Joanie Schirm
Joanie Schirm won the 2013 Global Ebook Award for Best Biography for her book: Adventurers Against Their Will. Potomac Books will publish the second book, her father’s epic WWII tale, My Dear Boy: A World War II Story of Escape, Exile, and Revelation on March 1, 2019. Joanie is an award-winning writer, photographer, community activist, and retired Orlando, Florida businesswoman. The daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Oswald Holzer, she grew up on a sandy barrier island on the Space Coast of Florida, a place where extraordinary memories are made and pelicans soar. A sought after public speaker, she is internationally known for her highly successful leadership role in Orlando’s hosting of FIFA’s 1994 World Cup USA 1994. She is the proud parent of two adult children, Kelly and Derick, and lives in Orlando with her husband, Roger Neiswender. Her books can be purchased here.
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“Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.”
Recently, I was a guest author at a local book club. The 13 attendees all had read Adventurers Against Their Will and came with questions and compliments that once again reminded me why I’m doing what I’m doing in this second chapter of my life. Clearly resonating with readers is the humanizing of history through…
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How can we make peace in our world? One hopeful idea.
How can we make peace in our world? If we look to our past, there is one simple way for our shared humanity. As if foreordained, the Holocaust Remembrance Day of April 28, 2014 mirrors the time in which my paternal Czech grandparents, Arnost and Olga Holzer, began their journey to meet their fate…
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April is an important month for me.
My daughter Kelly was born in April 1970. April 1942: my grandfather Arnost wrote the last letter he would ever write to my dad. My father received it in Ecuador three years later. He saved it when he moved to Florida after WWII; he just didn’t tell his kids he had it. My…
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My “homage” to Adventurers Against Their Will soon to be expressed as “pocta”
As I held my pen to sign this Triton publishing agreement, words from my 1992 Walt Disney World Dreamers and Doers Award came to mind: Somehow I can’t believe there are any heights that can’t be scaled by someone who knows the secret of making dreams come true. This special criteria, it seems to me,…
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“7 Days on the Yangtze” …a birthday gift for my mom 20 years ago
Today is my mom’s birthday- February 7. If she were still alive, she’d be two years from turning 100. She ranks up there high as one of the best moms ever; also one of the most unique moms among my Florida childhood friends as she was born in China. Although there are several billion people…
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Remembrance + Hope – A Common Cause for Humanity
Remembrance + Hope – A Common Cause for Humanity It would seem to most that the United Nations-sanctioned International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 and Chinese New Year this January 31st would have little to do with one another. And yet during my father’s life, and now in my own daily writing,…
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Reminder of Threads of Life
So the world continues to show how small it is…and the never ending threads of life from the story of my father’s life continue… Today I got a sweet email from Czech cousin Ondrej “Ondra” Matejka. To those of you who have read Adventurers Against Their Will, Ondra is a great-grandson of my father’s Aunt…
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Things that are tough are what you remember.
Things that are tough are what you remember. I was brought up on the view that if you wait patiently until the end of the story, the good people will live happily ever after. As a 1960’s child, “Treat others with respect and make the world better wherever you go” paraphrases the example…
