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

Mele "Mel" Vojvodich

Mele Vojvodich Jr. was born of Serbian ancestry on March 28, 1929 in Steubenville, Ohio. He went on to become Major-General in the USAF. For his bravery he was awarded the Legion of Merit.

Looking back at the career, Vojvodich received his pilot wings in 1950 from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Six years later, he graduated from Squadron Officer School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. During 1971, he completed his studies at National War College Fort Lesley J. McNair in Washington DC.

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Vojvodich served as an F-84 pilot and aircraft commander in the early 1950's at Turner Air Force Base in Georgia. He then saw action in South Korea, flying F-80's and F-86's. He also made a 300 mile surveillance flight into China searching for, and ultimately finding, secret Soviet-made bombers.

In all, Vojvodich flew 125 combat missions. He is also one of only five initial pilots who flew the CIA's spy plane (A-12) in North Vietnam. His time spent in the air was a total of 6,000 flying hours. On May 1, 1980, Vojvodich was promoted to Major-General.

Some of his worthy military awards also include the Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Flying Cross and the Intelligence Star for Valor presented by the CIA. He retired in March of 1983. Maj-Gen Vojvodich passed away on November 3rd, 2003 at his home in Schertz, Texas after suffering from leukemia.


SA

 

People Directory

Ronald Radakovich

Ronald Ron Radakovich retired as Vice-President of Kaiser Aluminum & Chemical Corporation. A Minnesota native he holds  a B.S. and Master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota. His parents emigrated from Lika and Bosna. Ron serves on several Boards of Directors, including the Byzantine American Alliance of Northern California and the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Former Vice-President of the Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church and Executive Committee member of the International Orthodox Christian Charities (IOCC) of Northern California, he is currently the Counselor Emeritus of the Serbian Orthodox Church-Western American Diocese. He is a Serbian Unity Congress Board member.

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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.