1 What is your full name? Explain why your parents gave you that name.
My name is Sherry Lynne Wodraska Neaves. I really have no idea why my parents named me Sherry Lynne except that they liked the names. My middle name begins with an L because both of my parents had L middle names—my mom was Shirley Laverne (I have her same initials) and my dad was Wilbur Lee.
My last name is Bohemian, from the part of the Czech Republic that is called Bohemia. My dad’s father’s family came to the United States in 1856 and first settled in Michigan. Later, they moved to South Dakota and that’s where my dad was eventually born to Edward Alois Wodraska and Edna Irene Perkins in 1929. The Wodraska’s still spoke Bohemian when my dad was a child, but I met very few of them and never learned any of the language. Dad never shared any with us either, so I’m not sure how much, if any, that he knew. The Wodraska’s were musical, because somewhere there is a photograph of the family band. I think they had uniforms and they were playing all different kinds of brass instruments.
I did not know my dad’s father well—he died in 1967, when I was only nine years old. We did visit him a couple of times at his farm in South Dakota. I think he raised wheat. He lived in a little wooden house that seemed to me to be out in the middle of nowhere. South Dakota is flat plains with few trees and the horizon goes on forever. I remember Grandpa burning dry corn cobs in his wood stove to keep the house warm—there were a couple of trees near the house as wind breaks, but certainly none to cut down for firewood, so he burned corn cobs. I’m sure they grew lots of corn on those big farms, as well as wheat.
I also remember that Grandpa was hard of hearing, because Mom and Dad had to yell at him. That seemed very odd to me as a small child.
Grandpa came from a large family, but I don’t remember meeting many other Wodraska’s. I do know that in his generation (or the one before) some of the family moved into town. They changed the spelling of their last name to Woodraska—maybe to make it easier for everyone else to spell. Those that stayed out on the farm kept the first spelling. From what I have found in my little bit of family history research, Wodraska is not the correct Czech spelling either. I found an older spelling of Vodrazka, but I don’t know if that is the Bohemian spelling or not. Maybe as I do more research, I will find out.
As an adult, I have never met an Wodraska’s, but I feel fairly confident that anyone with the name is a relative.
