Bells and Brandy : Southland Croatians and Slovenians Celebrate Republics’ Independence

Father Felix Diomartich was in the rectory of the old St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church in Chinatown when he heard the church bell ringing like crazy around noon on Tuesday.

As the retired 76-year-old pastor headed into the church to look for a naughty child, he bumped into his own associate, the diminutive, gray-haired Msgr. John Segaric, 68.

“It was me,” confessed Segaric, a sheepish grin on his face. “I heard the church bells were ringing in Zagreb. I wanted to ring with them!”

Every day since 1945, Segaric has said a prayer for the independence of Croatia. That prayer was answered Tuesday when the Yugoslavian republics of Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence.

“When I was ringing the bell, I kept visualizing all my own people back home and how happy they were,” he said.

Croatian and Slovenian immigrants in Southern California are celebrating the independence of a region barely familiar to many Americans. In San Pedro, where several thousand Croatians settled in the 1920s and took up fishing as they had for centuries back home, elderly immigrants joined their children and grandchildren Tuesday night in assembling at Croatian Hall and parading around town, honking and cheering in an impromptu caravan.

“Everybody who’s Croatian, up to the third generation, still has relatives at home,” said Mirko (Mike) Volaric, a private investigator in West Covina and president of the Croatian National Assembly, an umbrella group of Croatian organizations in Southern California.

“I called my cousin in Zagreb to see if it was true. . . . Finally I reached a cousin who could scarcely hear me for all the celebration,” he said. “She just held the telephone up so I could listen to the cheers. It made my eyes water.”

Around Southern California, Croatians are pulling out bottles of homemade plum brandy that relatives have brought them on visits.

“Zivjela Croatia!” they toast. “Salute to Croatia!”

“I drank Courvoisier,” confessed Volaric. “That plum stuff is pretty strong.”

“We feel we have been promoting this since 1945, when communists took over,” said Petar Radielovic, a Croatian language radio commentator. “Everybody is happy with full-hearted exuberance. Finally they will be able to achieve their own future.”

When Segaric went to say his first Mass for mir --peace--for the new state of Croatia on Wednesday morning, his parishioners didn’t seem to understand. Croatians have long since moved away from the church, built in 1910. The faces of the faithful staring up at him were Mexican and Chinese.

Afterward, he said, one Mexican woman came up and congratulated him, but he didn’t think she even knew where Croatia is.

“I don’t think there is one Croatian person in the United States or around the world who is not celebrating independence,” said Mario Juravich, an aide to City Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores. “We are happy to be here, Americans, but we are here because we could not make a living or because we did not have political freedom in Croatia, not because we didn’t love our country.”

Ever since Yugoslavia submitted to communist rule after World War II, he said, Croatians from outside the country have been raising money to send to their homeland. Immigrants from the United States and elsewhere sent money to support families, nationalist causes and, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, equipment for the cause, such as typewriters, facsimile machines, telephones and computers.

Croatians, the second-largest ethnic group in Yugoslavia, have been at odds with the dominant Serbians repeatedly throughout their history. Of the 1.7 million Yugoslavs believed to have been killed during World War II, up to 1 million reportedly died in ethnic violence.

Karmen Marasovich, 30, of Reseda is Slovenian, while her husband, Zeljko, 40, a musician, is Croatian. Such intermarriages are unusual in Yugoslavia, where languages and customs vary between ethnic groups.

When Karmen Marasovich saw on the news that Slovenia and Croatia had simultaneously declared their independence, she remembered the way she had felt when she and her husband first decided to leave their homes, get married and strike out on their own.

Though elated, she said she is also concerned, like others who have relatives in the two republics, about growing reports of violence. The reports, she said, led her to cancel a planned trip home this summer.

“What is going to happen next?” she asked. “Will there be violence? All we know is that this is not the end of the story.”