By Darko Dudić (97)

Few of you will have heard of Mike Stepovich but his story is quite something. Son of a stowaway. He rose to become a prominent lawyer and governor. Father of 13. It’s thanks to Mike Stepovich that Alaska became the 49th state of the USA.

Before our story begins, I want to make one thing clear. Mike Stepovich did not wheedle Alaska from the Russians. That 2-cents-per-acre steal was done and dusted a century earlier.

What Mike did do was sweet-talk sceptical locals and the federal government to promote the US territory into a fully fledged state. He was so effective, he had talked himself out of his job as governor.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Saint Sebastian (Dabovich) of Jackson (b.1863-d.1940), the first Eastern Orthodox priest to be born in the United States, is one of the rare canonized saints known to have voted in U.S. elections. Historical voter registration records from the State of California show that Saint Sebastian registered to vote in the 1890 and 1898 Congressional and Gubernatorial elections in his native San Francisco. Interestingly, the 1898 election on Tuesday, November 8th, coincided with the Feast of St. Archangel Michael.

I live in Kansas, and the first Orthodox parish in my home state was St. George Serbian Church, founded in Kansas City, Kansas in 1904. A few days after the feast of Theophany in 1910, the parish priest, Fr. John Markovich, blessed the waters of the Kansas (or Kaw) River. The following report appeared in the Kansas City Star (1/23/1910):

Ко зна колико је Срба са сиромашног Балкана кретало у свет „трбухом за крухом“. У 19. и 20. веку велики број њих се из економских, а после II светског рата и политичких разлога иселио у САД, у потрази за својим местом под сунцем, желећи да оствари оно што се обично назива „америчким сном“. Где год у свету да су се налазили, Срби су увек били узорни грађани и одани држављани земаља које су их „хлебом храниле“. Тамо су давали велики допринос привреди, науци, култури, а у последњих неколико деценија и у спорту. Такав је случај и са Србима насељеним у САД. Међутим, често се забораавља колики је значај српских исељеника у војној историји Сједињених Држава. Процењује се да је у оружаним снагама САД од почетка 20. века до данас служило око 160.000 Срба, од којих су неки стекли највише војне чинове. За учешће у ратовима и допринос одбрани САД огроман број њих је одликован највишим војним одликовањима, а многи се убрајају међу најодликованије војнике у америчкој историји.

Пред читаоцима ревије Историја је прича о неколико таквих хероја.

FULL TEXT PDF (Serbian)

By Milina Jovanovic

The Serbian American residents of Amador County have the longevity that is not present in other Bay Area communities. Just imagine…the great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers came [to Jackson] 110 years ago. The people who live here belong to the families of the original settlers in this area. They’ve been here almost as long as the French, and the Italian, and the Spanish, and the Irish…and together they’ve built this place now called Amador County. The people here have the longevity that you did not have in Moraga or Saratoga. In Moraga, a large portion of population came right after World War II and they have a different mindset. There were certainly Serbs in San Francisco in the 1850s, but proportionally they were not that significant. Here, in proportion to the total population, we have much more influence. The Serbian presence here is real. Others who live here but don’t have Yugoslav roots also know Serbian traditions. You know, there is this tradition here in Jackson that all merchants don’t take down their Christmas decorations until Serbian Christmas comes; this is an indication how influential our community is. Most definitely we’ve preserved our good reputation here. And the reason goes back to the fact that we were so influential. There was a solid basis here and people were not swayed by the propaganda. Because their neighbors were Serbian, their grandparents grew up with Serbians, they knew that this doesn’t compute—it cannot be the right thing. But when they live in big metropolitan areas with a lot of people who came from all over the world, there is not the same foundation to build upon, or to challenge the information that is being fed to them. They have been told an untruth about Serbian Americans and now they have to undo it. - Reverend Stephen Tumbas, St. Sava Church, Jackson, California, 2005

Jackson is the county seat of Amador County, California, situated in the Sierra Nevada foothills at the junction of highways 88 and 49, 50 miles southeast of Sacramento. Immigrants from the Yugoslav region originally settled in this Mother Lode region during the California Gold Rush and ever since, a prominent Serbian American community has resided there. This article will focus on Serbian American contributions to Amador County over the past century and a half.

From the Chapter III of the book of Bishop Sava Vukovich, History of the Serbian Orthodox Church in America and Canada: 1891-1941, Kragujevac, Serbia: Kalenic Press, 1998, 21-26.

In the history of the Serbian nation the Serbian Orthodox Church in certain periods initiated migration not only to safer regions but also to regions where it already had its own church organization. As the number of people increased, and hence the number of Orthodox, the Serbian Church founded additional parishes, church congregations, monasteries and dioceses.

Emigration, however, to America and Canada took place without the guidance of the Church. Individual bishops, for instance Bishop Miron of Pakrac, were explicitly against emigration, because this reduced the number of Orthodox and in general Serbs in Slavonia and other regions from which the largest numbers of our people emigrated, first, for economic reasons and then, for political. Although our emigrants went to America and Canada without the guidance of the Church, they carried the Church in their hearts. We do not know how well they understood their faith, but we do know that they were sincerely faithful, which they and their children demonstrated by the way they lived and worked in the New World.

"Now Is the Time (Sada je vreme)" - 10-minute documentary dedicated to Mirko Vukelic as he presents his views on transferring the remains of late King Peter II and Prince Andrej Karageorgevich of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to Oplenac, Serbia for burial.