My Life: Preserving Serbian Heritage and Faith Across Continents

by Ljiljana Pantović 

Every person carries a novel within him but only some manage to write it. Lilly Pantovich’s My Life is one of those rare exceptions. It’s a beautiful story, written from the heart. The text is read without pause and the sentences follow like machine gun fire. And when the last sentence in the book is reached, the reader feels sad that it ends there, wishing there was more. Indeed, if it were not for her modesty and humility, this could have been a much lengthier tale.

Lilly has had a rich life, embroidered with philanthropic and humanitarian generosity. Her many and varied contributions to the Serbian community in cultivating, promoting and preserving the ethno-cultural identity are of precious value and are well worth preserving from oblivion. Although her story is of a personal nature, as all autobiographies by definition are, it is multilayered, as it spans seven decades and bridges three continents. It’s a chronicle of and commentary on a time in the life of the Serbian diaspora in America. And as such, it is a priceless source of information for historians who choose to explore the history of American Serbs.

On the personal level, the book is precious gift to her off-springs and descendants. For here, she traces and identifies the family roots and defines the moral fiber from which the family has been woven.

My Life is a monument to Lilly Pantovich’s life achievements and a source of pride and inspiration for her descendants and the generations to come.

Ray Radojević
Historian