For these pals a pen is a mighty matchmaker
For over 40 years, letters have kept women together
BY CHRISTINE GRIMALDI
Staff Writer

CHRISTINE GRIMALDI Jarka Bla'hova' (l) and Diana Van Hise are reunited in Milltown.

MILLTOWN - With a chance connection, a daring meeting and an overdue reunion, these pen pals could write a book.

For over 40 years, Diana Van Hise of Milltown and Jaroslava "Jarka" Bla'hova' of Louny, the Czech Republic, have shared their lives through letters. Their similarities are striking. Both are interested in music, became teachers and are only a year apart in age.

Thirty-five years after their last in-person meeting, Jarka flew July 25 to the United States for a month-long visit at Diana's home. It is her first trip to the U.S. She will return to the Czech Republic by Sept. 1, when her job teaching English and art classes begins again. As for Diana, she teaches music at East End Elementary School in North Plainfield.

A computer linked Jarka and Diana back in 1964.

Diana, then 16, attended the World's Fair that summer in Queens, N.Y. Among the various sites there, the Parker Pen pavilion offered an interesting opportunity.

"It was a big deal, a computer was going to figure out a good pen pal for me," Diana said.

She filled out a card with her name, age, address and interests, and entered it into Parker Pen's huge computer. Jarka's name and personal information popped out on a slip of paper.

From the town of Louny, about 60 kilometers from the Czech capital city of Prague, the 15-year-old Jarka had sent in a small pen pal information card that came with her father's Parker Pen refill.

"I was [a] very courageous girl because I almost didn't speak English and I sent it," Jarka recalled. She had briefly corresponded with a Brooklyn pen pal before Diana, but that girl had stopped sending replies to Jarka's rudimentary English.

Jarka and Diana, however, bonded right away. They wrote about the Beatles and Louis Armstrong. Jarka sent an LP of a popular Czech folk singer and, over the years, has sent small dolls dressed in colorful ethnic clothing.

In 1971, Diana and Jarka arranged to meet as Diana traveled across Europe with her Germany-based comparative music graduate program.

Jarka met Diana in her hotel lobby. Getting to Louny for the night would prove more difficult.

Diana came to the country then known as Czechoslovakia in a group overseen by a guide who continuously took head counts. A communist government official spied on the guide, Diana said.

To maintain the official count, a family traveling with the group that had

never before counted in their small children for meals, now added one of their own for the meals Diana missed.

Diana disguised herself with a short brown wig that she passed off as an April Fool's joke to the group's usual bus driver - and to Jarka, so that no one would question her change of appearance.

"Then how we disappeared out of sight, I don't know," Diana said. "We went on a local bus and I remember being very scared because there were all these men in uniform; I had no idea which were Russian soldiers and which were police or who they were. All I thought about is, all somebody has to do is ask me about my passport and I'm going to be in jail. But nobody asked."

That night, the two had dinner with Jarka's family and shared her mother's apricot dumplings for dessert. They visited Jarka's sister and young children, and the next day Jarka returned with Diana to join in several activities around Prague.

They saw each other later that summer as well, when Diana's sister, Donna, came to visit and travel through Europe.

After their five days with Jarka, Diana and Donna cried on the entire return trip to Germany.

"It was like we were leaving a part of our family; we didn't know if we'd ever see them again," Diana said.

Diana and Jarka were nervous the first time they met years ago, but this time excitement took over.

Though there was another twist.

Donna picked up Jarka from the airport that day because Diana was unable to make it there.

"My sister made a sign that said 'Jarka, Welcome to the USA,'" Diana said. "Jarka wrote me a note saying, 'I'll have a light green scarf.' So when Jarka saw the sign she pulled out the scarf."

The two planned to go to New York, Philadelphia and the Jersey Shore, and to visit the Statue of Liberty before Jarka heads back home.

Diana and Jarka noted they exchange letters less frequently than they once did. Sometimes, their letters traverse the Atlantic Ocean once every other month; sometimes six months go by.

But Jarka said that because she and her pen pal are female, they have a lot of experiences to tell each other.

"No matter how much time has gone by, we've always clicked," Diana said.