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

Peter Tomich

Peter Tomich (June 3rd, 1893 - December 7th, 1941) was born in Prolog, at that time in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For his courage during the raid on Pearl Harbor he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

During World War I he served in the US Army. After enlisting in the United States Navy in January 1919, he initially served on the destroyer Litchfield.

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By 1941, he had become a Chief Watertender onboard the training and target ship Utah. When that ship was torpedoed during Japan's raid on Pearl Harbor, Tomich was on duty in a boiler room. The Utah was hit by two torpedoes from attacking Japanese planes. The order was given to abandon ship. But Tomich, up on the deck, pushed his way through the men, yelling that he had to get down to his men and his boilers before they blew up. As the Utah began to capsize, he remained below, securing the boilers and making certain that other men escaped. His actions cost him his life.

Tomich's devotion to duty and his brothers in arms did not go unnoticed. For his "distinguished conduct and extraordinary courage", he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4th, 1942.

The escort ship USS Tomich (DE-242), 1943-1974, was named in honor of Chief Watertender Peter Tomich.


SA

 

People Directory

Téa Obreht

Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia (Belgrade, Serbia), and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Zoetrope: All-Story, The New York Times, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading. Her first novel, The Tiger’s Wife, has been published by Random House on March 8 2011. She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation’s list of 5 Under 35. Téa Obreht lives in Ithaca, New York.

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Publishing

The Church at Prayer

by Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra

Publisher’s note

Many readers of the addresses of Elder Aimilianos, which have been published in the five-volume series, rchimandrite Aimilianos, Spiritual Instructions and Discourses (Ormylia, 1998-2003), have frequently expressed the wish for an abridged and more accessible form of his teaching. In response, we are happy to inaugurate a new series of publications incorporating key texts from the above-mentioned collection. Other considerations have also contributed o this new project, such as the selection of specific texts which address important, contemporary questions; the need for a smaller, more reader-friendly publication format; and the necessity for editing certain passages in need of clarification, without however altering their basic meaning.

Above all, the works collected in this volume reflect the importance which the Elder consistently attached to prayer, spirituality, community life, worship, and liturgy. Thus the experientially based works "On Prayer", and "The Prayer of the Holy Mountain", which deal primarily with the Prayer of the Heart, appear first, followed by the summary addresses on "The Divine Liturgy", and "Our Church Attendance". These are in turn followed by the more socially oriented discourses on "Our Relations with Our Neighbor", and "Marriage: The Great Sacrament". Finally, the present volume closes with the sermons on "Spiritual Reading" and "The Spiritual Life", which in a simple and yet compelling manner set forth the conditions for "ascending to heaven on the wings of the Spirit".

It is our hope that The Church at Prayer will meet the purpose for which it is issued and will serve as a ready aid and support for those who desire God and eternal life in Him.