Spiro Dozet came to Colorado in 1913 from Pochany, . He brought his three daughters with him, Yeta, Bojo and Mata. While he was working in the coal mines for Colorado Pew and Iron, which was owned by the Rockefellers, a strike started. This was because the miners wanted a Union but the Rockefellers didn't. So strike breakers were brought in. They burned down tents and houses, but he escaped and by following the railroad tracks, came to Rock Springs. This was called the Ludlow Massacre. Bozo, Stanko, Milan, Akim and Yovan Prijic came to Colorado from Serblica, Yugoslavia. They soon moved to Walsenburg to work in the mines. Back in Yugoslavia, their nephew, Ilija graduated from Gymnasium (High School) and was going to college to become a Orthadox Minister. Yugoslavia was under the rule of Austria Hungry. When a young man became a certain age, he was drafted into the army. To prevent Ilija from being in the Austria Hungry Army, the five uncles sent him a shipcard (passage for ship) to come to Colorado. So when he was 19, he came over to The United States on the Lusitania. Ilija worked in the mines and never became a minister. Bojo Dozet came to Denver, Colorado and met Ilija. She came to marry another Serbian but she didn't like him, so Ilija and Bojo eloped. They got married in ~he St. Nicolas Church in Pueblo, Colorado. They had eleven children. Smilga, the oldest, was born on August 12, 1915, in Rugby, Colorado. Smilga remembers that her father called Rugby, Ruby, and she did also for a long time. It is now a ghost town. Her real is Cnelia, which if a~"J\"\:_ cized correctly, should have been Amelia. But a girl who took her to school called her Smilga so that's what the teacher wrote down. She never changed it back. Her parents (who had nick­ for all the children) always called her Millie. Helen was born next, on August 29, 1916, in Morley, Colorado where the had just moved. Her Slavic name is Yelena. They then moved to Kemmerer, Wyoming with friends. Daisy was born in Kemmerer, Wyoming on Nov. 16, 1917. Her Slavic name was Danisa. They thought she was going to die from pnemonia, so an Orthodox preacher was sent for, from Pocatello, Idaho. Tfiis was because an Orthodox Church wasn't organized in Wyoming at that time. The preacher was sent for because in the Serbian Religion, if you are not baptised, you are a heathen, so they would send for a preacher even before a doctor if someone was close to death. But Daisy didn't die and was also saved from heathenism. George was also born in Kemmerer, Wyoming on Feb. 27,

1919. His is ~ Judy. Mike (Dimitar) was born in Poposia, Wyoming, on June 24, 1920. This was a little coal mine four miles from Hudson, Wyoming. The Indians named it but whites called it Popagy. Mik~s birth record has the name Bronco on it, Smilga doesn't remember why. Sophie was born in Poposia, on April 27, 1922. She was born during a big miners strike, when no one had a jpb. It lasted six months. She was called Gutty. This was from the Slavic word Gudva, which means dark, she was called this because she had long, dark hair. Edward was born in Popsia on Fee. 16, 1924. He was the first to have a . That was because his 1other called him Alexander after the King of Yugoslavia. Dr. Wright, who delivered him, was an Englishman and gave him the middle name of Edward after the man in England who would get the t · h~wn. He was called Fatty because he was a fat infant. Milan was born in Rock Springs, on Dec. 9, 1925. The teacher spelled his name Melaine and later he had to change it legally to Milan. He was called Bekey which means light color because he haa light hair and skin. William was born June 26, 1928 in Rock Springs. His Slavic name is Valdemir. When he went to Medical School he changed it legally to Wiiliam Valdemir. He was called Luddy. Mary was born Oct. 9, 1930 in Rock Springs also. She was called Marta by her parents but Queeny by everyone else because she always had to have her hair curled. Patricia Jean was born September 21, 1937, in Rock Springs. When she was born, her mother didn't know what to name her. Shirley Temple was popular at that time so her name was put down as Shirley Jean, but the next day her mother decided she didn't like Shirley but she liked Patrona, so Smilga told her to call her Patrica. She was called Pat for short. The children never called their parents mother and father or Mom and Dad. The Borders they took in called them by their Serbian name, but their mother called their father Bilija, so they were called Bilja and Bojo by the children. The name Prijic was changed also, because the president of the Coal Company thought the J was a Y and the C was CH because of the accents above and below it so it ended up Pryich. When Sihilga went to school, she couldn • t spea.k English. She went to school for one year to play with the other children and eventually picked up the language but lost her own. The family moved from one mining town to another. r:{.lhe miners got payed by the amount of coal they brought up from the mine. When he worked at Poposia Coal Company by Hudson. Wyoming, he was paid $114.92 a month. The store took $40.00, miners union was $1.25, mules rented for $2.50 and the weigher, who weighed the coal got .94 cents.

Most people in the c~mps were Serbian. But there were also the English, Irish and Welsh. The called them Americans and the Serbians were called the foreigners.~ecause of the language barrier, they felt isolated and they stuck to their own culture. In the house they had coal but no electricity, kerosene lamps, which they cut the wicks for themselves. They also had sod irons. Smilga remembers when she was seven, she tried to pick up the iron and it dropped on the plain wood floor they had. They ~t ~~ soup, polenta (corn meal mush) with sour milk (much like yogurt) and sometimes~th stew. Smilga remembers the first time she ate "American" food was at a Halloween party in the second grade. She tasted coco, pickles, and pumpkin pie for the first time. She says that she can still taste that spicy pumpkin pie she thought was delicious. In Popsia her mother took in borders, cooked for them and did their laundry because there were many single men. When they moved to Rock Springs she didn't do this because most men were married. Smilga graduated from high school in 1933. she was the first girl from the Pryich or Dozet family to graduate. This was because foreign girls were married off at a young age. She remembers when her mother was sick, two ladies told her father to take her out of school and let her care for the rest of the children, but she told him, "No one is taking me out of school." Her father was working night shift, so she had the principal rearrange her schedule to go all morning to school and she stayed home in the afternoon with the others.

This was duri ~g the Depression. After graduating she worked for the WPA (Works Progress Administration).

She remembers that Rock Springs escaped the depression because the Union Pacific mined coal for the railroad.

She also worked for the U. P. so while people were begging for jobs, she had two. She remembers living in

Popsia in 1929 when the mines closed down so the family moved to Rock Springs with another family, named Mitro~ich.

They l i ved with them. Both slept in one room, with children on the floor. Everyone helped out washing dishes and peeling potatoes. The women took in borders and one day one of them was killed in the mines, so she told Ilija to run down and get his job. He did and he got the job. Men were always getting killed in the mines until

the U. P. started their safety program. But even then

miners resented the hard hats and steel foot shoes. Boys

were sent down in the mines at ten or eleven. Most of

them never finished school because the times were tough

and someone had to make the money.

There were happy times like the holidays. The Serbians

had a different calander than everyone else. It was two weeks different. For instance\Christmas was celebrated

on Jan. 7 not Dec. 25, and because their father was going

to be a minister, they went through all the traditional

rituals like lighting three candles for the three Kings

and walking around the table three times before putting

it out with wine. They didn't have birthdays butast.

Nicholas day, that is like a birthday but everyone cele- .. brates on that day. The Serban children got out of school

on these days.

If she would forget someone on Valentines Day and

that person confronted her, she would tell them "Tlia±•s

~11 r~ ght, I will s:end you one on Serbian Valentines Day two weeks later." But she made it up since Serbians don't have Valentines Day.

On St. Nicholas Day they did the same thing that was done on Christmas except someone was given the candles.

Something was supposed to happen to that person. Smilga recalls that many Serbians ·were superstitious. For example, they believed that if you put your clothes on insideout you were supposed to take them off and stomp on them three times or you'll have bad luck. Smilga later quit doing a lot of them because :- they seemed silly.

In 1923 the family was supposed to move back to

Yugoslavia. The morning that they were going to leave

Smilga saw a pig on the way to school. When she got home she complained to her mother that if they went back to

Yugoslavia all they would have to eat is polenta and never have beefsteak again. When her father came home her mother told him they weren't going. She told him he could leave but she was staying with the children. ' "My

Big Mouth Helped Me to Stay in the United States," Smilga reported. Ilija then died in 1939 of black .lung, called miner's consumption or miner's asthma. On the death certificate the company doctor, who was payed by the compapy, put that he died of a heart attack. They did this all the time so the family couldn't sue them later. Smilga remembers that even in three cases where miners were killed in the mines the doctors would rule for the company. The Union at this time never helped. They also cited with the company instead of the miners. She thinks that this happened because the union leaders were payed off.

Eight months after their father died their mother died.

She was taken to the hospital with a tumor. It was prob­ ably cancerous but then doctors didn't talk about cancer.

George and Smilga together made $125.00 and this is what they lived on. The welfare office was going to help them but Smilga recalls one day they called her to the office.

They asked her where they had spent $30,. 00. She told them to "Stick that Goddamm $30.00 up you know where. Who in the hell's going to keep track of $JO.OO. You figure it out." So they ended up not ge,tting help from anyone. After their mother died they moved into the house that Smilga still lives in today, 1030 Pilot Butte Ave.

The Union Pacific gave people trees and the houses on

Pilot Butte could use as much water as they wanted. So the people grew beautiful gardens of multicolored flowers.

That is why they used to call it Rainbow Avenue. When they moved to Rock Springs all the nouses were burgandy but then U. P. painted the houses white, green and grey.

The "bigshots" at U. P. got the white lj.ouse and their house was painted grey "To this day I hate grey" she says.

Their grandfather, Spiro, moved in with them after their mother died. He kept the children in line even though he was an alcholic. This was because in 1920 he went back to Yugoslavia to bring their grandmother back but his son the~e had died and the grandmother was too frightened to write and tell him. So after he discovered the truth he began drinking. The grandmother would never come to the United States.

During prohibition the grandfather made whiskey but so did most of the foreign people. Smilga thinks l- that is what kept the foreign people from getting many diseases.

She remembers many remedies. Like giving them boiled sugar water when they had colds. Rags soaked in viniger was placed on their foreheads when they had headaches.

They were given castor oil with oranges for everything.

"To this day, I hate oranges," she says.

One time, she recalls, when they lived in the mining camp, some of the children had the measles. The adults exposed all the other children to the infected ones so they all had measles at once.

When World War II came, George was drafted but exempt from the Army because he took care of the other children.

"But he made a mistake and got married" and they took him.

George didn't even leave the country though. Because he had worked as a butcher, they made him a butcher on the train that transported troops. His wife was a nurse.

Mike was working for the government surveying and they drafted him. Mike went all over. Once Smilga had sent him a pen and pencil set. He was under fire and got hit but he had the pen in his pocket and that's where the shell hit him so he was never wounded. Another time in Germany they had no fresh eggs or milk, so whenever they found a farm Mike and the others went to see if they could steal some. They went into a barn and many people were in there. He tried to tell them he was looking for eggs so he made a noise like a hen, soon one of the men said something in Serbian and Mike understood. So he said ja, ja which means eggs and those people grabbed him and hugged him. They were all from Yugoslavia. They were displaced persons brought to work. After that they had a celebration.

In 1943 Alex was supposed to graduate in May but the government drafted him in April. Smilga went up to the draft board and told Mr. Murphy, "My God, you have two of my brothers." "What do you want, the whole works.'' She said it was a crime not to let him graduate. He told her to write a letter and have four prominate people from school sign it. She did and the day after he graduated he was in the army. He went to the Philipines. He didn't talk much about the war except one time the men had to build an air strip and they had nothing to build it with. But there were many dead people and because it was so hot they decomposed fast, so they made it with the bones.

Milan was a 4F beacuse he had kidney problems. He went to Cheyenne many times for a physical and was always rejected. So he went to the family doctor and was told he would pass him if he wanted to go. But by then all of his friends were home or coming so he didn't want to go.

Smilga recollected that the Japanese people that lived in town were sent to a camp in Wyoming, called Heart

Mountain. They came from all over the country not just

Wyoming. Many of them were born in the United States.

But some of the other miners in Wyoming spoke up for the

Japanese miners and they weren't taken.

Another time during the war the Navy was sent to Wyo.

She can't remember why but she thinks it was probably a strike. They took over the mines. Everything that anyone did had to be cleared by them but they didn't stay very long.

William was too young to be in the army but he was the only one that went to college because he was a good student. He got a scholarship to go to Colorado. They had an aunt

there whom he st~yed with. He went to the Denver University for four years and then he wanted to go to medical school.

They were hard to get into but the comp~ doctor went to eraigton and got him in. The rest of the family helped finance him through medical school. No one else wanted to go to college so he was the only one·trcl- ~-

Today most of the family is still in Rock Springs with the exception of Daisy in San Francisco, George in

Casper and Mary in Oregon. Smilga still lives at 1030

Pilot Butte. Although she never got married or had child- ren, she's had her share of them, babysitting her nieces and nephews~er brothers and sisters children. She be- lieves that an alternative energy source will be found one day. This will cause coal to be obsolete and Rock Springs will be a bust town again. She thinks that the wildlife will save Wyoming from going~ way with Rock Springs.

Her message to the family is to behave yourself, work hard and get an education which she thinks is important today.