By Teddy Gadjev, Son of Ivan
On May 20, 2017 at 9:18 AM Dr. Ivan Iliev Gadjev passed away. I have heard many times people say that a person’s life story is worth making a movie about them; this couldn’t be more true for my father.
Born on December 23, 1937, in the city of Nevrokop (Gotse Delchev), Bulgaria, his life was changed forever at the age of just six years old. His father, Ilia Todorov Gadjev, was arrested on September 9, 1944 when the communist partisans came down from the mountains and overtook 170 Bulgarian towns and villages. His father would never be let go. After a decision from the People’s Court, on the night of October 5, he was dragged to the mountains with 42 others, and was killed and buried in an unmarked grave. The remaining Gadjev family members – his wife Katerina, daughter Maria, son Zdravko, and my father were then labeled enemies of the State. They were told they needed to leave their home immediately and could take only what they could carry.
For the next 20 years, my father’s family was forced to live in housing provided by the State, which had no indoor plumbing or toilet. If not for his mother’s absolute love and dedication to provide for her family, things might have turned out differently for my father. She had to walk miles every day to the tobacco fields before sunrise. Her sons would be forced to join her in work much earlier in their lives than any child ever should. He would always tell me “I hated those fields so much, but without them we wouldn’t have survived… we would have starved to death”.
As an enemy of the State, my father was not even allowed to serve in the Army, instead having to serve in the labor brigades. He was banned from enrolling in the profession of his choice – a lab chemist. With some luck and help from a sympathizer who knew his father, he was able to enroll in a College for Veterinary Technologist at Stara Zagora, graduating in 1962. After completing this, and again with a little luck and sympathy, he enrolled at the Higher Veterinary Medical Institute in the capitol city of Sofia.
After graduating in 1967 as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, the only job he could secure was to care for the animals and livestock in 16 villages near his hometown, near the Bulgarian-Greek border. This was a very hard job, as he wasn’t given any form of transportation and would have to walk for miles daily. This “job” was a blessing in disguise.
After challenging the authorities to reopen his father’s case, he was warned to “keep your mouth shut or you might end up like your father.” My father then made the decision that he couldn’t live under this oppression anymore, and on July 3, 1968, he decided to cross the Bulgarian-Greek border. After careful planning to avoid guards and tripwires, he crawled on his hands and knees for two kilometers. After six hours, he arrived at the Mesta River, the natural border between the two countries. My father told me that even after swimming across he wasn’t sure if he was free. Not until he saw an old Coca-Cola can was he sure that he was safely in Greece and then, out of elevated adrenalin and emotion, he turned around and gave the middle finger to the country he wouldn’t step foot on again until 1990. He accomplished this when the official orders at that time were “anyone caught trying to escape was to be shot dead, buried immediately and the border patrol who caught them to receive one week’s paid vacation.”
After a brief interrogation by the US Army, he was eventually transported to an immigration camp in Lavrion, just outside of Athens, Greece. This is where he would fall in love with the great John Wayne and the American Western movies. He was eventually sponsored by Father George Nicoloff, a close family friend of his father, and ended up in Detroit on December 22, 1968 as a political refugee with only 1 Bulgarian Lev in his pocket. He has told me that on his flight over they were serving the meal and he realized he didn’t have any money, so he used the only English words he had learned – “no thank you”.
His first job was washing bottles at a Coca-Cola factory until he arranged to work at Owen Animal Hospital while simultaneously studying English, and for his licensure exams. Because of his discipline and studiousness day and night, in 1970 he received his Certificate from the American Veterinary Medical Association in Chicago, Illinois. Not knowing where he would end up, my father quickly attained licensure in 1971 from New Jersey, then from both Ohio and Ottawa, Canada in 1972. He had become the first Bulgarian Veterinarian in America to earn such credentials. In the end, he would remain in Detroit where, in January 1974, he purchased his own clinic offering boarding, grooming, and full medical services. His facility would expand and become the largest in all of Metro Detroit.
In 1972, his future wife, Florence Rose Christoff, would meet her “Prince Charming”. They married in 1973 and had five children – Katerina, Ilia, Theodore (Todor), Christopher (Hristo) and Marie.
He immediately became very active in the Bulgarian emigration colony in Metro Detroit. He was elected as Secretary to the Central Committee for the Macedonian Patriotic Organization, President of the local MPO chapter “Fatherland”, and worked with many other prominent emigration and anti-communist organizations in North America. He would travel across the United States collecting books and archive materials, and recorded the stories and experiences of the older generation Bulgarian emigrants who came here before him so that they would not be forgotten.
In 1976 he founded the “St. Clement of Ohrid Macedono-Bulgarian Scientific Institute”. This was located in a special addition built at our family’s home. After the political changes in Bulgaria in 1989, and Bulgaria’s acknowledgment of the Republic of Macedonia on January 16, 1992, the Institute was renamed and expanded to become the “Ilia Todorov Gadjev Institute for the History of the Bulgarian Emigration in North America”.
After the fall of Communism on November 10, 1989, the Gadjev ancestral home was finally returned by the government. Eventually, my father decided to purchase the empty parcel of land next to the house and build a three story, 7,500 sq. ft. building that would satisfy all the future needs for proper functioning of the Institute. The building was completed in 2000, and by the summer of 2004, over 60 tons of archive materials, books, newspapers, and office equipment were shipped from the United States.
He always did things his way and on his own terms. He had planned on closing his business and retiring at the end of 2003. Then on December 23 of that year, his birthday, having just closed up for the night, my father locked the front door, came home, said that he was done and never went back; how many people are able to do that?
After his retirement, he would travel to Bulgaria and stay for six months out of the year living in the house he was born in. He published 12 books, numerous articles, and participated in many TV interviews and discussions regarding the Bulgarian Emigration in North America, Communism in Bulgaria and the Balkan Peninsula. My father received various awards from different organizations and governments. The most recent was in 2014 when he was awarded the “Golden Bay Leaf” by Bulgaria’s Ministry of Exterior. This is the highest award given to people that live outside the country, but work in the name and for the honor and benefit of Bulgaria. There have been only three other recipients of this honor from the United States, Hillary Clinton being one of them.
Thinking back, our family can’t even be sure of all the lives our father and husband has directly or indirectly touched and influenced over the years. We have lost count of all the Bulgarian families he has brought into our home and let stay with us for as long as necessary until they got their footing in their new country; “Hotel Gadjev” was always open for someone. He changed many lives forever, in ways that we will probably never understand, giving them a chance at a better life here in America. Just this morning, I received a phone call from someone that I have never met calling from Indianapolis with his condolences and telling me that he owes everything to my father because he was the green card sponsor for him and his two daughters many years ago.
They say that a child is supposed to surpass and exceed the accomplishments and successes of their parents. I know that this will never happen, and I realize that all the accomplishments of me and my siblings combined will never be able to surpass the courage, resolve, and selflessness he showed during his life.
May he rest in peace! Memory Eternal!
Бог да прости! Вечная Памет!
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