DUBA: A VILLAGE’S DYING VOICE

The oyster boats of Louisiana have been both lifeline and death knell for Duba, tiny fishing village on the Adriatic Sea in Dalmatia, Croatia. Many who left Duba to find riches in Louisiana have never returned. The following story, written by Gwendolyn Thompkins, staff writer for The Times Picayune in New Orleans, tells of the "Croatian Connection" between the oyster fishermen of Louisiana and the people of Duba. The story appeared in The Times Picayune on July 10, 1994.

DUBA, Croatia-lvo Tomasovic, tottering under the burden of his 70 years, stood one morning outside St. Anthony's Church in Duba and waited for the words to come to him in English. The Croatian oysterman furrowed his brow, pursed his lips and paused. And then, caressing each syllable, Tomasovic smiled and said, "Maison Blanche." His father came to New Orleans at the beginning of the century, he said. "He came to Canal Street, and they were sticking pilings into the ground to build Maison Blanche. He was 13 years old."

Like his father and his father's father, Tomasovic also went to New Orleans to work the oyster boats. After more than two decades, he retired to his beloved Duba in 1982. He wasn't the only man outside the church to tell such a story. In this tiny fishing village on the Adriatic Sea, everyone calls the New Orleans area home. Each speaks of a relative on the West Bank or in St. Bernard or Plaquemines parishes, and every man, save two, is an American citizen. For more than 100 years, the men of Duba have signed on with the Louisiana oyster boats and, by sending home their pay, have kept this Dalmatian port alive.

But the U.S. lifeline has taken a toll on the village in recent years. Once teeming with children and growing. families, Duba today is a veritable ghost town of fewer than 50 people, a quarter of its population 20 years ago. The median age of residents is 64. Faced with diminishing economic prospects, more and more of the recent crop of Duba oystermen have decided to stay overseas, many of them in Louisiana.

"There are more people from Duba in New Orleans than there are living in Duba now," Anka Lepetic had said over iced tea in a Marrero restaurant. Like many of her contemporaries, she left the Dalmatian coast in the 1960s and visits her parents there only when she can afford it-every couple of years or so. To the generation living in the New Orleans area, Duba is an idyllic place, a wonderful vacation spot and a revered ancestral ground. It has remained untouched by the war. Sunshine, blue skies and a peaceful sea make the village redolent with fig trees and bumble bees in every hamlet. The people rise with the sun and work hard; many still bake their own bread, make their own wine and raise their own vegetables. Unfortunately, say their children, people here make everything but money.

The villagers are protected by their patron, St. Anthony, but they are supported by their offspring in America. "'The streets are empty, but the graves are full," said Ante Zibilich, 67, a villager who worked the Louisiana oyster beds near Empire for 20 years. "America saved Duba. But America has killed Duba."

It began with Luka Jurisich, says his great- granddaughter, Srechka Murina, who is Anka Lepetic's mother. With a strong maritime tradition, Duba had long provided seamen for merchant vessels around the world. Jurisich's travels took him to southeastern Louisiana in the mid-1800s, and it was there that he happened to fall in among oystermen. Others from Duba followed Jurisich, frequently leaving their wives and children for years at a time, then retiring to the village on plump bank accounts and, in recent years, Social Security checks. "'There were a lot of cases before the first World War when a man would leave his wife pregnant and come home to meet his grand children," Murina, 72 said. Her husband, Kuzma, left her with three children to raise on his first trip to Louisiana in 1959 and stayed away seven years. "It was terrible when he had to leave," she said. "But now we enjoy a good living because of that sacrifice. All we have is a product of what was made there." Kuzma Murina's work on the boats has provided the couple with an apartment in Split, a house in Duba and a standing invitation to visit their children in Chalmette and Marrero, Mrs. Murina said. "We have enough."

As the years passed, however, other oystermen from Duba could think of fewer reasons to come back. Many took their wives with them to Louisiana for good, while others married American women and stayed. Painful as it has been to those left behind, Duba's economic stagnation has had a preservative effect on the village. There are no movie theaters, no restaurants and no traffic lights. Families are as likely to own a donkey as a car. Olive groves date back a thousand years, and the only grocery store opens for one hour each morning and closes before 9 a.m. The people here are devoutly Catholic. They worship together in the small church near the center of town and till fields of grapes, onions, potatos and garlic. When villagers visit one another they rarely knock, preferring instead to stand in front of a neighbor's door and yell.

For Damir Slavich, these simple customs proved more appealing than the blandishments of the life he found in Louisiana. He will still work the oyster boats occasionally, but, unlike so many others of his generation, has decided to make his stand in Duba. While his brother raises a family in Empire, Slavich, 35, is building Duba's first restaurant and plans to open it this month. He hopes the tourists will come back to Croatia this summer and when they do, he plans to-serve them a highball and a meal. In America, he said “Life is kind of too fast and materialistic, I do this because I enjoy it. I want to do something for my village. I don't expect to make a lot of money, but it's OK. I'm home." (Zajednicar 1994)

Zajednicar

August 17, 1994