A great man is one who collects knowledge the way a bee collects honey and uses it to help people overcome the difficulties they endure - hunger, ignorance and disease!
- Nikola Tesla

Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.
- Franklin Roosevelt

While their territory has been devastated and their homes despoiled, the spirit of the Serbian people has not been broken.
- Woodrow Wilson

Stella Jatras

Stella Louis Jatras (nee Katsetos) from Camp Hill, PA, was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, as the fourth and youngest daughter of Louis (Leonidas) and Marina Katsetos, originally of Sparta, Greece, and later of Harrisburg and Carlisle.

Stella was quite literally a daughter of Sparta - and her father's name was Leonidas, no less. As Julia Gorin noted, she was Sparta, truly worthy of that heroic heritage. Axia!

In addition to the U.S. Department of State, her professional work included service with the U.S. Department of Defense, NASA and the Veterans Administration.

In 1953, she married George Jatras, also the offspring of Greek immigrant parents, and began a long and varied life as the wife of a career U.S. Air Force Officer.

As a career military officer's wife, Stella traveled widely and lived in several foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. She lived in Moscow for two years, where she worked in the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy. She also lived in Germany, Greece, and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries.

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Stella Jatras was a woman of intelligence, knowledge, class, and dignity. She was also a kind and thoughtful human being and a tireless advocate for the truth. To say that she was a great friend of the Serbs is an understatement. I can only hope that she knew how much she was appreciated.

Prior to the civil war in Bosnia (1992-95), Stella’s primary interest in foreign affairs centered on the Soviet Union and the issues of the Cold War. She and her husband lectured on their experiences in the Soviet Union at the Naval War College, the Air Force Command and Staff College, and to many military and civic groups.

With the breakout of the war in Bosnia, Stella was appalled by the bias of the Western media, especially in the United States, and began her efforts to present to the American people a more accurate view of that tragic situation. She later expanded her commentaries to numerous foreign and domestic issues, with her letters and articles published in the Patriot-News, the Washington Times, the Washington Post, the Arizona Republic, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as a number of magazines and periodicals. In addition, her writings have had worldwide distribution via the Internet.

For the past two decades, even as many Serbs stayed silent in the face of a bigoted campaign of lies and libel, Stella and her family took a courageous stand for truth and justice, never wavering, never losing faith.

Stella’s efforts to set out the real story of the Balkans wars (Bosnia and Kosovo) were warmly appreciated by the Serbian community, where she is particularly well known. In September 1998, a luncheon was given in her honor in Washington, D.C., by the Serbian community of the National Capital Area. In June 1999, Mrs. Jatras was the main speaker at the 54th Annual Serbian Day Celebration of Canadian Serbs in Niagara Falls, Canada. In February 2004 she was presented with a "Gramata" (formal certificate) by the Serbian Orthodox Church.

She passed away on 15 June 2013 at Holy Spirit Hospital in Camp Hill at her 81st year.


Photo by Aleksandra Rebić


SA

 

People Directory

Metropolitan Irinej (Kovačević)

(1963–1998)

Milan Kovačević was born to Sreten and Kristine Kovačević on 6 September, 1914, in the village Vrnčani near Gornji Milanovac in the Kingdom of Serbia. Milan completed primary school in his village, and high school in Gornji Milanovac. After completing the course at the Teachers High School, he served as a teacher in the village Ljutovnica near Gornji Milanovac.

In 1941, during World War II, because he was at that time an army reserve officer, he was taken by the Nazis to a camp in Germany, where he remained until 1945. After the liberation, Milan went to England, where he temporarily attended a seminary in Dorchester.

In 1950, he emigrated to the USA, and he enrolled in the Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in New York, and also in Columbia University.

In October, 1953, Milan entered the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of Saint Sava in Libertyville, Illinois. On 30 December, 1953, he was tonsured to be a monk by Archimandrite Firmilian (Ocokoljić), and he was given the name Irinej. On 31 December, 1953, the Monk Irinej was ordained to the Holy Diaconate in the monastery by Bishop Dionisije, while on April, 1954, the Hierodeacon Irinej was ordained to the priesthood in the monastery by Bishop Dionisije. On 31 August, 1956, the Hieromonk Irinej was elevated to the dignity of igumen (abbot).

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Publishing

My Brother's Keeper

by Fr. Radovan Bigovic

Rare are the books of Orthodox Christian authors that deal with the subject of politics in a comprehensive way. It is taken for granted that politics has to do with the secularized (legal) protection of human rights (a reproduction of the philosophy of the Enlightenment), within the political system of so-called "representative democracy", which is limited mostly to social utility or to the conventional rules of human relations. Most Christians look at politics and democracy as unrelated with their experience of the Church herself, which abides both in history and in the Kingdom, the eschaton. Today, the commercialization of politics—its submission to the laws of publicity and the brainwashing of the masses—has literally abolished the "representative" parliamentary system. So, why bother with politics when every citizen of so-called developed societies has a direct everyday experience of the rapid decline and alienation of the fundamental aspects of modernity?

In the Orthodox milieu, Christos Yannaras has highlighted the conception of the social and political event that is borne by the Orthodox ecclesiastical tradition, which entails a personalistic (assumes an infinite value of the human person as opposed to Western utilitarian individualism) and relational approach. Fr Radovan Bigovic follows this approach. In this book, the reader will find a faithful engagement with the liturgical and patristic traditions, with contemporary thinkers, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, all in conversation with political science and philosophy. As an excellent Orthodox theologian and a proponent of dialogue, rooted in the catholic (holistic) being of the Orthodox Church and of his Serbian people, Fr Radovan offers a methodology that encompasses the above-mentioned concerns and quests.