I didn‘t aspire to high positions, flying was enough for me.
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Jiří Ovísek was born in Březce, a part of Štěpánov near Olomouc on 21 April 1937. His parents joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (CPC) after the war and his father served as the chair of the local committee (MNV). When the witness was a child, the family hid in the cellar for three days because of heavy combat action at the end of the war in 1945. The witness apprenticed at Elektromontážní závody in Olomouc-Holice, then found his way to aviation, also thanks to his older brother František who was a pilot. He started flying gliders, and he entered the aviation school in Prostějov in 1955. During his military career, he served with an aviation unit in Sliač, Slovakia and then in Přerov from 1965. He piloted the MiG-15, Yak-11 and supersonic MiG-21 MF. He completed an electrical engineering high school remotely. He did not join the CPC, which restricted his career progression. He witnessed the invasion in August 1968 as a professional soldier. In January 1979, he survived a serious accident in a MiG-21 MF when the aircraft stopped responding and he ejected near Dolní Němčí. He was temporarily reassigned to another job, then returned to flying as an instructor in a school regiment. He retired from the military in 1984. He went back to electrical engineering, working as head of electrical maintenance at a coop farm, and as a freelance inspection technician after 1989. He served three terms as a town councillor in Lipník nad Bečvou (2003-2014) and chairman of the local committee in Podhoří.
