Profiles in History
Bohumil “Barney” Stejskal (1912–2004)
A load-bearing wall of Bohemia
Every community has a few people who quietly become its load-bearing walls — the names that turn up again and again behind the firehouse, the school board, the ambulance corps, the church hall. In Bohemia, that name belongs to Bohumil “Barney” Stejskal.
Across a life that stretched nearly the length of the twentieth century, Barney was a hotelier, a wartime Seabee, an undefeated firematic racer, a founding member of our ambulance company, an 18-year school board veteran, and one of the founders of this very Society. To understand him is to watch a Czech immigrant village reinvent itself, again and again, and refuse to disappear.
Industry Shift
A Czech village in transition
They arrived in Bohemia at a moment of crisis. The hamlet had been built by Czech families fleeing the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for decades its economy ran on a single skilled trade: cigar-making. By 1930, every one of the village’s primary cigar factories had closed, undone by the Depression and by the new automated machinery that made hand-rolling obsolete. The Huml factory burned in 1931. Bohemia needed a new way to sustain itself — and the Stejskal family was about to provide one.
1928
The Central Hotel: A fortress of home
In 1928, the Stejskals purchased a prominent property on Smithtown Avenue that had passed through several hands. Under the family, it was reborn as the Central Hotel, and for the next quarter-century it became the beating heart of Czech-American life on Long Island.
The Central Hotel became a destination for Czech immigrants from New York City, offering traditional Sunday dinners like pečená kachna (roast duck) and vepřo-knedlo-zelo. It served as the village nerve center — a place for hiring, community news, and cultural preservation through Czech-language theater.
1942–1945
Wartime Service
Barney enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve on June 15, 1942. His experience running a busy hotel earned him a posting with the famed Naval Construction Battalions — the Seabees. He served in the Pacific Theater, building the infrastructure that powered the island-hopping campaign. By May 1945, he arrived in France, serving as a military policeman in the final months of the war in Europe.
Fire & Rescue
Fire Department & Ambulance
Barney gave 66 years to the Bohemia Fire Department. In the 1930s, he was a key member of the legendary “Suicide Squad” firematic racing team, undefeated across Suffolk County for five straight summers. In 1950, he became a charter founder of the Community Ambulance Company, helping raise the $11,000 needed to launch the organization that protects the area to this day.
Legacy of Leadership
Barney served 18 years on the Connetquot Central School District Board of Education, steering the district through explosive suburban growth. The district honored his leadership by naming its main boardroom the Barney Stejskal Boardroom. A founding member of the Bohemia Historical Society, he provided the oral histories that document much of the village’s early life.
His legacy is enshrined in the institutions of Bohemia. As the community remembers him through the memorial scholarship in his name, his life remains a testament to the village’s evolution from a tight-knit immigrant settlement to a modern suburb.