A scout who became a writer and filmmaker
Stáhnout obrázek
Mirko Juna was born on 23 April 1945 in Jičín. His father, František Juna, worked first as a policeman and later as a glassmaker and stonemason. His mother Marta Junová, née Davidová, was a textile shop assistant. Mirko Juna was fond of art from his childhood and went hiking with his parents. Between 1960 and 1964 he studied at the Secondary School of Glass Arts in Železný Brod, where the world-famous glass artist Stanislav Libenský was the director. In 1968, he graduated from the Faculty of Education at the University of Hradec Králové in the fields of art education and primary school. During the occupation by the Warsaw Pact troops led by the Soviet Union in August 1968, he took photographs in front of the Czechoslovak Radio in Prague. He was not at the military service, because of allergies he only attended the summer military exercises in Pardubice. Until 2007, when he retired, he taught not only art education, but also geography and history in Trutnov, Vítkovice and other villages around Jilemnice. He also taught at the people´s art school and a smaller music school in Jilemnice. In his spare time he went hiking and camping, and during the normalisation period he led the TOM youth hiking clubs. During the Velvet Revolution in November 1989 he created and distributed posters with scout symbols in Jilemnice. He then stood at the third renewal of scouting in Jilemnice. He founded the children‘s scout troop Blue Star in Horní Branná and led it until 2008. He participated twice in the international Scout Jamboree in Dronten in the Netherlands. Mirko Juna was also a collector, collecting scout magazines, hats and costumes, badges, stamps and chronicles. As part of his collecting activities, he maintained contacts with collectors in this country and abroad, and State Security became interested in him. He was interrogated several times by State Security officers and burned part of his collection for fear of persecution. Mirko Juna is the author of five books about the Boy Scouts, published under the title Camp under the Blue Star. He also made six films at his own expense, the originals of which are now in the possession of the Semily State District Archive. In 2025 Mirko Juna lived in his house in Zvědavá Street in Jilemnice.
