COUNTYWIDE : Airlift to Help Feed Book-Hungry Czechs

When the “velvet revolution” swept Czechoslovakia in 1989, Terri New was there to witness the transformation of the people’s spirit as they took to the streets.

She left, wanting to spur further change in that country. Because the Czechs showed such interest in news of the revolution from U. S. publications, New decided to bring them information on their own country and on other previously banned subjects, such as Jungian psychology and Zen Buddhism.

For years, the Czechs “weren’t allowed to study their own history,” New said. “They had to learn it from their parents and grandparents.”

She was astonished by how many Czech friends who, regardless of city or background, asked her to bring books when she returned.

“It was starvation. Starvation for books,” said New, a Santa Barbara resident whose grandparents were born in Czechoslovakia.

New launched Project Booklift, which is being funded this year by a U. S. Information Agency grant. Friends of the Library groups from all over Ventura County are helping to collect books, she said, adding that individual donors may drop off books at the Port Hueneme Library. York Business Record in Oxnard has contributed 50 storage boxes to the project.

“To me, (the Czechs) gave the gift of a peaceful revolution. . . . They showed the world the way of peaceful conduct through oppression,” she said, adding that she wants to send the country a gift in return.

Her first lift took more than 35,000 books to Prague on Nov. 17, the revolution’s one-year anniversary. She asked contributors to inscribe the books.

“To have flown into Prague that evening to watch people opening up boxes of books with tears in their eyes, it was all worth it,” the 39-year-old singer, composer and playwright said.

New said she received many of the books in the mail from donors all over the United States and Canada, thanks to an interview on National Public Radio. Continental Airlines, for which New once worked as a flight attendant, flew the books over for free.

The next lift, which New estimates will contain about 90,000 books, is planned for next month to Slovakia, one of Czechoslovakia’s three provinces. Prague, known as the city of 100 spires, is in the province of Bohemia.

So far, she has collected some 40,000 books in Newark, N. J., 40,000 in Houston, 4,000 to 6,000 in Los Angeles and 3,000 to 5,000 in Chicago.

New said she is looking for books on market economies, banking, accounting, politics, philosophy, jurisprudence, history, art history and language. She also hopes to collect biographies, memoirs, dictionaries and encyclopedias.