DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, in my own words and pacing. Now picture Fayette County in the mid-1850s. Czech Catholics are putting down roots, building lives, raising families.
And for a good while, area priests are doing their best to serve them. But language, culture, distance, you know how those things press on a community. So these settlers did what determined people do.
They petitioned the Bishop of Texas. They said, in so many words: we need one of our own. And in 1872, their answer arrived from Europe.
The Reverend Joseph Chromcik. Born in 1845. He came across an ocean and a good stretch of this republic to reach Fayette County, and the very year he arrived, he held his first service in Fayetteville.
Just like that, history had itself a footnote worth keepin'. He became Texas' first permanent Czech Catholic priest. But the man wasn't the type to hold one service and call it a life's work.
He established Chromcik School. He built churches, many of them. And he was instrumental in establishing the KJT, the Czech Catholic Union of Texas.
That's an organization, an institution, something that outlasts a single lifetime. The people around him knew what they had. They called him Taticek.
Dear little father. Not a formal title handed down from on high. Just the name people reach for when affection runs deeper than ceremony.
Joseph Chromcik passed in 1910. But the schools, the churches, the union, and that name, Taticek, those stayed right here in Texas.
What the marker says
Czech Catholics, who settled in Fayette County in the mid-1850s, were initially served by area priests. Eventually they petitioned the Bishop of Texas for their own Czech priest, and in 1872 the Rev. Joseph Chromcik (1845-1910) arrived from Europe. He held his first service in Fayetteville that year and became Texas' first permanent Czech Catholic priest. He established Chromcik School and many churches, and was instrumental in establishing the KJT, or Czech Catholic Union of Texas. He was fondly referred to as "Taticek" (dear little father) by many of the people who knew him.