Todor Polich: Great Builder and Benefactor

Todor Polich (1887–1978) was born on March 22, 1887, in Uskoplje, a village of about twenty houses in the hills above Trebinje, Herzegovina. His father, Petar, worked the land, while his uncle Trifko, a trader at the nearby Ivanica market, raised him as a son. Todor grew up on the gusle and Serbian epic songs, especially those of Marko Kraljević. From the age of seven and a half, he walked to school at Duži Monastery, where he learned Cyrillic and Latin, Old Church Slavonic, German, and the catechism. He also tended flocks and worked in his uncle’s shop.

In 1905, at seventeen, unwilling to serve in the army of the occupying power and drawn by the promise of a new life in America, Todor left from the port of Gruž near Dubrovnik. He sailed with little more than his strength, the counsel of his father, and the upbringing of his ancestors. After travelling by train from Trieste to Le Havre and crossing the Atlantic, he continued from New York to Los Angeles. His first job was washing dishes; soon he was digging trenches and laying concrete pipe. On his first day with a concrete crew, the shovel handle snapped in his hands, stopping the line until a replacement could be found. He later worked in the copper mines of Butte and learned concrete-pipe construction under Arthur Bent, a pioneer in the field.

In 1919, Todor set out on his own in Merced. With partners Božo Ukropina and Steve Kral, he built a construction company that carried pipelines, aqueducts, dams, and highways across California. The firm survived the Great Depression and, during the Second World War, built ships for the U.S. Army at Long Beach. In 1951, the partners sold the company for more than six million dollars and soon began again, building bridges and interchanges for Los Angeles’s new freeways. Todor was still building bridges and highways at eighty-four.

In 1933, Todor married Andja Budincich, born in Los Angeles in 1910 into one of the city’s earliest Serbian families. Their sons, Ted and Ty, were born in 1935 and 1938, and both graduated from Stanford. In 1946, Todor was among the founders of St. Steven’s Cathedral in Alhambra, whose iconostasis was created by Paja Jovanović. He and Andja gave generously to churches, monasteries, schools, and hospitals; supported the Serbian youth camps in Jackson and Shadeland; and helped sustain the St. Sava Mission in Jackson, the cradle of Serbian Orthodoxy in America. Andja, who served as national president of the Federation of Serbian Sisters Circles, shared his commitment to their community and faith. They also helped family and countrymen in the old country.

Todor worked tirelessly for the unity of the Serbian Church in America. After its division in 1963, he pleaded for reconciliation for the rest of his life: “Unity, brothers, let us preserve unity!” In 1968, Stanford’s Hoover Institution dedicated the Polich Room in Todor and Andja’s name.

Andja died suddenly in 1970. Todor lived eight more years, lucid to the end, and died in Los Angeles on February 22, 1978, aged ninety. They rest side by side in Jackson.

Todor Polich: Great Builder and Benefactor tells the story of their lives, work, generosity, and enduring place in Serbian American history. Begun in the 1960s by Dr. Radoje Vukčević from Todor’s recollections, the biography was completed by Veljko Bojić and Danilo Marić and first published in Serbian in 2003. This revised and expanded English edition, prepared by Bishop Maxim Vasiljević, includes new chapters, family recollections, archival documents, hundreds of photographs from the family archive, and a foreword by Todor’s son Tyrone. The institutions Todor and Andja supported remain part of their legacy; the book also preserves the convictions, relationships, and acts of care that shaped their lives.

“Freedom, freedom, and human rights, freedom and dignity—these are more important than any earthly treasure. They brought me here and kept me here. Everything in this world is fleeting; these values stand above all others.”

“The best among us is not the one who possesses the most, nor the one who knows the most, but the one who knows how best to serve the Serbian people.”

“Guard your honor and good name—that is what matters most.”

(Todor Polich)

Dr. Radoje Vukčević was born in 1897 in the village of Goljemadi, in Old Montenegro, and died on March 18, 1976, in Carmel, California. At fifteen he fought against the Ottoman forces at Taraboš (1912), where he lost an eye; he served again in the First World War. He studied at the University of Paris and at Oxford and earned a doctorate in law from the University of Berlin; between the wars he was a respected attorney in Belgrade. During the Second World War he was associated with General Draža Mihailović and later wrote extensively in defense of Mihailović's wartime course. He wrote some ten books of prose, poetry, and drama; in émigré circles he was best known for At the Last Judgment (Na strašnom sudu, Chicago, 1968).