Zivko Stivic ~~~ aka John Stevens

I can think of a few moments I have reached the goal of something I wanted to achieve, I still remember that thrill of excitement that everything you did to make this thing happen is finally here and that standing on your tip toes with that happy bounce, huge grin and the fluttery butterflies of excitement in your stomach is just not enough expression of what you are truly feeling inside.  A sense of achievement is sometimes the greatest feeling.

Zivko Stivic (aka John Stevens) has been a hard man to pin down.  He is my great grandfather on my paternal side.  He was born in Jugoslavia, a country that no longer exists.  He is known to be Hungarian, Croatian and Jugoslavian.  Every form has had some variation of this information.

Within the last few months I have met cousins that I didn't know I had by one reaching out to me on Facebook and two others commenting on a photograph of my grandfather on Ancestry.com.  In the last few weeks I have doggedly searched and finally found death dates of my grandfather and great grandparents.  When I want to know something… I find it.  The great thing here is collaboration.  One cousin has a copy of a hand written will, the other cousin has documents that were shared and all of these things would never have been available to me otherwise.  By proxy of my father I have been estranged from this family all of my life.

The Stevens family line has been hard for me to start.  I didn't have a kind and gentle father (or a family  life) and he didn't have much contact with his family but I am finding it okay to skip over him and find out about my people and where I come from and I am glad I have.  What I have found out about my great grandfather so far is I wish I had known him.    He was an immigrant, he worked hard and he was a good man.  He lost his wife early, my great grandmother died in 1944.  He died in 1966.  He saw to the care of my grandfather (his son) who ended up living many years in a State Hospital after a car accident altered his life permanently.  He had to bury his son, my grandfather died in 1964.  He was a stamp collector, I have found his small ads in the back of Popular Mechanics magazines.  Truthfully I don't know much about him but I know enough about him that I like him more than I thought I would.  See in the last year or two of giving myself permission to bypass the bad and search for the good in my bloodline he was just dates and places but at some point in the last few months the documents have reached out and he has grabbed me by my heart.  It is hard to explain.

So today I sit here documenting his Certificate of Citizenship where his name change becomes official, there is a very fuzzy picture of him and he signs his new official name, John Stevens.  It may sound odd but I found myself cheering a little inside my head for him, so proud of his accomplishment and I can just imagine his smile as his dream of achievement actually happened or his newborn saunter out of the Court room as now being an American.  What did he do I wonder… did they have a party?  Did they go out dancing?  Just what did they do to celebrate.  This was an accomplishment of patience, he originally arrived in the US in 1912 and never left, not even for a home visit.  This document makes me happy for him.  It overshadows the bit of bittersweet sadness I felt when I saw the picture of his grave marker.  (A quick diversion of topic here… a Find-A-Grave volunteer had my photos within 2 or 3 days!!)

So I will leave off here with a Congratulations Great Grandpa!!  Even 86 years later this is still exciting news!