How We Got Here
By Susanne Liebich
I have often thought about how remarkable it is that I am sitting here in a comfortable home in a lovely suburb of Massachusetts given my origins. I had a great childhood and am well-educated, for which I am eternally grateful. My parents did not have a lot of money; we had a solid middle-class background. But they loved us and made sure we were safe. They provided me with dance classes and took us on road trip vacations. They instilled in us the importance of hard work and being charitable. I really was so fortunate. However, I would not be here if it were not for the risks taken by my paternal grandparents.
About one hundred years ago my grandparents, George Radovich and Anjulina Fazo, whose marriage was arranged by their families, left Yugoslavia for the United States to start their new life. They knew that they would probably never see their families again. They arrived at Ellis Island sometime in the mid-1920’s. Shortly after they arrived in the United States, my grandmother Anjulina had her first child, my Uncle Anthony. Anthony would have been considered “birthright” status, as when the United States adopted the 14th amendment in 1868 after the Civil War, all immigrants’ children born in the United States achieved birthright status. In fact, four of their five children would have been considered birthright because it took about five years to become a citizen in the 1920’s.
I often reflect on how brave my grandparents were to venture far away from their families with little or no support system in America to pave the way. When I visited Montenegro, a former Yugoslavian country and my grandparents’ country of origin in 2016, my Uncle Toni said that the Fazo family was glad when Anjulina left. They had nothing- no industry, no money, little to no work, no medicine. My grandmother’s sister Lubjana, who stayed in Yugoslavia, lived to be ninety-four but her two children died at one and five years old of an infectious disease. For my grandparents, leaving Yugoslavia was an opportunity for them to provide a better foundation for their family with better healthcare, education and work opportunities.
They were able to buy a small home in Arlington after my grandfather made enough for a down payment but lost the house during the depression. They had to rely on public assistance for a few years. Those were difficult and uncertain times, and I remember my father said they stood in long lines to receive block cheese, milk, and a loaf of bread.
When WW2 arrived, my father was at Rindge Tech HS in Cambridge. When he was a senior, he enlisted in the Air Force just as the war was ending, and he was stationed at the Panama Canal. He sent his salary back to my grandparents which they used for an operation for my grandfather. After service, he returned home with little money in the bank, but he was able to attend BU on the GI Bill and received his bachelor’s degree in business administration. He met my mother, a pre-school teacher, at BU and they married a few years later. They raised four healthy children. My father started a successful industrial products business at sixty years old financed by a home equity loan on his home in Milton and fulfilled a lifelong dream of starting his own business. He ran it for decades until he passed away three years ago.
I sometimes reflect on the trajectory of my grandparents’ lives through my life and how different it would be if I were not born here. My father’s parents gifted him with a country that offered him a chance to make a better life. And with that better life, he like other first-generation Americans, gave their industry, their hard work, their energy, and their children to the American way of life. I will never lose sight of this fortunate accident of my birth, and my gratitude for those who got me here.