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

SA

 

People Directory

Bishop Firmilijan (Ocokoljić)

(1963–1992)

Te Right Reverend Dr. Firmilian, Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Midwestern America, was born on the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, according to the Julian Calendar, on the 7th of January 1910. Born into a clerical family in Kaona, Serbia, he was the son of many generations of priests, specifically, born in the family of the protopresbyter Uros Ocokoljich and his mother, Darinka, nee Plazinic, also the daughter of a priest. To the delight of this family, the parents were blessed with the birth of twins, named at baptism, Stanko (later, Firmilian) and Ranko. Stanko was the tenth child.

Having completed his elementary (in the place of his birth) and secondary education (Gymnasium, High School, in Čačak,) young Stanko was admitted into the Orthodox Seminary in Sarajevo, Bosnia, from where he graduated in the year 1930. After having served the Armed Forces of his country, Stanko was married to Nadežda Popović. Following their marriage, Stanko was ordained to the diaconate and then to the priesthood, being assigned as assistant to his father, protopresbyter Uroš, in the Village of Kaona. He was ordained to priesthood in 1930 by Bishop Jefrem Bojović, brother of well-known Vojvoda Petar Bojović. Tragically, within the first year of his marriage, Father Stanko lost both his wife and son, during childbirth.

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Publishing

Serbian Americans: History—Culture—Press

by Krinka Vidaković-Petrov, translated from Serbian by Milina Jovanović

Learned, lucid, and deeply perceptive, SERBIAN AMERICANS is an immensely rewarding and readable book, which will give historians invaluable new insights, and general readers exciting new ways to approach the history​ of Serbian printed media. Serbian immigration to the U.S. started dates from the first few decades of 19th c. The first papers were published in San Francisco starting in 1893. During the years of the most intense politicization of the Serbian American community, the Serbian printed media developed quickly with a growing number of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications. Newspapers were published in Serbian print shops, while the development of printing presses was a precondition for the growth of publishing in general. Among them were various kinds of books: classical Serbian literature, folksong collections, political pamphlets, works of the earliest Serbian American writers in America (poetry, prose and plays), first translations from English to Serbian, books about Serb immigrants, dictionaries, textbooks, primers, etc.

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