Sonny Mirich, Teacher & Coach
Photo Credit: Buttesports.com
Oral History Transcript of Sonny Mirich
Interviewers: Aubrey Jaap & Clark Grant
Interview Date: February 9th, 2018
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Archives
Transcribed: September 2022 by Adrian Kien
Jaap: So we're here with Sonny Mirich and he's going to talk about his family and his Serbian heritage. Sonny, you had prepared some stuff. Would you like to begin with your family?
Mirich: Yes. I think the thing that I'll start with is where the Serbs in Butte originated from, where they came from. And the Serbs came from former Yugoslavia, but that is five separate republics now. But the ones in Butte, they call them Serbs, but most of them came from Montenegro. And there are some Serbs in Butte, but Montenegro is one of the republics from former Yugoslavia. And that's where my dad and my wife's family came from. But there are some Serbs in Butte that have come from Serbia. But anyway, they are all of the Eastern Orthodox religion, which is a pretty strong tie between Montenegro and Serbia. Next to Serbia, to the west is Bosnia Herzegovina. The priest that we had before, he's now in San Diego, at our church, he came from Bosnia and his brother now lives in Butte. His name is [inaudible] Kursick and he and his wife.
One of the things interesting about Bosnia Herzegovina, it's probably one-third Serbian Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox religion, one third Muslim, and one third Catholic. And when you get going on this you'd probably think the reason for the Muslims in Bosnia would be that that whole area was overrun by the Ottoman empire, the Turks. And so there is that Turkish presence there and certainly Muslims, but as far as in Bosnia Herzegovina, the three religions, they get along fine. There's no problem. And then if you go farther west, there is Croatia and that is almost entirely Catholic. And then further west from that is Slovenia. And they're more under the influence of Western Europe where like Serbia and Montenegro and part of Bosnia, Herzegovina, they are more under the influence of Eastern Europe. So there is a difference there, but the alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, it's pretty much the same. And the language pretty much the same. It's just a difference in religion. So the Serbs in Butte, they mostly came from Montenegro and Serbia, but a considerable number also from Bosnia, like our priest before this. One other area that the Serbs have come from so-called Serbs.
I mean, if it gets specific, there are Montenegrins, Bosnians, down along the Adriatic coast (and you can look on that little map). That's part of Croatia, but at one time, part of that was controlled by Montenegro. And now they say it's controlled by UNESCO. And I was going to look that up, but I didn't. But anyway there's one part of that area that they say it's really beautiful, it's called a Bokakotestra. And I think we have some serbs in Butte that have come from there.
Okay. So that's kind of the background where the Serbs in Butte came from. And some came in the late 1800's because our church was formed by a group of people that got together probably in the 1890s, 1895, 1897, something like that. And the church was built by 1904. So we had some that came in at that time. But history will tell you that the Western Europeans, when they immigrated, like to Butte, like the Irish, and they probably came in the, mostly in the 1800's where the heavy influx of serbs began in the early 1900's. But some came earlier.
Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit about my dad's immigration to Butte. He was born in Brnsno, Montenegro. And the big city in Montenegro is called Niksic. And I had a cousin that just recently visited there and he said, Brnsno was about six miles from Niksic. And I thought it was farther back. But anyway my grandfather, my dad's dad came to the United States five years before my dad and his mother came.
Jaap: What was your grandfather's name?
Mirich: My grandfather's name was Luka, L U K A. Luka [inaudible]. And if you look at the Ellis Island thing, it's [inaudible] and they didn't change it there. I think probably when my grandfather, he moved to Idaho, Wallace, Idaho. They shortened it at that time probably to Mirich.
But anyway, the story that my dad would tell me is that his dad was in the United States for about five years. And on several occasions, he wrote letters to his wife, my grandmother, his mom saying, "I'm waiting for you to come." Send them money and that. Well, like when I was talking to other other people, it took her five years to decide to come and they say, "Well, didn't she want to come?" Well, I'm sure she wanted to come, but you're leaving people that you'll never see again. And there was a big family. Her last name Subertovich, S U B E R T O V I C H, most of them are real long names. But finally he said, his dad wrote her a letter and money and said, "I'm sending you this now. And if you don't come now, forget it, that's it. I'm not going to be writing anymore." So finally they did come and on that sheet, you'll see that they boarded the ship in Brennan, Germany, which I thought was kind of interesting. And what was it called? It was called the Kaiser Wilhelm the Second. Okay. So it's interesting that they came on a German ship and they landed at Ellis Island. I think it said July of 1912. It says on there that my grandmother was 27 years old. Her name was Mara Miachich. And my dad on that other sheet, his name was Novo. And it says on there he was four years old, but I think he was five at that time. The name Novo, where that came from, he was born on January 14th and that is Serbian new years. And Novo means new in Serbian. It is called Novo Godina, new year. So that's why they named him Novo. And around Butte here, they called him Novi and they called him Nova. And he said at the end, when he was dying, that he said, "I'm Novo. Make sure it's NOVO." So he passed that on. So anyway once they landed, and neither one of them talk English, needless to say, they boarded a train. The Northern Pacific was already in operation. They went all the way to Wallace, Idaho. And that's where they tied up with the dad.
Jaap: Was he mining in Wallace?
Mirich: Yes. He was a miner in Wallace. And like I said, he had been here for five years and then they had several more kids. In the family there were seven altogether, seven, three boys and five girls. And one of the girls, the youngest one was Rose and the oldest one was my dad. One of their boys, Georgie. Well, when they moved to Butte, the dad was kind of a carpenter and he would tear down houses, I guess being a miner at the same time.
But one time he was tearing down this house and there was a wall there and it crushed my dad's younger brother, and I looked it up in the archives here and it lists accident. I think the boy was 10 years old. And then my dad and the rest of family would say that that really crushed the father, my grandfather, because having to go home and say that, Georgie was gone. And right now he's buried at Mount Moriah in the same grave with the mom, Mada. And they had another boy Johnny and then five girls. So that's the story with my dad's side of the family. If you have questions as we go along, let me know.
I'll tell you a little bit about my mom. She was first-generation Serbian. She was born in Grace, Montana. And I think she was second oldest in her family. Her family's name was V U C U R O V I C H. Her dad's name was L A Z A R. And her mom's name was Milka. M I L K A. And some of those pictures that we have around here, Milka is shown there. She lived probably into the seventies. I knew both my grandmothers. Milka, I was well into my twenties when she died. But Mada, my dad's mom, she died probably in the forties. So I was only about 10 years old, but I can remember her, but neither one of the grandfathers they died. I think Laza died in 1940 something. And Luka died in, I think, the early twenties and it could have been from a broken heart, but I looked it up in the archives here and from his tombstone, I found out the day that he died. So I looked it up in the paper and they listed his name as Louis Merrick, which isn't too surprising. Luka would translate out into Louis.
Okay. Anyway, going back to my mom. Her dad somehow ended up in Grace. Maybe they had a mine out there, something. Grace is a little town Southeast of Butte about 22 miles. And it was a railroad stop, I think, for the Milwaukee. So maybe it had something to do with the railroad, but my mom, her name was Vasie, V A S I E. So it's kinda neat. And they called her Vasa. She was born very close to Serbian Easter in the spring. And Vaskrse in Serbian is called Easter, Vaskrse. So maybe there's a tie in, they named her Vasie because of, being close to Easter.
She was born in Grace, along with her sister Dora and my uncle, her brother, Pete. And then they moved to Butte and they lived at 101 South Oklahoma Street, which is now right above the Mack Center and very close to the Belmont Citizens Center. The family home in Butte for the Mirich's was on 2400 Delaware, which is south Kai Avenue.
There was a difference between the Vucurovich's and the Mirich's. The Mirich's, they were more rural, coming from Brnso. And I know when I was growing up, I have one sister, there were a lot of chickens and they had cows, my grandmother, Mada, had a garden and I can remember climbing over the fence. And she said, "[Serbian] Get out of there." She was kind of swatting me on the butt. I can remember that, but she was a kind lady. But as far as the Mirich's, they were kind of laid back and mellow. The Vucurovich’s, they were fun people. I mean, they were lively, always something going on. There were nine at them. And they had a tragedy in their family, too. I mentioned the tragedy in the Mirich family of Georgie, being killed with that crushed wall. But in the Vucurovich family, my uncle Matt, he was a good football player at Butte High. And he graduated and he went to Comptom junior college, and he played at a junior college, good football player. And when he came back to Butte in the summer, he started getting blind. And previous to that, his sister Toots Florence Kovacich, that was her married name. She got blind also. And it's something that I think they called it uvio eyeritis or something like that. And they took trips to like Billings. There was a doctor and also to the Mayo clinic and Toots never did recover. Matt got to the point where he could see for a while. And he opened the Milwaukee bar across from the Milwaukee Depot. Well, actually he started bartending for a guy there, but the sight was bad. So long story short, he wasn't able to go back to Compton college and play football. That was the end of it. And at this time the grandfather, Laza, had already died, both of my grandfathers, Luke and Laza died in the early fifties which it was miners consumption. And it even says that on there birth certificate. I guess emphysema, that kind of thing. So my grandmother, Milka, had to bring up nine kids. And then there were a couple of little ones that died. My mother had a little brother, Auburn, that died maybe at one or two years old, but she would always talk about him and miss him. So anyway there were two other boys besides Matt, Pete Vucurovich, that ran Marty's bowling alley. And then he also started the Vuvilla. He ran the Vuvilla. And then Georgie, he was the second youngest in the family. He died in San Francisco. He got cancer. He died in about 1947 and he was kinda like a youth worker, a counselor. And then Florence, Toots, the other one that was blind. She married John Kovacich and they had three kids.
I know one story there. When she got pregnant and was going to have kids, they were all worried. Well, is this hereditary? Is it going to cause the kids to be blind and the whole family was worried about it, but the doctors said, no don't have to worry about it. So she got three kids that have totally good sight. But anyway, that eye disease, it was not, they say it wasn't hereditary, certainly not contagious, but there were two in the family that got it. And I think that's still kind of a mystery. Maybe some of the doctors could talk about it. But later on, Matt could see pretty well for a while, but then toward the end, he was totally blind. He was a good football player for Butte High.
Alright. So anyway, around Vucurovich family, there was always excitement. And Bubba that I call my grandma, she was always keeping things going and we lived on the flat. My mom and dad and my sister and I, but I know my mother hopped on the bus a lot and went to Oklahoma Street to spend time with her mom. So they were real close. So that's kind of the story on my family, on my mom's side and on my dad's side. But they were fun people, good memories on both sides. My mom's family stayed pretty much in Butte, but my dad's family, other than my dad and his sister, Rose, they all ended up in California. One of them ended up in Oregon, but still have a ton of cousins in California. And then one in one in Oregon.
One of my dad's sister. One of my aunts, her name was Dessie Dunista. She married George Kustudia. And it's always been odd to me, K U S T U D I A, that doesn't sound like a Serbian name. And I mentioned that once to my cousin, Louie Kustudia. Oh, that's a Serbian. I said, I know it's Serbian. It just didn't sound like it. But anyway, she married George and he worked in a coal mine in Red Lodge and there was Louis Kustudia. Marlene Kustudia, Marco Kustudia, Don Kustudia. They're all out of state right now, but I got a call a while back from Don. He lives in Los Angeles. So he'd be my cousin. He would be Andy's cousin. They took a trip to a Brnso, Montenegro and the whole area there and they went to Brnso and he sent me pictures of it and showed the some Mirich graves there. Of course they were in Cyrillic Miata. But then he also went to this other place. He said it was 75 miles away. It was called something like Majesta. One of our cousin's sisters that still lives in probably Belgrade in Serbia. And they escorted him around and we know just minimal amounts of Serbian, but so he had Serbs that were taking them around, but they went to this one place where there was a Kustudia graveyard. Just like in Brnso there was a Mirich graveyard. My cousin's dad's name was Judo Kustudia. And he had a brother named Buko and Buko's grave was there at the site. This is all in Montenegro, but in the early 1900's, probably the same time that my mom and my dad and my grandma came over, Buko and judo came over together two brothers, and I'm not sure where they ended up at that time.
But when the first world war broke out, they went back. The first world war, of course, the arch prince of Austro-Hungary was shot in Sarajevo, which was in Bosnia Herzegovina. But it was a Serb that did the shooting. So well, where I'm going with this is anyway Boko and Judo thought Serbia was on the side of Britain and France where Croatia at this time was under the Austro-Hungarian empire. So Croatia was under the wings. So the axis powers, Germany. So, Montenegro and Serbia fought on the side of Great Britain and France, and eventually the United States in the first world war. So they both fought in the war. And the reason Don, my cousin found out about this after his dad died in Red Lodge, they were going through a trunk and there were all these papers they had to do with the service. And they found out that he was fighting in Montenegro against the Germans and the Italians, at that time. Eventually after the war, his dad came back to the United States. Buko stayed there. I thought that was kind of interesting. Two brothers and Don, the picture it shows Buko, I think, well it's probably in Cyrillic, but I saw the name Buko. So his was brother stayed over there. It was not an unusual thing for people or guys that came to the United States to leave during the first world war and go back and fight. And then most of them did come back. But I thought that was kind of a neat story there.
Jaap: So Sonny, you mentioned that you know a little Serbian, did your parents speak Serbian?
Mirich: Yeah, my dad did definitely. When he came over, neither he or his mom could speak English at all. And they, of course, grew up with Luka, probably the grandfather learned a little bit of English, but the family all grew up with Serbian, but as time went on, well, the big difference between people coming into the United States today and the ones that came in then is they couldn't become Americanized fast enough. I mean, they wanted to drop their old language and learned English as fast as they can. And they were very, very hard set on telling the kids to go to school. And I can remember them talking about you got to graduate, you got to do this. And when some of us start going to college and getting degrees, this was the first for a lot of them because my mom's side of the family, they were all born here. So they were first generation. So I guess I consider myself second generation Serb. So anyway, they were very interested in becoming Americanized. So the sad part about that is we were not given the great opportunity to learn Serbian and Cyrillic and that. I know when my dad was in the United States here, he went to Serbian school. They had a priest here and he went to a Serbian school so he could read Cyrillic.
Jaap: Did they do that in the church? Did they have the school in the church?
Mirich: In the church, yeah, probably the priest. They just had one priest here, no deacons, but the church goes all the way back to 1904. And of course it was on the Southwest corner of Idaho and Porphyry street. I think they have a pregnancy center there now. I believe. So, anyway, talking about Serbian. I know a few words, but when they get talking real fast, they lose me, but I can say a few words, [speaks Serbian] "How are you? Fine." And my sister is pretty much the same way and it's sad that we didn't learn it, but as far as my mom and her first-generation, my bubba, Vucurovich, that's all she spoke and she would get mad at us. She would tell us something. And I'd look at my mom and say, [gestures]. She never hit us, but she was tough. She had to be tough bringing up nine kids and two of them blind. And the husband gone. How she did it, I don't know. And the house is gone now. I'm jumping around a little bit here. Right down the alley from where Butte Brewing is now on Oklahoma street, that's where their house was. And it might've had like three little bedrooms, a small kitchen, one bathroom, and then another eating area. But they got by somehow and they had a basement. I know a lot of those, the old Serbs in Butte, they made wine down in the basement.
My grandma made it. My uncle Mike Drakovich was right up the street, he made it. And I can remember taking a gallon of it and going into some of the houses around Butte, selling them for, I think, maybe a buck a gallon or something like that. They used to call my uncle Mike Jakovich, he was in a lot of those pictures up the street from my grandma. They was called him Pepsi-Cola because when he went down to the basement to get a jug of wine, he said, this has Pepsi-Cola. So, he was quite a character. He could talk English okay. This kind of thing. All right. So I'm going back to this fact that we didn't learn Serbian. My cousins, the Kustudia's, they did a little better at it because their dad, George, they talked a lot of it. And of course my dad's sister, she would probably be second oldest, I think right behind my dad. She was probably born in Idaho, along with Johnny, the other brother, they talked a lot of Serbian. So my cousins, the Kustudia's, they all talk it pretty well. Unfortunately, we know some of them. And when I was growing up in the church, it was all Slavonic. I mean, we didn't even know what they were, you know, what they were saying. And then in our church at that time, there were no pews. When you go to the library and they have those little study things, they called carels, they had them on the right side of the church, just along the wall. And on the left side of the church, the women were on the left, totally. The men were on the right, but I can remember going there with my mother and leaning into a carel and just reaching up to put my elbow on the shelf coming out.
She was probably on the other side though. So I must've been standing. It wasn't my dad because he didn't go to church all the time. My mother did though. She took us regularly. As I got older, I didn't go as much, but now I'm going again. So anyway the old church, it did get pews later in the fifties and it started in 1904.
The idea of it going in that started in the late 1800's. The cornerstone for that church on south Idaho Street is at our new church outside. So that was built in 1904 and it lasted till 1965.
Another story I can tell there, my wife and I in February of 1965, were the last ones to be married in the old church. And then the reception we had at the new hall on Continental Avenue that was in February of 1965, the new church at that time, the building was standing and then some of those pictures show the inside was done, but there was nothing, no icon. You could see the steps going up into the altar, the stained glass windows weren't there yet, but the inside you could go on the inside. So that's how it was in February of 1965. Our new church, the old church was gone. The new hall was there and that's where we had our reception. So we're the last ones to be married in the old church, the first ones to have a reception in the new hall. Yeah. Another bit of trivia.
Okay. A few things about our church going through these pictures that you have here now it shows that the church was very important to these Serbs that came over there because the majority of those pictures have something to do with the church. Whether it's Circle of Serbian Sisters, they call it KOLO, circle of Serbian sisters is what it's called, but there those women in the white uniforms and they usually have the band going across it. And there's a majority of those pictures there that they show that the one where there was a dinner, the big long . . . This one here, you can see the women in the background with the white uniforms. So that's evidence of the fact that church was very important and it was mainly the bubbas, the grandmas, their daughters that frequented the church regularly. That's part of the KOLO in front of the old church. There's a dozen pictures like that. And then they had a ton of dinners in the old in the hall, always an excuse for a dinner, whether it was the anniversary of the church or the groundbreaking of the church, Serbian Easter, Serbian Christmas, a Bishop visiting town. Our bishops are stationed in Los Angeles and the bishops in the Orthodox church, their lineage comes from the original apostles. So they are considered very high in the church and you respect them big time. And if you don't, they'll let you know about it. Because they are the lineage of a original 12 apostles. All right.
Going from there, something else that I remember, I remember all these dinners. I remember the old timers around Butte, the old Serbs. Both of the Vucurovich's and the Mirich's always had a gang of these Serbs hanging around. I mean, there was a closeness to it and being Serbs that have just come within, say the last 10 or 20 years, something like that, they didn't fit in with the the culture of the rest of Butte. So they hung around their own kind. Even though they were becoming Americanized and they were true Americans and it might've taken them 10, 20 years to become citizens, but they eventually did. But I remember a lot of these old fellows around. And if you look around Butte now, a lot of these empty apartments, like I think of the one right north of the the police station, that red building there. Right, right across from the parking lot. I bet that was loaded with the miners and the single guys, not just Serbs, but probably Irish and Cornish and Italians, whatever. And my grandmother, Vucurovich, being on Oklahoma street, the eastside was loaded with Finlanders, Mexican Americans Serbs, Croatians, Irish, but there were a lot of apartments, rooming houses for the single Serbs. And I can remember going into some of these with my dad or with my mom visiting some of these single guys. And a lot of them, when they came to the US, I look back now, kind of sad, really, because a lot of them never did find a mate and get married or that. So they died single either that, or some of them went back. I can remember this one guy that built a house on Oregon avenue. His name was Salikovich. And the house is still there. And he eventually, I know, there were a couple of women that, why I remember this probably just a family talking that he was looking for a girlfriend and never did.
So eventually he sold his house and went back and Salvo got married, I think. And he found a gal in Montenegro. A lot of these old Serbs, when I look through those pictures, I know their names. I remember them and I was probably 10, 11 years old. We were around them on Christmas, Easter. We visited them. They visited us and I can go out to the Mount Mariah and the Highland, the Mountain View cemetery, and see their names on the gravestones. And I get a mental picture of what these guys looked like. So that's kind of neat which brings me to another thing. I shouldn't bring up, but the Serbian church does not believe in cremation. It's a traditional burial. It's not that some of the Serbs haven't been cremated, but it's a no-no in our church. And I think that the ones that are cremated, if these old guys were cremated, they would have been totally forgotten. You wouldn't who they were. But now it might be 20, 30, 40 years from now. People can come to those cemeteries and maybe they have the same name. They can look at those stones, at these old single guys that died alone. Well, they weren't alone. They had other people with them, But they were single and they see those names and say, "Hey, that's same name as me. And this guy was here in the early 1900's." So when I go out to these cemeteries, walk around these graves, I look at the names when I can read them. If they're in English or they've been westernized, if they're in Cyrillic sometimes I get the Cyrillic alphabet and can kind of work it out just by doing that. So a lot of these guys did stay for the whole time in the United States but a few went back.
[00:37:39]
And I still have their names like this Joe [inaudible]. That was my dad's friend. He drove an old pickup and I think he was a carpenter and he had a house on Dixon street. And when he died, he left it to my dad. And that's where I grew up on Dixon street by the Longfellow school. But Joe Kotich, his stone is right up by the Serbian platform where my dad's is there is right now. And one other thing, he had this gold watch with the chain that he used to wear. And he gave that to my dad. Now, Mike Jankovich, my uncle on Oklahoma street. He had these old single buddies too. There was this Milaje Philipa Vich. He was a real big guy, but they said he was a sheep herder. And they said that one of his toes froze. And when he walked, he would kind of limp. He died and they waked him in Mike's house. So instead of in a church or instead of a mortuary, they had the caskets in these homes. And that wasn't the only one. I think this one was a cousin of Mike. His name was Petra Jankovich. He was waked in their house also. So that was kind of, kind of interesting. Okay.
Something else where I came in contact with these old Serb. They had these Serbian lodges. One of them was called the [inaudible]. And the other one was called the Bulkesni, but they were national Serbian lodges that my mom and dad would pay. Each Serbd family would pick out one. And then you would pay monthly dues there for you and your family, maybe only a quarter a month, but the purpose of those lodges was after you died or needed some money, it was like an insurance policy. So they would send you money for the burials. And they would have these meetings in the bottom of the old church. And on many occasions, my dad would me the lodge book and the money. And he'd say, go in and pay it. And my mother would say, well, why don't you go? I don't know. I'm not going to go. So I would go downstairs there in the old church and all these old timers would say, "[Serbian] Where's your dad?" And I'd say he was working and they would just laugh and I'd pay the dues. But anyway, I'd see these old guys there too. It's all good memories. I can't remember any abusive situation. They were strict. I mean, my grandmother Vucurovich, she'd give you a swat on the butt and holler at you. But they had to be tough. You were disciplined. It wasn't a matter of going into the house when you had a dinner and seating the kids first and feeding them, you waited your turn and you always came after the adults, but we got fed. We had plenty to eat. There again difference in the Mirich's and the Vucurovich's, the Mirich's always had their own food. A lot of chickens. Well, they had a dairy. And my dad, that's how he got connected with my mom. He delivered milk on Oklahoma. So they had chickens, cows, ton of chickens. We have some pictures of home when Dessie Kustudia and nanny Lusak, my other aunt got married and this is a 2400 Delaware and they must've invited every Serb in Butte. There were pictures of it. But my dad said when Dessi and Jesse and nanny got married, I think they killed 22 chickens for the dinner, things like that.
Alright any questions?
Jaap: You guys have such interesting traditions for Christmas. Would you like to talk about that?
[00:42:20]
Mirich: Yes. Okay. Serbian Christmas is on January 7th and the reason that we still celebrate Serbian Christmas is according to the Julian calendar when the Eastern Europeans, like the Russians, part of Russia and Yugoslavia, and those countries went from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, there were two weeks different between December 25th and January 7th. So growing up, we would still, and we still do have a celebration at our church on Serbian Christmas, a big dinner and the church service but it's not like the old days. Every Serbian house on the west side, east side, south side, they would set up a table, there'd be drinks. There would be rushtila and piginstina. These are sweet things that the women make. The Rachella were like pie dough and you would deep fry it and then you would sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on it, really good. And then pliginista, they still make them, they're like a rolled up donuts, kinda, and each house would have that. And then there'd be a bowl full of walnuts to crack, or different kinds of almonds, nuts, things like that. And, of course, beer and wine, a lot of drinking going on on Serbian Christmas, and the women would stay in the house and receive all of these guys that are going from one place to another. But you would literally go from one house to another. And when you got to the eastside, it was in walking distance. So needless to say, by the end of the day, the guys were pretty well toasted. Yeah, pretty well toasted. No doubt about it because each house, they would have to have a shot of whiskey. And I can remember my dad coming home. And I was a little older then, they had this this, this thing. I can't remember the name for it, where each house, there was somebody in the family that had to be the first one coming in the house on Christmas day. And my dad was the one that had to go to the Vucurovich house before anybody else on that day. I can't remember the name of the word for that, but he would get up early and go there and see Bubba and the rest of the family and that. And then move on, join up with other guys.
But he came home this one night and everybody wore hats and suits, the fedoras and my dad smoked at that time. And when he came home, there were a bunch of burnt holes in his hat. He was using his hat as an ashtray. I remember that. And one picture that shows the roasting . . . But the head of the pig is there. And it does become roasted, but then they put it as a centerpiece on the table. Have you guys ever heard of that? And then you open your mouth and you stuff an orange in there. There's a picture in one of those too. Well, that's where George Stanosich is roasting the pig, but there's a picture of, I found out that he would always have, he was a policeman in Butte. He would have everybody over on Serbian, Christmas, a full household of that. And one of the pictures I went through showed his household. I could recognize a few people, but there was a centerpiece was probably the head of that thing right there. People find that kind of weird. But every household did have that as a centerpiece. And then by the end of the day, you go back home. And this was on Serbian Christmas, but they always had church service on that day too. And we still do. And on many occasion it was in the middle of the week and there was one day we were allowed to stay home and it wouldn't even be marked absent at school because they knew that you're a Serbian. And so they were probably happy to get rid of you for one day.
And then Serbian Easter is the same thing. Now our Serbian Christmas is always on the seventh, American Christmas, always on the 25th. At our house, even though it was first, second generation Serb, we still celebrated American Christmas, had a tree up and all that, but we usually kept the tree up right through Serbian Christmas and the decorations, but as far as gifts, most of them came out on the 25th. So Serbian Christmas, even as far back as I can remember, it was just going to church, a dinner and a social gathering. All right.
Now, Serbian Easter is pretty much the same way. Now there's something weird about, not weird, but a Serbian Easter can fluctuate. It can be the same time as American Easter, or it can be like, I think last year, about five weeks difference. And my wife knows all this. I don't. She knows how Serbian Easter is calculated. It's the first new moon or it's the first Sunday after the first new moon. It's something like that. Now we do celebrate lent just like the Catholics do. And in our church, we also celebrate communion. You have to fast for it. You can't just go in and get communion and where the Catholic church, I think it's wafers and a sip of wine. In our church it's the transformed body and blood of Jesus Christ. They break up bread, put it in the chalice with wine, and then he's got a long spoon and when you take communion, he'll spoon it in your mouth and then you kiss the cross.
Okay. So anyway, Serbian, Easter has different dates. It can be the same day, or it can go all the way up to about five weeks difference. And therefore, when western lent starts, our lent might be several weeks later, but it's still 40 days. And you fast as much as you care to, the more, the better. My wife follows it pretty closely. A lot of them won't eat meat for the full 40 days. I follow it to a limited extent, but we do have holy week where we have all of the different things, like the treachery of Judas and Jesus coming in on the ass. We have all of that and being put on the cross the whole week. So it's celebrated pretty much like probably the Western people. But it's pretty important following that.
There are a couple of things that are kind of controversial in our church. Like I mentioned that a cremation is a no-no, but you're not going to be totally ostracized or that. But if you are cremated, you can't buried in our church. You never see an urn in an Eastern Orthodox church.
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And I know it kind of varies a little bit, but some good church goers their whole life died and they wanted to bring their body into church, but the priest found out that they were going to be cremated later. So they stopped it. So that is one thing that is kind of controversy. The other is this thing on abortion, our churches totally against it. I guess in extreme cases like maybe rape stuff like that. There'd probably be an acceptance of it. There are no female priests or that in our church. They can be readers. We do have nuns at our seminaries and monasteries, but no female priests. So that's another thing we don't believe in. And some people that have started to come to our church thinking they liked orthodoxy and that, not, not a whole lot, but some have left because of they believe in women's rights and things like that. It is kind of a controversial thing, but they are old school. A lot of people that go to our church now say, "Well, why doesn't it change with the times?" Well, the attraction to our church is it stayed the same for 2000 years. The liturgy is pretty much the same as it was 2000 years ago. And whether it's Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, the OCA, the Orthodox church of America or Serbian Orthodox, you can go from one to the other and the liturgy is going to be the same. At the Serbian church Las Vegas, there are a lot of immigrants that have come in just recently. So it is totally in Slavonic, the church down there, where our church of course is probably 90% English. There's still a little bit of Slavonic just to keep the old, old habits alive. So that's a little more about our church. The church was important to our early immigrants. Very definitely.
Jaap: Sonny, last year we did the exhibit on the Serbians. And we did find that interesting you couldn't talk about the religion or the ethnic group separately. They were totally knitted together. It became very clear that you could not talk about one without the other.
Mirich: And even the ones that don't go to church all the time, it's still their church. Like they don't understand the church, the rules and things like that, but don't take the church away from them. It's their church. It's part of their heritage. It's very important. And you can see that in the the people we're talking about. Those old pictures. The church was a very important part of it. Let's see if I have anything else written down here.
Jaap: So while you're thinking, so you had mentioned the men on Christmas would wander around. At what age did a boy get to go?
Mirich: Well, not in high school, but I can remember coming home from college and you know what? Probably in high school too, but there might be some families where they'd slip you a drink, but I can't remember personally. I can remember eating, but no, they would watch that.
Jaap: Could the younger boys go? Did they travel with them?
Mirich: Oh yeah. As a group. And there were a ton of kids of Serbian heritage when we grew up. And now there's only a very few, very few. Like I graduated from Butte High in 1955. And there was this Don Borzen. I can talk about their dad and Bronco Borzen. But Dukie and Bebba were in the same year as me at Butte High. And then there was this Billy Uptick. So there's three Serbs beside myself, but there were a ton of girls. There was this Sue Terbovich. Her mom's in a ton of those pictures. Stella Milanovich her dad's, he's the one that is in most of those pictures with the mustache. And he ran a lot of the lodges. He was in there. This Floralee Yellich. If I sat down, I could probably name about 10 girls. So there's about 15 Serbs that graduated in 1955. And then probably the few years after that, it continued. But once you hit the sixties, it dwindled and now it's gone down quite a bit. But as far as visiting, yeah, we could go from house to house. Well, a lot of the houses had kids our age and they knew who we were. Everybody knew everybody else. And I guess that's why I can pick out 90% of those pictures, especially the ones from the forties when I was about 10 years old and the fifties, sixties, and so forth. Now I mentioned Mashon Borozan, that's B O R O Z A N. That's another one that might not say, Hey, that's not a Serbian name, no "itch" on it, but it is. Now this guy was very interesting. He married Java. I don't know what her maiden name was, but he probably, a lot of these people, I don't know if they were married in old country, were married when they came to Butte or knew the family and then brought their wives to Butte.
But they had the three boys and they talked totally Serbian. And the boys, of course, they grew up Americanized. Totally. They lived across the street from the Washington School. And Borozan had a big apartment building. They rented the bottom and I went to the University of Montana with Dukie. He and I roomed together and Dukie would get a check. I think every two weeks from his dad and the dad never worked. He would put on a suit in the morning. He had like a bald head, but then he had long hair in the back. And Dukie would always say, "You see my dad's fez?" Because it looked like a Fez from a hat hanging down. But Mashan would dress nice, put on a fedora, put a cigar on and then walked downtown probably to the M&M, the Board of Trade. Not come home drunk, but just visit with the old timers. He never worked in Butte. Okay. Now I asked Bronco once, he was visiting here. I said what's the story with your dad? I think he was like a military general or something like that during one of the Balkan wars, when they were fighting the Turks, he was high up.
Yugoslavia was formed after the first world war. I got to get this straight. And then it started going downhill. I think it was officially dissolved somewhere between the fifties and the seventies, but it started falling apart in the late 1940s because of the the first world war, second world war, this half fighting with the allies, the other half fighting with the axis powers. And then all of Yugoslavia with the exception of Montenegro was pretty much overrun by the Ottoman empire of Turkey. And my dad always said that Montenegro is kind of proud because the Turks never claimed there. They were high up in the mountain. Turks probably didn't want to spend time going up there. And where the Ottoman empire controlled the east Yugoslavia, the Austro-Hungarian empire controlled the west, Slovenia, probably part of Bosnia and definitely Croatia. So anyway, I think Mashan got on the wrong side that lost in one of those. And I think he was exiled from the country, but he still had a check coming in. Now, one other thing interesting about Serbia, when Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Serbia was called the kingdom of Serbia. And I think it included Montenegro too. They had a king and they had lineage. One of the princes still lives in England. And in one of those pictures, there has to be 200 people in front of the old church, recognizing where the Memorial for King Alexander of Serbia. And then there's another picture that is shown on the inside where you can see the women on the left, the guys on the right, the casket, it's a Memorial for King Alexander when he died.
So these people, all of those people, they were probably first-generation Serbs, Montenegrans when they left. I think the kingdom ended. If I remember. I got it written down. When the kingdom ended in the 1920s. Yeah. That's when the Ottoman empire started losing its hold in the 1930s and they were gone by the 1940s, but then there was fighting probably between groups in there on who's going to control what. So anyway, The Balkan wars. I know a lot of them were in 1912, 1913, and they were just getting rid of the Turks at that time.
And I think there were leaders from Croatia and leaders from the kingdom of Serbia. They were trying to get control. And I think Mashan, I know they used to talk about this, Mahinovitch. And then Tito. Tito eventually got control, became the leader of Serbia or of Yugoslavia. And he held it together until the forties. And then after that each one of these went a separate way, like Montenegro, Serbia all of them. So I think Mashan was on the wrong side, but I think he was supporting the Kingdom of Serbia and probably the king. And there was still money there.
And this prince, I forget his name, but right now, every now and then, you could look it up on a smartphone, I was going to do it, but I didn't have time. The prince lives in England. And probably never worked a day in his life. But there's still that wealth of those old Kings or the monarchy. So this was a story with Mashan.
And I know Dukie when he was going to Butte High, he got into some kind of trouble and they said, you're kicked out until you bring your mom and dad back to school. It was nothing bad. His mom and dad couldn't talk English. So there's some pictures in there of Zorca Milanavitch. She was a first-generation. She was a Popovitch. She married Milanovich, but she was pretty intelligent women. And I think Harriet knows who she is. She would work the slides and the cowboy swings out at the Columbia Gardens and monitor the kids. But Zorca had to go to school with Dukie and sign him up. I do remember that.
So Mashan was kind of an interesting character. There were a lot of old ones. One of those pictures shows this Resco Nikolaj. And he was a single guy, but he was always around Mike's house and my dad's house. And they say he was quite a comedian. I could pick him out in one of those pictures. They're all good memories. Yeah. I'm sure. One of those things would show Mashan. He was quite a character. And his wife Yorba, she worked at the tailor laundry for little cash, stuff like that. Yeah. They had one of those two story apartments and right across the street from the old Washington School.
But there were all kinds of these rooming houses all around Butte, full of the miners. They could just walk down the hill from there. But I don't have a bad memory. I mean, it was just a lot of fun growing up and all these people, all this excitement, the closeness of it all. Christmas, Easter. I would get tired of standing up in church. And another thing that a lot of people that have been around for quite a while in our church, complain about all the time. Well, the liturgies are too long. They can go anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. But that's tradition. It's the way it is. And if you want it to be westernized, you're not going to get it. Our church is going to stay the same. We have had some people, well, several from the Catholic church that have become chrismated in our church because they feel the Catholic church is becoming westernized too much. And we can talk to friends of ours that say, well, I'm not going to church. It's too long. But a given liturgy is about an hour and 15 minutes.
There were some pictures in here. Well, this could be one where we have like a parastos which is a 40 day memorial for a person that has just died. 40 days. They die and then 40 days you have a parastos where the family of that individual comes to church and they have prepared a bowl of wheat. They have a name for that boiled wheat. They put wine in it. They make a cross on top of the sugar cubes, either that or walnuts. And then they light a candle like here. That isn't the parastos. So this one that's probably receiving communion. And he says prayers for the memory eternal for the ones that have deceased and mentions that family. And on those days, the church can go practically two hours sometimes. If you see the candle and the table in front there, and the bowl of wheat, you're in for a long session. Now, normally the liturgies are St John Chrysostom's and his are the ones that we celebrate every week. But during lent, we have St. Basil. And his are really long winded. The priest goes on and on. It'll increase the length of the of the liturgy at least by 10 minutes. I mean, when you say, when Basil said a prayer, he said it for everybody, he didn't leave out anything. So that's another characteristic of our church. You'll notice in these Orthodox churches, the back of the altar is always facing the east and the front of the alter faces the west, the old church, this was west, this was east, the altar was back here. And you don't see an Orthodox church any other way, no matter where you go. Unless they haven't built a church yet and they're using a temporary building. I mean, we go to church down in Las Vegas and it's the same way.
Jaap: And why is that?
Mirich: I'll say tradition. In Fiddler On The Roof, they were Russian Jews, but when the guy was asked a question, he'd say, "That's tradition." I'm sure the priest would give a religious reason for that type of thing.
One of these stained glass windows we still have. It's in our church that was put together. When they built our new church, this one was being razed. And I think we have a picture of that and where they're pulling out the time capsule. It's kind of neat. Where was I going with that? I'm not sure.
So anyway all of them do face the west. Yeah. That's the one. Okay. There's another one too. Yeah. This one here shows, I think that guy is Joe Roberts. I think he ran heavy equipment. [inaudible] and George Stannis recovering the time capsule when they were destroying the old church or razing it. And then this is a bigger picture of it.
One thing that we haven't talked about the old church, when it was first built, there was nothing behind it. Some of these pictures have been whited out. So you don't know if there was a building there or not, but this one looks like it wasn't, but the church was built in 1904. In 1935, I think was the groundbreaking for the new hall or for the old hall. And it faced Porphyry Street. This would be Porphyry here, but you could also go on a connection from the side door of this church, it would tie in with the hall. All the cooking was done in the basement. They had a dummy waiter that would bring it up to the hall like that one picture of the Kolo people. That food was all cooked downstairs. I don't know how they got it all on the dummy waiter and packed it up.
Jaap: We have a picture of people roasting downstairs that appears.
Mirich: No, no, you didn't roast. It was just a small little room. They had a kitchen and they had a couple of tables for meetings of the lodges or a church committees. And when I was going over these with Harriet and Pat and Frank. They were saying, well, where do you think that was going on? And I said, his brothers, Tom and Sam, they worked for the county. So I think it was the county. I'm a hundred percent sure of it.
Jaap: Roasting in the county shops.
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Mirich: The county shop was out on Continental. As you drive into that Skyline park, right next to that center of technology or whatever it is, the county shop was right there. So I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they used the county shop for roasting, probably opened the doors or windows, so they didn't get the sticks in there.
Jaap: So we've interviewed a few Serbian people and Sylvia Scolotich talked about her wedding when we interviewed her and she had an arranged marriage. Was that common, do you know?
Mirich: I would say it was fairly common. Yeah. Because here is a family with a bunch of boys and here's a family with a bunch of girls and the house is crowded. The girls are getting older. My mother got married when she was 16 years old. And my dad, I think, was seven or eight years older. So my dad met her when he was delivering milk. But that in a way could have been that the Vucurovitch's were happy to get rid of Aussie and Novi was about due for a woman. So yeah, they got married in the 1920s. I have a picture of that. And my dad wrote down on the picture. It was 21 below zero when they got married. And they had big weddings. Okay. So I would say a certain percentage of them were. A good percentage of them probably were arranged.
Jaap: And her story was so interesting because in her wedding party, her mother wasn't allowed. Her mother couldn't attend. So there's a picture and it's Sylvia and her little line of attendants and all of these men. And we had thought she was about 16 and we thought, oh, she must have been so afraid. So I was just wondering, because hers is the only story we've heard like that.
Mirich: I think I do remember that story, but that's one that worked out pretty well, because Louie was a good looking guy and Sylvia was a good looking gal. And quite a family, Stanisich. And Stanisich is a very common name. There was George Sam, and Joe Stanosich, and Tom, the ones that we were just talking about roasting a pig in the county shop. They were one set of Stanisich's, and then Sylvia and Sylvia's brothers, Marko, and another one, Joel, they were another set of Stanisich's.
And then in the picture visiting George Stanisich probably on one of those celebrations he had in his house. His name was George, but it was called so-called Judo and he and Muzzy Faroni opened the Freeway Tavern. So that's another Stanisich. And then there was a Milka Stanisich who's probably the oldest one in our church right now. She's 88 years old. They lived on Park Street. Well Milka was Judo Stanisich's sister. And if you ask them, they'd say, well, you know, we were all cousins. I mean, if you're a Serb, you got the same name. You say your your cousins. I had a laugh at Bob Kokrovika Jr. His dad was Bob Kokrovika, senior, and Jennifer Shay is the daughter of Bob Kokrovika, senior. But he ran Bob and Joel's wholesale, started Lucky Lager, then Miller Lite and all the beer distributors. Bob Kokrovika, junior, he was quite a character and he went in the beer business too, but he would laugh at the dad. He said, every time we go out of town, my dad will pull out the phonebook and look up to see if there's Kokrovika's in there. Because he thinks he's related to all of them. It's kind of funny. But some of those names are common.
We had a Dushan Kokrovika that was a priest here, a young guy, one of our better priests. He came before [inaudible] and when he left, I didn't think we'd ever get a priest like him, but this [inaudible] who is now down in San Diego, the one from Bosnia, he was really a good one too.
So anyway this Dushan Kokrovika that I'm talking about. He's from Detroit. His dad was a Montenegrin and the mom and that, and I think he's serving in Detroit right now, but he served in Butte for a few years, but his wife wasn't happy in Butte. So he had to go where the wife wants you to.
Jaap: That's usually how it works.
Mirich: It is. I know my family my wife is the boss of me. Every now and then I choose my battles, but I choose them carefully. Roseanne, very smart.
Jaap: So, Sonny, is there anything else you wanted to tell us?
Mirich: I'm trying to think if there's any other traditions we've gone through. I think just about everything I can think of. Our church here is locally run, but there's strong affiliation with the Western diocese of Serbian churches. And the center of that is in Los Angeles. And there's a Bishop there. He's a Bishop Maxim and all of the bishops just about every one of them come from Yugoslavia, Montenegro or Serbia and Maxim did, but he's the younger one and speaks very good English. And most of them are very well-schooled.
They have gone to seminary school and on and on up with that, now that something else that occurs to me that I haven't mentioned is that our priests can marry. They have families unlike the Catholic church, which is probably a fortunate thing to allow them to have a relationship. But if you're in a monastery or you get to the point in your work or your tenure or what you have to learn, and you become a bishop or a monk, then there's no chance of marriage. And they're all single. Like our priest in Butte right now, father Russell, he has four kids and he came from California. And our past practice with California priests coming to Butte, some have stayed for quite a while. Like Father Dostei Brodovich. He was called in at our command rate and that's a higher level of a priest. And he probably got to the point where he couldn't marry either, but he was in Butte for a long time. And then he left. Then he came back again and then he retired down there. But the California priests, when they come to Butte, it's like a lot of other people come to Butte, the culture, the mines, the looks of it, the lack of, especially today, there's very few Serbs around.
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And if these Serbs are used to mingling with other Serbs, it's kind of quiet for them up here. So they can't get out of Butte fast enough. And it seemed like all of them ended up back in California. A lot of them. We have gone through cycles where we had difficulty keeping a priest. But talking about father Russell [inaudible], he was born in Fresno. His dad was Montenegrin. I'm not sure about the mom, but they came from the wine country. And I think his brother is still down there running the vineyards. And he's got like a degree or whatever you call it in a sommelier. Is that the wine type of thing? And he's really into the wine. I mean, he doesn't drink it all the time. He's not a drunk. But we have had wine tastings at our church. And his wife originally was from Canada. She is not Serb, but she is, of course chrismated Serb now. They have three beautiful daughters. They have a son, Paul. Of course, they all live in the church home out there. Paul's old are now going to school. And I think Vesna, the older one's going to Missoula, but they have one daughter that's probably at Hillcrest and one that's at Butte High, but they love Butte. I guess that's what I'm getting to. He was one of the few from California that they are just happy as ever. And he's probably been here 10 or 11 years now. And, of course, when we get a real good priest like that Father [inaudible] Kursick, the Bishop will pull them out of here if he needs someone in California close to him, they want them down there. So right now this Kursick that came from Bosnia, he married a Serbian gal when he went to school in Chicago, he's got a big parish in San Diego, Serbian parish.
Well, it's interesting there though, his brother's Fetlan and his sister-in-law when he was a priest in Butte here, he filled out all of the papers necessary and he brought them to the United States and they're living in Butte right now. And of course there they've been here several years now. So they both have a really good English and they've become citizens, but there isn't that Serb culture. And I think they would like to leave Butte and get down by their brother in San Diego where the action is. And then I know they have [inaudible], which is something I can talk about in Milwaukee. So they have friends all over, but they would kind of like to leave Butte, but he works for Montana Resources. He's got a good job and they can't afford to leave. But if something comes up and they're good people and we're happy to have them in the church. Now he's the one that he and his wife [inaudible names] and they have a real cute daughter, Maria that I think is an eighth grader at East. So they're raising their family here. They did buy a house, but they sold it. And that like an apartment, which means that they want to when they get a chance, but Serbian Cyrillic, both of them, both his wife and the little girl, I think she's, she's going to grow up with the, yeah. I want to become American, but they want her to learn English or Serbian too.
They're still in Butte here. I kind of like to get together with them and show them some of these pictures of old Butte, but they came from Bosnia, Herzegovina. So they were on the Serbian side. If you look at a map of Bosnia Herzegovina, I saw one on the computer. Yellow was Croatian and Roman Catholic, I think green was Muslim kind of in the middle and then in the west, it was red, which was a Serbian Orthodox. And the amount of area there was a third, a third, a third pretty close. But one thing about the Muslims there, they're not . . . they're friendly, let's put it that way. I guess there doesn't seem to be any problems. And then as far as the Serbs and Croatians, there's no problems there either. A lot of them have become intermarried. And like I know on the east side there were Serbians and Croatians, they got along fine. The Croatians, of course, like Bobby Pavlovich. They're Croatian.
But everybody got along real well, even though there was a period of time there when president Clinton was there where this one Serb, Milosevic, was being a little nasty with the Croatians. But then I can tell you something else too, during the second world war, have you ever heard of the Ustase? Look that up sometime. They were Croatians that were supposed to have killed 600,000 Serbs and this is backed by books. And so it wasn't all Serbs doing the killing of Croatians. The Ustate, well, they were under the hand of the Germans at that time. Germany overran Croatia probably part of Serbia for a period of time. But there was a group in Serbia called the partisans that fought against the Germans kind of like rebels. So anyway, this Ustase was a fighting army, probably under German control. Not probably, but they were Croatians that were killing Serbs. And then the number got up to under a million, I think. So there was always a lot of fighting in the Balkans.
The thing that I think about a lot is these people, like my grandmothers, my grandfathers that left that country or their villages and came to the United States. I mean, that was a big move and there wasn't just Serbs that did that. Irish, Italians. But these people to leave old country, leave brothers, sisters, mom, dad, and never be able to get back. Like [inaudible names], they have family back there, but they're in a position to hop on a plane and go back and see their family where these people were not. Most of them, they were here to stay. My dad never could get back there. My one uncle, he was able to go back. Okay.
Here's something else I can bring up. I looked up like my grandmother and my dad and I found them on Ellis Island. But I looked up Luka [Mirich], my dad. And there's no recording of it or it's not listed. And I looked up Liza Vucurovich and Norko, and nothing on that. Somebody was saying that they could have gone to South America first. There are Serbs down there. Jankovich had a brother that was down there. Or they could have gone to Canada. Mada, my grandmother had a brother in Canada. And Anny, one of Rose's sisters, she went to Canada and visited him.
And I have a picture at home of my dad, my grandmother and my grandfather. It must've been maybe within five years after they got back. [inaudible] Johnny and Dessie were in the picture and my dad and the brother. So Bercovitch, my grandma's brother was in the picture too. And he lived in Butte for a while. They ended up back in Canada and my dad said, "I can remember my uncle buying me shoes." But he was kind of a little guy. So the reason I brought up Canada, maybe like Vucurovich and Luka, they might've got off instead of Ellis Island in Canada. A different ship, but they have a different port and then eventually worked their way across, maybe worked up there a while and then eventually crossed into the United States. Maybe it didn't have the difficulties getting across. And eventually just started working in mines and went to class and became citizens. I know Laza did, because I found his name. I'm going to have to look up and see if I can find Luka's name in there to become a citizen. How are we doing?
Jaap: Good, Sonny. I don't have any more questions for you.
Mirich: How much time have we been here?
Grant: Just the hour and a half.
Mirich: So we at least went an hour.
Grant: I have one final question. I'm just curious why [inaudible].
Mirich: Good question. Subsistence from the underground mines. Oh yeah. It'd be interesting. There's one picture there. The old hall, when we were going through that. Show that one of the dinner, I don't know. You could see a big crack in the hall of the old hall. Yeah. And that was a evidence of a subsistence. Yeah. All underground mines under there. This hall right here, we had the big dinners. There was a big basement there. The stairs were real steep, steep stairs. This basement was real small, but yeah, there was starting to be cracks and it was just unsafe. This was 1965. And so it lasted for 60 years from 1904. But this isn't the only thing that was in the subsistence area of Butte, west of Butte High where you have that Emmett park, there was a grade school called the Garfield school.
And then by the Travonia mined, there was the Webster school and all of them were in the subsistence zone from underground mining. And every one of them had to be razed, destroyed - the Garfield, the Webster. And that's why you have the Webster-Garfield school on the corner down there. It was built in 1950. I think I was in eighth grader when they opened it and we used to play our basketball games down there. Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely. Now, right now I can remember that building. And in some of these pictures, there was no hall that was built in 37, you'll see the cornerstone out on Continental alongside the church. They got compensated and maybe they just gave them the land for the new church out there. But the new church has been there since the hall operated in 1965, probably opened the church late in the year of 1965. Yeah. This is Porphyry. And then it's Idaho street running this way. It's the Southwest corner. And then Montana street would be right over here.
Yeah. I can remember going to church with my mom leaning on those carels and especially if we were fasting and then walking up the street with my uncle Matt who was blind and my mom and me and my sister, we'd walk up Montana street and go to the old Beehive Cafe for breakfast after fasting. Do you know where the Beehive was?
Jaap: The corner of Montana where Taco Del Sol is now?
Mirich: Yeah, right there. That's where the Beehive was. Just happy memories. I mean one thing though, every picture I see of my mom in here, she looks so sad. She's not smiling on any of them. I wonder why. She was happy in that one, when she was delivering the food to the table of her mom and her sister, and she was all family, she loved her family. Well, and then she was so close to the blind. It was kind of a heartbreaker right down the line. I mean, Tootsie, my aunt, she got blind I guess when she was a sophomore in high school and she met Johnny Kovacich. He was so good. So they married. He said, "You had beautiful eyes when I met, you got beautiful eyes now. So forget it. We're staying together." And they raised a family, but he died young too. He had a heart attack, I think when he was 50, but they do have three children, Cheryl Ackerman, Ted Ackerman. They're running the Miner's Hotel there. Now that'd be Tootsie's daughter and Crystal would be the granddaughter.
Tootsie was the last of the Vucurovich. And Rose was the last of the Mirich's of the first generation. Yeah. But it was not without problems, but we never went hungry. My uncle, John, my dad was real mellow. He was a big man. John was kind of short and he was kind of feisty. When we talked about his dad, we said he was mean. He was mean. And I asked my dad about that and he said, "Well, his life changed when [inaudible] got killed." But my uncle John, he was always ready, ready for a fight. He lived in Los Angeles. He was single his whole life, but there's a story there too. During the second world war, all the guys were going to war and Johnny went to report and they wouldn't take him. He had epilepsy and it broke his heart. And at that time there was minimal pills to prevent it. So he spent the war years in Alaska driving truck. And when he came back, he had a bicycle for Margie and I. It was a used bike, but a bike was unheard of. You couldn't get them. And we still lived down there on Delaware Street. And we were happy to have a bike. Marjorie had put me on the handlebars and we'd go up to Reed's grocery store and get pop and ice cream. And it was right down the street from where Rose lives now, where the old house was. She can relate to all this because her husband is Rose's grandson. Yeah.
These thoughts keep running in and out and as I look at these things more things, more things occur to me that I hope I haven't, we're not on, there are no, or we are not pulling the hell out of it was, it was fun looking at these pictures. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do so. I sent some to my sister and then Mark Vucurovich. Do you know Marko? Did you see the picture of him when he was a little boy?
Jaap: He's in the front of these somewhere? Isn't he?
Mirich: Yeah. Do you know who Marko is? He was the the head of the chamber of commerce in Butte. And he got sick. He's a lot younger than I am. But there's Marko right there. That's Mark. And this is his sister. Marko right there. Now I think Harriet or one of them said, "Well, isn't it cute? They got all the kids at a table." And they do. And they all got smiles. They're not causing trouble. They've got the adults over here. So that is everyone in that thing is cute. Do you know Sandra Popovich? Pat's the one that got me involved. And I think Pat, she works out at the kids classes at the YMCA. And Pat was talking to her and then one thing led to another. And Sandra asked me to come up here.
Yeah. This table here. That's unbelievable. That's Bubba Vucurovich right there. She was a tough one. The blind ones aren't there. That's Angie. She was a aunt. She lived in Anaconda. She married [inaudible]. That Joey Jankovich, she married Mike. That's Sammy Jankovich there. He was president of the church for a number of years. That's Joe Roberts that married Eileen Markovich, who was Sammy's half sister, Dora's daughter. Joe Roberts they moved to Missoula. That's my brother-in-law Jane. That's my dad. And I think this one is, I'd say that [inaudible]. My mom is heading right to the table where her family is. She's going to pass up everybody else. She was a good person. Good, good memories. I thank Luka and Laza for coming to the U S. Leaving whatever they got over there. Montenegro is not a rich country. It's way up in the mountains and it's rocky, but you go down one part of it and you will hit Dalmatia, which is part of the Croatia. And it's along the Adriatic sea. And Don, my cousin, when he went there, he said it's beautiful. Really beautiful. And I know there's this Donna [inaudible]. I don't know her maiden name. She died. They lived in Whitehall. She had a couple daughters, but they had property in Dalmatia, to this day. So it's got to be pretty valuable. We know it's in [inaudible] baby, her family, whatever her maiden name was. I don't know and one other thing that I haven't been able to find out and I'm going to have to work on it up here, Bubba Vucurovich. I can't find her maiden name. And I don't know if her and Laza were married there. I couldn't find it here, but I think Katrina Ackerman, Cheryl's daughter was up here and she said she found some information on it.
So I'm going to have to look for that. Laza and Milka, if they married back there. And then also I asked Tootsie before she died, what Bubba's maiden name was. And she couldn't really tell me. I want to think of something like Birch or Busich or something like. I got that. I think Tootsie told me that, but I couldn't find it on Ellis Island either. I couldn't find Vucurovich. And not Laza in the proper timeframe. I figured that Luka must have come across probably in about 1907, because they came in 1912. My dad said he was five years old. My dad remembered when he was 10 years old. He could remember them pulling bodies out of the Speculator. What was that? 1917. And loading them on carts. Because his dad was mining the whole time. Well, he was a carpenter too. And so was Laza, but they both died early, early fifties. I wish I had known them. I was lucky to know my grandmas. Some people don't get to know them. And Mada was a small lady. Long dresses, the scarf, old country. I mean, you could tell they were rural people, chickens, not horses. We had cows and pigs. Bubba was feisty. She wasn't mean. But she was loud and always bossing the kids. Like we would sit down and eat dinner, I'd ask for ketchup. And my mother would nudge me. Because if Bubba heard me asking for ketchup, she'd get pissed off.
And Bubba would talk to me. I'd look at my mother and then Bubba would holler because I couldn't understand. So well, thank you for allowing me to do this.
Jaap: Thank you for coming.
Mirich: Well, I enjoyed it. You're going to see me more now because I'm going to have to follow up on some of this stuff. And it was nice meeting you, Clark. Well, I'm glad that you enjoyed it.
Jaap: And there was an earthquake. Just like, yeah, I don't, I don't know. I don't know if it was very big earthquake, but there was subsidence and I think that earthquake and then it just started going. I think that's probably what was the nail in the coffin.
Mirich: I'm going to send this to John [inaudible]. Well, his mom was in a ton of these pictures. They lived on Montana Street and he left Butte probably in the sixties. He could name every one of these guys. So we'll do a little more work. I still have a half a pack of what Harriet gave me.