Slovakia doesn't mind sharing the accomplishments of Stefan Banic with the United States.

After decades of shunning the worldwide presence of Slovakians and their descendants, Slovakia is now embracing them.

"My grandfather was born in Cleveland," Jan Orlovsky, head of the Slovak embassy in Washington. "You can't find a Slovak who does not have a relative here" in the United States.

Orlovsky participated in a ceremony Friday at Greenville Railroad Park honoring the connections between Greenville and Smolenice, Slovakia, including their claims to Banic.

The ceremony was part of the Stefan Banic Skydiving Festival and the Pennsylvania State Parachuting Championships.

Banic was born in 1870 in Smolenice, Slovakia, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and came to the United States in 1907 during a massive wave of Slovakian immigration to the United States

He settled in Greenville, one of some 500,000 Slovaks to settle in the United States between 1880 and the 1920s. Half of that number came to Pennsylvania, with another sizable contingent in eastern Ohio.

Orlovsky said he can understand why Banic was comfortable in Greenville.

"The landscape looks totally the same," he said, comparing the borough to Smolenice. There is one important difference: Smolenice has a castle.

Although he worked in the coal mines around Greenville, Banic's claim to fame was that he was the first to receive a patent for a parachute design, on Aug. 25, 1914. The device strapped under the jumper's arms.

Banic donated the patent to the U.S. government in exchange for an honorary membership in the Army Air Corps.

Banic went back to Smolenice after World War I, and died in 1941.

Even though Banic was honored in 1970 with a memorial tablet at the Bratislava Airport, he was not well-known in Slovakia until recent years, Orlovsky said.

Until about 1990, Slovakia did not acknowledge its sons and daughters who went elsewhere and achieved something of note, he said.

But since then, Slovakians have accepted people such as Banic into their history.

"Now, when you say 'Banic' everyone knows that's the parachute," Orlovsky said.

Slovakia is a country of 1.4 million, while there are 1.8 million people of Slovakian ancestry living elsewhere.

The participation of someone such as Orlovsky in the Greenville Banic Festival is something novel to the young modern history of Slovakia.

"Something like that was unthinkable just 10 years ago," Orlovsky said of a Slovakian delegation participating in an American activity. "The last decade has seen growth in many kinds of cooperation."

Slovakia became independent by breaking from the Czech Republic in 1989. Orlovsky said the country is only eight years old, counting back to when it became a democracy.

As an example of what Orlovsky called a "wonderful loop" in Slovakia-American relations, he noted that U.S. Steel Corp. bought a steel mill in Slovakia.

"That was the step that made U.S. Steel a global steelmaker," Orlovsky said.

So many Slovakians from the late 1800s and early 1900s went to America and ended up working in steel mills and related industries, such as coal. Many of them earned meager wages, but it was their labor that built the American economy.

A big draw for U.S. Steel to buy the Slovakian mill was cheap labor -- much cheaper than in the United States.

"I look for both countries to continue helping each other," Orlovsky said. The good will showed at the ceremony Friday as dignitaries read a string of proclamations citing Slovakian-Americans' contributions to American culture.

Slavo Mulik, a skydiver and founder and president of the Stefan Banic Parachute Foundation, presented a container of soil from Banic's grave in Smolenice to Greenville Mayor Clifford Harriger.

Harriger presented Col. Radomir Peca, a military attaché from the Slovak Embassy, a key to the city, returning the favor to Smolenice, which had presented state Sen. Robert D. Robbins, R-59th District, Salem Township, with a key to that city when he visited Smolenice in May.