Former Mayor Bobbie Landers Proclaimed a Tabor Honorary Citizen

    Anyone who knows Bobbie Landers – Orinda’s first female mayor, dedicated fundraiser for the Joaquin Moraga Adobe, lone woman on the city’s inaugural Council – will understand when her daughter Holly Burke recently remarked on Facebook that “Mom was speechless. Which is 
unusual.”
    This unusual (but very temporary) affliction came about on Sept. 15, 2024, when Mayor Štěpán Pavlík declared Bobbie Landers an honorary citizen of Tabor at a very special ceremony in Czechia.
    The connection goes back to the late 1990s when Landers, together with Orinda’s first mayor, Dick Heggie, was instrumental in setting up the Orinda/Tabor Sister City Foundation after the Czech Republic split from the Slovak Republic and was emerging from decades of communist governance.
    Since then, Landers has made a number of visits to Tabor, but this is by no means a one-way shuttle. The Sister City Visiting Student program that she set up is an essential ingredient to the success of the Orinda/Tabor experience.
    Each year, a student from Tabor is chosen to attend Miramonte High School for a short time – a wonderful opportunity for both countries to understand one another’s cultures. So far, 21 students have been fortunate enough to spend a semester in the West, thanks to the generosity of Orindans. Sadly it has become a yearly battle to convince Miramonte families what an educational opportunity it would be, for the entire family, to host a Czech student for a few months.
    September’s Orinda delegation included Landers’ two daughters, Merrily Taylor and Burke, plus son-in-law Buddy Burke, as well as Czech native, Slavka Ruzicka, who, along with her late husband Jan, has been an essential part of the Orinda/Tabor Sister City Foundation since 2012.
    This was Mayor Darlene Gee’s second attempt to visit Tabor – first time around, back in 2020, her plans were scuppered by the pandemic. This time, non-stop rainstorms dampened any chance of witnessing the famous medieval parade through town. Nevertheless, both she and her husband, Dennis Gee, were honored to witness Landers recognition for her long dedication to the Sister City Foundation and the exchange student program.
    “Tabor’s affection for Bobbie is heartwarming,” said Gee. “She has charmed so many members of Tabor over the years with her visits, her role in seeing that the exchange students in Tabor have a great experience when they come to Orinda, and her personal connection with the many friends she’s made in the Tabor community.” 
    But more adulation was to come.
    Unknown to Landers, a group of former exchange students, under the leadership of local historian, Michal Vašek, hired a Czech ancestry expert. Together, they spent 10 years researching Landers’ ancestry.
    And so, last September, they took Landers on a magical mystery tour for a few hours, until they came upon the house where her grandfather František Eminger was born, and from which he walked away, still a teenager, in the 1890s, setting sail for the New World.
    Once they had left Landers’ ancestral home, the students had yet another huge surprise in store: after a decade spent researching Landers’ lineage, they presented her with a leather-bound and illustrated “ancestry book,” complete with colored reproductions of her family’s birth, marriage and death certificates, reaching back to the mid-18th centenary.
    With this precious document in her possession, Landers finally got what her daughter Burke called “the ultimate experience of seeing where both sides of her mother’s parents were from.”
    Cue yet another moment of teary speechlessness for Landers.
    Burke said when her mother first became interested in her family history, she had just one name and one immigration date to work with.
    “Now,” said Burke, “at the age of 95, mom gets to touch places where her grandparents once roamed.”