Author: Charles Novacek
Born: May 11, 1928
Died: July 13, 2007
Bio: Charles Novacek was born in Ožd’any, Czechoslovakia. He graduated from the Industrial College of Engineering in Brno, Czechoslovakia with a degree in mechanical engineering and attended the Masaryk University School of Law in Brno. After escaping his homeland in 1948, Novacek fled to Germany, then Venezuela and was finally able to immigrate with his family to the United States in 1956 where he taught himself English as his seventh language.        

Novacek was a registered professional engineer and spent thirty-three years in the Detroit, Michigan, metropolitan area as a civil engineer, project, design and quality assurance manager. In retirement Novacek studied Mandarin Chinese and earned a B.G.S and an M.A. in Liberal Studies from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and an M.A. in Painting from Eastern Michigan University.  Novacek wrote and painted all of his life, but didn’t start writing his memoir Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance until the year 2000.