even by the standards of our founding-family hamlet.
The American chapter began in 1895, when Jan and Albina Kovarik arrived from Bohemia (the old country) and purchased a five-acre plot of land for $2,100. The property centered on the farmhouse at 1359 Ocean Avenue and stretched all the way across to Sycamore Avenue.
For decades the homestead was a working farm. In the late 1930s, Joseph and Minnie Kovarik raised crops and livestock there — chickens, turkeys, and geese. One particularly cherished tradition was the stripping of goose feathers each year to fill high-quality bedding — a thrifty, hands-on practice that captured the Czech immigrant ethic of using every part of what the land produced.
The Industrial Backbone of the Village
To understand the Kovarik family, you have to picture the Bohemia they lived in.
Founded in 1855 by Czech immigrants fleeing political pressure in the Austrian Empire and searching for economic freedom, the village built its economy on two industries: cigar-making and pearl button manufacturing. By the turn of the twentieth century, Bohemia was alive with the work of both.
The Kovariks were deeply embedded in the cigar trade. They worked in the large factories along Lakeland Avenue and Ocean Avenue, and they worked at home in the small backyard workshops Bohemia residents called hauziky — wooden sheds where families hand-rolled cigars by the hundred, passing the craft from parent to child. It was hard, repetitive, eye-straining work, but it built a stable middle-class life. The Bohemia cigar industry thrived until the Great Depression and the rise of mechanized production finally ended hand-rolling in the early 1930s.
A Veteran of the Great War
Among the children of that hard-working Kovarik clan was a young man named Joseph Kovarik — a native son of Bohemia, raised in a village where everyone knew everyone, and where the language at the corner store was as likely to be Czech as English.
When the United States entered World War I, Joseph answered the call. He served his country in uniform overseas and came home to Bohemia after the war ended.
His story, however, did not have a long ending.
In 1927, just a few years after returning from the war he had survived, Joseph Kovarik was killed in an elevator accident — a sudden, almost senseless death after the dangers he had already lived through. The village was small enough that the loss of one of its young veterans was felt by everyone. The grief sat with the community for years.
A Post Built by Hand, in His Name
By the late 1930s, Bohemia’s American Legion members decided that Joseph’s memory should be permanent. In 1940, construction began on a new American Legion Post building on Hubal Street — built primarily by the Legionnaires themselves, with their own labor and donated materials. On September 21, 1941, the building was dedicated and formally named the Joseph Kovarik American Legion Post 1146.
The land was donated by the Anton and Emma Thuma family in memory of their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bedřich Bild, ensuring the site itself was a piece of Bohemia memory.
For more than 85 years, Post 1146 has served as the village’s guardian of military memorials and its advocate for local veterans in need. In 2017, the Bohemia Fire Department honored the Post with the Edward E. Krepela Citizen of the Year Award for its work educating the community about military history, honoring fallen veterans, and supporting living ones.
A Living Legacy
The Kovarik legacy in Bohemia did not end with Joseph. It extended into one of the most distinguished religious lives in Long Island history.
Albina Kovarik married Emil Wcela, and their son — born in Bohemia on May 1, 1931 — was Emil Aloysius Wcela, who would grow up to attend St. John Nepomucene School right here in the village, then Seton Hall High School, St. Francis College in Brooklyn, and the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington.
Ordained a priest in 1956, Emil Wcela was elevated to Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on December 13, 1988 — making him the first native of what is now the Diocese of Rockville Centre ever raised to the episcopate. His episcopal coat of arms incorporated the red, white, and blue tripartite Czech flag in honor of his Bohemia roots.
Bishop Wcela served the diocese for more than 65 years as a teacher, scholar, and pastor. He authored six books in a Bible study series titled God’s Word Today and wrote countless articles and reviews. He served as rector of the Immaculate Conception Seminary from 1973 to 1979. Through his historical recollections, he also left behind invaluable insights into the social fabric of Bohemia in the 1940s.
Bishop Wcela passed away on May 21, 2022, at the age of 91. His funeral Mass was celebrated at St. John Nepomucene Church in Bohemia — the same parish where he had attended school as a boy — and he was buried in the parish cemetery, just a short walk from the homestead where his Kovarik grandparents had once raised chickens and goose-feather bedding on Ocean Avenue.
The Quiet Endurance of a Name
From a five-acre farm purchased in 1895; to a young veteran lost too soon in 1927; to a Legion Post built by hand and dedicated in his name in 1941; to a bishop born of the same family who became the first native Long Islander ever raised to the episcopate — the Kovarik story is, in miniature, the story of Bohemia itself.
The blacksmith’s name endures. So does the village.