Jarmila Chalupová

Jarmila Chalupová began fencing at the age of 13 in Vienna where her father was a military attaché at the Czech embassy. A year later she won the Austrian championship at the age of 14 and later won it twice more. She won the Czechoslovakian national championship six times in a row.

She married an American named Jerry Francis Vokral and came to the United States in the mid-1930s where they lived in Pennsylvania and she continued fencing representing a club in Philadelphia. She became a U.S. citizen in 1936 and fenced in the United States national championships in 1939 placing third. In 1948, her husband began operating a water mill in Saint-Eustache, Québec, and Jarmila fenced at a fencing club in Montréal and fenced in Canadian competitions, winning the Ontario provincial championship three times. Jarmila took over running the mill from 1963 until 1984 when her son, Jerry-Milan Vokral, took over.