ABOUT US

The Friends of Dukla Pass Inc. is a not-for-profit corporation formed in July 2004, in Tallahassee Florida by Jan Shekitka and R. Vladimir Baumgarten. This website is the internet portal for the corporation.

Shekitka and Baumgarten met 20 years ago and quickly formed a strong friendship. Both are decendents of people from the Dukla Pass area and decided to make a difference in this small corner of the world.

R(onald) Vladimir Baumgarten was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 31, 1953. He is descended on his mother's side from a Slovak soldier family whose members traditionally served as Hungarian hussars but who supported the creation of Czechoslovakia in the twentieth century.
Baumgarten received his Ph.D. in History from Florida State University in 1982. His dissertation, "Slovakia's Role in the 1848 Revolutions," was the first English-language study of the event, for which he was granted third place in the Stephen B. Roman Award for Slovak history.

As an advocate of Danubian federalism, Baumgarten's publishing activities and affliations have been rather eclectic. He was a member of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences until Czechoslovakia dissolved and is a member of the Slovak Studies Association. From 1986 to 1992 he was a member of the board of directors of the Rakoczi Foundation International. In that capacity he spent two months in Budapest on the eve of the 1989 revolutions researching the Polereczky Hussars. After the collapse of the communist system in Central Europe, he published a series of articles dealing with Slovak-Magyar relations in the Hungarian Heritage Review. He has recently completed a novel, The Black Dog Chronicle, which deals with the Slovak, Czech and Magyar peoples between the years 1876 and 1919. Baumgarten lives in Tallahassee, Florida. He is currently researching the Slovak National Uprising of 1944, with particular emphasis on the partisan movement in Eastern Slovakia and the battle of Dukla Pass. He serves as chair of the board of directors of Friends of Dukla Pass, Inc.

Jan Nicholas Shekitka earned his B.A. degree in History from Wofford College, Spartanburg, S.C. and his J.D. degree from the University of Miami School of Law, Miami, Florida. Born into a military family he spent his formative years on air force bases learning to love the smell of jet fuel and discerning early the benefits of learning about other cultures and peoples. Shekitka spent almost four years as a JAG officer in the U.S. Army serving in Washington D.C. in the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army and in Japan for Headquarter's U.S. Army Japan as Chief of International Law.

He recently completed 20 years in legal publishing becoming an expert in the law of local government and editing and publishing 260 Codes of Ordinances in over 20 states. An eternal optimist, he believes that even a small contribution can make a positive difference. He serves as president of Friends of Dukla Pass, Inc.