George Drost (born Jiří Drost), 1946 – Biography

George Drost was born in Brno in December 1946. His father, John, was a lawyer while his mother, Doris, stayed at home and raised George and his older brother Rudy. George says the Communist putsch in 1948 was a ‘turning point’ for his father, who left Czechoslovakia within days. Two weeks later, George’s mother and brother followed, crossing the border into Austria and leaving George in the care of his grandmother. It took two years before George was reunited with his family. George says both legal and illegal attempts were made to transport him to Austria, but in the end one of his aunts and a family friend, Marie Bednar, worked together to smuggle him across the border and bring him to Innsbruck, where the rest of the family were staying. The Drosts, who had already applied for American visas, waited for their paperwork to clear in a guesthouse in Kranebitten in the Austrian Tyrol. They sailed to New York City on the General Blatchford (a US troop transport ship) on July 27, 1950, arriving in America some ten days later.

The family settled in Chicago, where George says they were greatly helped by the congregation at Ravenswood Presbyterian Church. At first, George’s mother earned money cleaning houses while his father found work in a factory cleaning meat-cutting equipment. George says a ‘breakthrough’ took place for his father when he became the caretaker at the city’s St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, where the German-speaking congregation encouraged him to attend night classes at John Marshall Law School and reopen a legal practice.

After staying in several Chicago neighborhoods, the Drost family moved to Rogers Park. George attended Taft High School and then Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He followed his father into the legal profession, obtaining his law degree from DePaul Law School. He is now an attorney at Drost, Kivlahan, McMahon & O’Connor LLC. George is a previous head of the Bohemian Lawyers Association of Chicago and, between 2000 and 2005, was appointed honorary consul of the Czech Republic for Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. He is a current director of American Friends of the Czech Republic and the Council of Higher Education (Matice Vyššího Vzdělání) and an avid collector of Czech art. Today, he lives in Arlington Heights, Illinois.