King of Grapes

DIVIZICH, PETER: This is a testimonial to the American Dream. It is the story of a young Croatian emigrant who came to America in the 20's and single-handedly parlayed a passport and a few hard earned dollars into a multimillion dollar vineyard empire of national and international. fame.

His name is Peter John Divizich, a legendary figure in California's San Joaquin Valley, one who turned a wasteland of sand and tumbleweed into a productive farmland and left an indelible imprint on the progress of American agriculture.

Peter, or Pete, as he is generally known, was born on June 16, 1897, in the small village of Gruda in Konavli, east of Dubrovnik, in the Republic of Croatia. The land of his birth is a perfect marriage of land, sea and sky. The warm, blue Adriatic Sea washes the sandy coastline of his native country and breaks against craggy cliffs behind which lie small, productive, semi-tropical farms.

It was on such a farm that Peter Divizich was born and grew up with his older brother Steven and younger brother George, along with a sister Maria, the oldest of the children. Seventy-eight years removed from those early days, Peter remembers his father John as a hard-working farmer, wresting a living from 42 small strip farms, toting stones to terrace every available inch of land for the production of crops of olives, grapes, tobacco, figs and vegetables which he marketed himself in the neighboring towns.

If we are the sum of our parents, then to his father Peter owes the work ethic that has characterized him all through his lite. To his mother Maria, he frankly alleges, he is thankful for a legacy of patience and humility.

Economic necessity forced young Peter to quit his eight years of village schooling. He was but ten years old when he joined his father in working the family acres.

Peter's Croatian lineage stood in his stead. The Croats, by nature, are strong in physique; tall, muscular and sturdy. With a history that goes back to the 5th century, they have stubbornly clung to the soil of their Republic and to their holdings abroad. When, as a lad, you see your father's vineyards and fields under twenty feet of water let loose by a swollen river fed by torrential rains, you learn, as any farmer does, the hard lesson of patience and acceptance which balances out in the end. With spring run-off, you re-stake the hardy vines, fertilize and irrigate them and see them through to fruition. Meanwhile, the other work goes on: the plowing, seeding and growing of other crops.

At the date that Peter Divizich was shouldering the responsibility of actually selling the family produce himself, there happened an event that changed the direction, if not the pattern of his life. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, under Franz Joseph, was sucked up in the maelstrom of World War 1, and, with it, Peter Divizich.

He was 18 years old at the time, a tall youth of 160 pounds, slightly stooped from the shoulders, as if from the weight of his muscular hands which were conditioned to the plow.

He was drafted and found himself in a Red Cross unit in the Austrian army during World War 1.

Service completed, Peter considered his future on the family farm in Konavli. He had had his fill of war - having served under Emperor Franz Joseph and, later, Karl of Austria. Drafted into the Yugoslavian Army in January of 1920, Peter had served two months and had been released as a reservist.

As a boy, Peter Divizich had been the proud possessor of a subscription to four Croatian newspapers, a gift of a generous uncle. Peter read avidly, acquainting himself with the events happening in his homeland and in the world, in general. From his youthful perspective, certain English speaking countries appealed to him. They seemed to offer attractive opportunities for one willing to invest his talents. The thought persisted during his early days on the farm and during young manhood.

Now, at home, the dream took shape. He would go, God willing, to either Canada, New Zealand, Australia or America.

He decided on America. Others of his nationality had gone there and had made out. There had been letters.

In such fashion did a 23 year old Croatian emigrant climb down the gangplank from the steamer that slid past the Statue of Liberty on a cold November day and docked in New York. The year was 1920. The newcomer was penniless; he spoke but a few words of English. What chance would Peter Divizich have, a stranger in a land of strangers with whom he could not even communicate?

The address of his cousin was a part of the answer to the question. Peter was given a part-time laboring job in the small construction business that his relative directed. Peter mixed cement, carried hods and did assorted jobs. The soil, however, was in Peter's blood. The call was West to the undeveloped lands. The skyscraper canyons, the noise and traffic of the city were not to his liking.

There was a dream of vineyards ... and Westward was the dream.

Peter left New York. He stopped for a few months stay at Manistique, Michigan, where he worked in a lime quarry and saved his money for his train fare to California.

With that train ticket, his savings and his passport, the man and his suitcase arrived in Watsonville, California, in 1921.

It was for awhile. Watsonville, at that time, boasted a population of about ten thousand people. Of them, thirty-seven hundred were Croatians. In the few years that Peter worked there he was literally at home. He could relate to his fellow laborers in language, customs and the native spirit of mutual aid. He worked the apple orchards dotting the rolling green hills of the area. The field skills and conditioning he had learned back home in Konavli were put to use. He also worked in a packing house. In the meantime, he was picking up a smattering of English by attending night school.

Peter was popular with his employer and Croatian friends. He became a member of the Croatian Fraternal Union Branch 352. After six months he was elected secretary of the group whose headquarters are in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Over one thousand branches of that ethnic group, divided between the United States and Canada, represent the magnitude of Croatian immigration to both countries.

By modern standards, laboring pay was low in Watsonville in the 20's. An indication of that was Peter's decision to leave Watsonville in the Spring of 1923 to accept a job at the large Irvine Ranch in Orange County in Southern California. He had read in the paper that, including room and board, jobs were open there: mule drivers at $2.00 a day for a single team; $2.25 a day for a four-mule team; and $2.50 a day for a six-mule team. One job as tree surgeon at $3.50 was eventually available. Peter applied for the job; he got it.

So went the life of the laborer at the Irvine Ranch in that chapter of Peter Divizich's life. For Peter, the trees were his assignment. Their pruning and care kept him busy for a year and added to the small savings in his pocket. With a little more capital he could buy a place of his own in the sun where the vineyards he still dreamed of could become a reality.

In the fall of 1924, he journeyed to Porterville in the great Central San Joaquin Valley. A year of earnings as foreman at the local Rosecrest Ranch, added to what he had already saved, served as down payment on a thirty acre deciduous orchard northwest of town. The expenditure was $1000 down payment. The local bank, the Home Bank, later to become the Security First National, held the mortgage.

Peter Divizich, the Croatian emigrant, had his land on which to anchor his dream, the grapevines that would multiply until they would one day become one of the largest vineyards in the world.

The heartland of California is the Great Central Valley. Geographically, it is divided into two great regions: the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. Together they form a lowland trough of approximately four hundred miles between two massive mountain ranges: the Pacific Coastal Range and the high Sierras. Situated in the southeastern section of the San Joaquin Valley Approximately twenty miles off the two major highways bisecting the Central Valley sits the community of Porterville, today a thriving agricultural center. Its diversified crops of citrus, grapes, grain, cotton and green produce supply the markets of California's San Francisco and Los Angeles, the eastern seaboard and the major markets of the world.

Peter Divizich's choice of that area for conquest is understandable. There was a small colony of Croatians who were trying a hand at farming and who could make him feel at home. Moreover, in his experienced hand, the feel of a handful of soil assured Peter that the land held fertile promise. The climate resembled that of his native Konavli in some respects: a short winter season of fog and heavy rains to feed the valley water tables; a long, dry summer spell when the foothills turned brown, and the land, flat and thirsty as a blotter, parched under a 105 degree sun.

This was not the natural greenery of Peter's native farm off the Dalmatian Coast of Yugoslavia; it was desert, reclaimed from tumbleweed and drifting sand.

Essentially, irrigation during the summer season was a question of sinking deep wells with sometimes dry risk.

On his thirty acres on the northwest side of town, Peter Divizich, the immigrant, took his stand. Ranching in any area is, at most, a gamble. Weather, soil, crops, marketing and personal know-how are the qualifications to agricultural success.

Peter Divizich gambled. The run.-down thirty acre prune and peach orchard he had bought consisted of twenty acres of old trees, ten acres of which were productive. The remaining ten acres were bare land. The well on the property was old. Since there was no home on the property, Peter was forced to live with a neighbor while working his holdings.

From 1924 to 1927 Peter fought the land. His well and a little water from the local Pioneer Water Company provided the irrigation. On the ten acres of the bare land he planted cantelopes, watermelons, cotton and vegetables. He marketed the returns himself in the neighboring towns along with the produce of other ranchers. He tore up the ten acres of non-productive prune and peach trees and replaced them with a vineyard. The planting of those first grapes was to signal a forty-two hundred acre spread of table and wine grapes in time.

Peter's first three years in Porterville were difficult ones. Neighbors remember him in the fields at night, a lonely figure behind a team of horses, plowing his acres for the planting of crops. The weathering of any farmer in the San Joaquin Valley is no easy thing. With summer day temperatures that climb above 100 degrees mark and hot nights, it takes a special breed of farmer or rancher to endure.

Nonetheless, Peter's efforts began to pay off gradually.

He was marketing his dried fruit, prunes and raisins, in nearby Fresno. He was selling his other produce, along with that of neighboring ranchers, in Los Angeles. Others recognized that the Divizich knowledge of marketing methods paid financial dividends. To meet transportation demands, Peter bought trucks on credit.

Peter had started with a run-down prune orchard. His merchandizing of local fruit and produce promised success. Still, he was three thousand dollars in debt at the end of 1927.

His situation improved in 1928, so much so that he started the building of a home on his ranch; it was completed in 1930.

The demands of his ranch had considerably restricted Peter's social life during his first three years in Porterville. Still he managed occasional visits to other Croatian and Slavic families in Delano, an adjoining community. If there is a time for sowing and a time for reaping, there is also a time for relaxation. Peter and his friends chose the proper time and enjoyed themselves in simple fashion. Peter, also, became a popular member of the Knights of Columbus at St. Anne's Catholic Church in Porterville. It is also to his credit that, as in Watsonville, he attended night school to better his command of English. In any land communication in the native tongue is essential for advancement. Peter added that working tool to his collection.

From 1928 to 1929 the years were good to Peter Divizich. Aside from his own ranch products, Peter leased land and sold fruit, prunes and raisins, dried in the open air beneath the hot San Joaquin sun. He shipped the crops to Los Angeles and Sacramento at good market prices.

Peter Divizich was beginning to command attention by those with a stake in Valley farming.

With his ranching profits, Peter considered a new project. The volume of business in produce and dried fruit that he was handling convinced him that newer, quicker methods of drying were in order. He was looking forward to the building of a dehydrator plant in the San Joaquin Valley. His reasoning was right. The fruit drying process would be quicker, would profitably speed delivery to markets. It was more sanitary than the old method of drying prunes and raisins in the open fields.

If the logic was right, the timing wasn't. The great Depression had suddenly gripped the United States. The economy in rural America, as well as in the great cities, had bottomed out. The stock market had crashed. Banks were failing; businesses collapsing; and wide-spread national unemployment, creating a climate of despair.

As Peter Divizich tells it, a worker on one of those dark depression days said fervently, "God must have sent you to us, Mr. Divizich. You're doing something for us. Others are doing nothing at all. "

The tail-end of the remark was understandable in terms of the realistic economic restrictions of the times. As for God's sending Peter Divizich to Porterville, Peter chuckles recalling the worker's well-meant tribute. As a religious man, he would admit God's inspiration, but there was also his own perspiration. The acres he held in the 30's had been the result of sweat and individual hard labor.

Peter Divizich was a young man in the early Depression years of the 30's. He was to see his prunes that sold for $210 a ton in 1929 drop to $35 a ton in 1930, 1931 and 1932. He was faced with a depressed market that made a ranching operation a questionable risk, at most.

How then could a man in such circumstances, times being what they were, entertain a vision of building a dehydrator plant?

Peter Divizich had proved himself a reliable rancher in the years preceding the Depression. Neither the local bank nor the merchants along Main Street could fault him for not delivering his promises. By shrewd marketing he had earned some profit for himself and for others who invested in his talents.

His proposal to build a dehydrator plant would have invited a few skeptics even in good times. To attempt such a venture in the Depression would seem to most an impossibility.

Peter Divizich had three things going for him: his power of persuasion, his friends and his past performance.

Peter had become a well-liked member of the Porterville Chamber of Commerce. He was also an active member of the local Farm Bureau.

Peter Divizich turned to his friends in Porterville with his idea of a dehydrator plant. He asked for support, arguing the practical merits and the value of a fruit dehydrator in terms of the Valley's future. People listened. What he said involved their own interests. The economy of an agricultural town grows in proportion to the success of its area farmers and ranchers. With a rancher's purchases and with the influx of his workers, the banks and stores profit. New businesses establish themselves; new land investors are attracted.

Peter's friends came to his support in the construction of his dehydrator project. The local Brey-Wright Lumber Company supplied the lumber and building materials on a cash-credit basis. The local Jones Hardware Store provided the other necessities on the same basis. Other local people lent a helping hand. In Fresno, the Rosenberg Dry Fruit Company and the Del Monte Fruit Company advanced him money against delivery of his dried fruit crops.

The building construction got under way. The dehydrator for drying Valley fruit successfully reached completion in the summer of 1930. At that time it contained two tunnels, fed by electricity and gas, through which the fruit passed in the drying process. Whereas it had taken twenty days to process prunes and golden bleach raisins in the past, it would now take approximately 10 to 16 hours.

Peter Divizich had proved the quick marketing efficiency of his project. However, from 1930 to 1933 there was practically no market for produce or fruit. Peter's dried fruit sold for $35.00 to $40.00 a ton during that time. The following years would see better years for the farmers and the ranchers. The Divizich dehydrator was ready for the upswing in future marketing demands.

Peter had demonstrated the latter qualities. He continued to capitalize on them profitably. He moved his own fresh fruit to the markets in Los Angles and San Francisco. He contracted to prune the local orchards, to pick the fruit and to market it, along with his own. There were dividends from his sale of fruit and of other produce. His golden bleached raisins found a fair market in England.

Rosenberg Brothers' Dry Fruit Company and Del Monte Corporation in Fresno, California, were his dry fruit outlet. He delivered to them prunes, raisins and peaches, dried in his Porterville dehydrating plant.

Rosenberg Brothers Dry Fruit Company in Fresno helped him in that direction. They were in the business of processing dried fruit, crating it and delivering it to national outlets and to such international markets as the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries. They struck a bargain with Peter. They would agree to a mortgage on his 400 tons of bleached raisins at $35-00 a ton. However, there was a condition attached to the transaction. He had to purchase a 160 acre ranch that they owned in Poplar, west of Porterville. They would offer $3,500 as down payment.

Peter accepted the terms. The 160 acre Poplar ranch consisted of 120 acres of prune orchard and 40 acres of grapes.

Peter Divizich now had 60 acres of grapeland: The Poplar property and earlier 10 acres, along with other fruit and produce, that he had planted in Porterville. The coming year would prove that they could properly be called the building blocks on which he built the vast Californian grape empire that he owned at the height of his career.

On May 18, 1934, Peter Divizich became a citizen of the United States. It was a proud moment for him. The years of night school and study had paid off. The independent Croatian emigrant farmer, Peter Divizich, now citizen in 1934, would never lose his love of fatherland. No one ever does. He would, however, make no mean contribution to the land that was now providing his living. It would be, largely, a legacy of grapes that would boost American agricultural economy.

Peter was now working out of an office that he had set up earlier on Grand Avenue, Porterville, in 1930. He hired workers, numbering 100 to 160 at harvest time, and worked alongside of them to pick his fruit. He contracted to buy and sell the crops of others.

In 1934 Peter bought another 42 acres, comprised of prunes, peaches and oranges. He planted 24 acres in grapes.

To be a farmer or rancher, one must be a speculator. That is obvious. One invests time, effort and money in projects, hoping for returns. Peter Divizich had done just that over his first ten years in Porterville. Aside from building up his ranching territory in Porterville and in nearby Poplar, he had been buying and selling lots in the area and elsewhere as the opportunity presented itself.

The Depression period was a question of using all the skills and resources a man possessed.

Operating in the latter capacity, Peter constructed buildings along Porterville's Main Street during 1936 and 1937. They still stand today, visible evidences of his foresight and of the profit that they brought to himself personally and to the town. While his original intention was to build a Safeway Market building, the construction operation mushroomed into something with larger dimensions.

The building complex still stands on Main Street with Peter no longer in control. The Safeway grocery, the Montgomery Ward store and other establishments which also occupied it have moved to different city locations, being replaced by other local merchants.

The building complex that Peter Divizich erected was a welcome addition to the architectural scheme of Porterville's Main Street. From it's early founding in 1861 by Royal Porter Putnam as a trading center, the town had gone through growing pains. The original dirt road of Main Street, flanked by wooden buildings, wooden sidewalks and hitching posts, had given way to asphalt and to a few modern business establishments of brick and stucco.

Peter's new building put it squarely into the 20th century.

If Peter Divizich was engaged in building in 1937, he, assuredly, was not neglecting his primary occupation, that of ranching. He purchased another 160 acres of land in Delano, located some 25 miles southwest of Porterville in the vicinity of Tulare County. His new acquistion added up to 60 acres of peach orchard and 100 acres of bareland.

The time was ripe, in Peter's judgement, to move his farming operations from his rented office in Porterville to the Delano area.

The land there, as he saw it, was ideal for the growing of table grapes. He located there and began the task of converting his 160 acres to productive vineyard. He purchased another 160 acres in Delano later in 1939. He planted that in grapes also.

So began the Delano chapter of Peter Divizich's ranching career. The Delano area, along with ranch land in Ducor to the northeast, eventually were to serve as the primary base for the operations of the P.J. Divizich Fruit Corporation. The two initial parcels of grapeland planted in Delano became part of the largest vineyard in the world which was owned and developed by one man.

Peter's move to Delano was a calculated one. The soil was good for grape growing. Peter knew that. Besides the vineyard returns that the area promised, the town of Delano was situated on U.S. Highway 99, the only main route through the Central Valley at that time. (Highway 5, a matching thoroughfare, was completed recently in 1974.) Further, the main line of the Southern Pacific Railroad served the area. In short, there were excellent facilities for transportation of ranch products to both Los Angeles and San Francisco and to other American markets by way of interconnecting railway and highway linkages. In Ducor to the east was a branch line serving both the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe Railroads. Port cities could be reached for overseas shipments. Although both railways serviced Porterville, that town was approximately 20 to 50 miles off Highway 99, depending on the route taken.

As Peter states it, with the growth of his'Delano enterprise, by the late 60's he had expended over a million dollars in just leveling land in the DelanoDucor area. Further, he had laid approximately 70 miles of irrigation pipe line, along with pumps, costing over a million dollars. In addition, he had constructed over 70 miles of private roads.

At any rate, the years 1938 and 1939 saw Peter launched into a vineyard career of considerable magnitude. He would continue growing and marketing cotton and deciduous fruit. His golden bleached raisins would be dried in his Porterville dehydrator to which he added another drying tunnel by this time. If his investment was to grow, as it did, to 3500 acres, that fact is understandable, considering the nature of the man.

In the life of Peter J. Divizich the years 1939 and 1941 were particularly significant. Established in Delano, he was busy on two fronts: marketing his dried fruit and developing new vineyard territory. In the past, he had bought and traded land as the opportunity presented itself. He continued to do so. Recalling those early transactions today, Peter states simply, "People came to me and offered to sell. I never went to them. It was like that. "

As Peter states it, from 1941 to 1968 he did approximately 26 million dollars worth of business with the Bakersfield Bank of America while developing his grape territory.

Food for the American public and for the troops overseas was an inescapable commitment. During the war years that ended with the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, Peter worked his holdings, expanding his vineyards and shipping his dried fruit to American markets and to the European war areas. At peak production one year he was employing approximately 300 to 350 workers. Besides the local work crews that he himself hired, the federal government supplied German war prisoners, numbering 95 to 100, to help in the harvesting of crops. To assist him, also, twenty laborers, under government auspices, were imported directly from Mexico.

The volume of production from his acreages persuaded Peter to rent a packing house in Delano. His dehydrating plant in Porterville had been expanded to seven drying tunnels and was operating at full capacity. Looking back, Peter recalls the remark made by a governmental official surveying four million pounds of Peter's dried fruit, There s enough there, Mr. Divizich, for one pound for each American soldier!"

On the agricultural front, Peter Divizich joined with others in that post-war period of reconstruction. In 1946 his vineyards, the result of constant land development, extended from Delano into the Ducor area. He had cleared tumbleweed, leveled land, sunk wells and planted vineyards that assured production to meet the market demand. It had been a costly operation, but it was underwriting itself. In Peter's judgement, the time was ripe to abandon the rented packing house in Delano and to build his own packing plant in Ducor. He did just that.

Following the construction of the Ducor Packing Plant, Peter built three warehouses in which to store his fruit while awaiting transportation to major markets. Meanwhile, his golden bleach raisins and dried prunes continued their sales abroad in the United Kingdom and in the Scandinavian countries.

In 1947 Peter was supervising a ranching business that had grown to approximately 1200 acres, chiefly vineyard.

However, in 1947 Peter was not thinking merely in terms of standard shipment of grapes. He had another idea. He decided to build his own self-contained storage plant in Ducor to service his grape territory. His motive was entirely practical. Cold storage of grapes can provide two important benefits to the grower: extension of the markeing period or relief of market congestion. Naturally, in terms of profit, extension of the marketing cycle is the primary concern of any grower. With his projected cold storage plant, Peter Divizich would be in the position of first marketing his early maturing fresh grapes and, then, releasing his later maturing varieties from cold storage to ensure monthly market delivery throughout the year. Following that reasoning, Peter built his cold storage plant.

Peter Divizich was well on his way to success. Clear evidences of that fact were the vineyards that he could proudly survey in 1950.

What precisely were those achievements? According to Mr. Rodgers, they added up to 2100 acres of land, 1800 of which were prime vineyard and orchard, a fact which probably made Peter the largest vineyard and orchard owner operating as an individual in California. Peter was raising twenty commercial varieties of grapes and was experimenting with fifteen other types. His Crystal grapes, an early, sturdy, white fruit, which he had experimentally developed over seven years, were finding popular markets in Hong Kong and Singapore. With the California Fruit Exchange acting as his marketing agency, Peter was selling his grapes widely throughtout the United States. The Divizich "Highland" brand was being shipped to Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang, Manila, Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica and other South and Central America countries.

The acres that produced those shipments were fed by 20 wells constructed by Peter. He was employing, at peak season 350 to 400 workers; his payroll was running over $500,000 a year. He could count forty ranch houses that he had built for steady help and four camps for packers, pruners, pickers and other seasonable workers. The man who had started farming a run-down orchard in the 20's with two horses and a borrowed tractor now owned considerable farm equipment: 12 tractors, 16 other farm vehicles, in addition to 5 palletizing lifting trucks to service his warehouse and cold storage plant.

The P.J. Divizich vineyards are operated as a fully integrated enterprise involving the growing, storing, shipment and marketing of a wide variety of grapes. The vineyards are located on approximately 5500 acres of ground (4300 acres presently planted to vineyards.) The operations are served by complete packing house and cold storage facilities. A rural community consisting of dormitories, multiple unit homes and single farm houses are all located on portions of the property. An extensive maintenance shop to provide for all normal requirements, including major mechanical overhauls of the extensive fleet of farm equipment, including tractors, trucks and busses all owned and operated by the ranch, is also owned and operated on the property. Twenty-seven major irrigation wells with production averaging 100 gallons per minute each are available for service of water through an extensive system of irrigation pipelines to allow service of water to the total acreage.

All lands are connected by the ranch pipe-lines excepting a block of 260 acres located within and served by the Delano -Earlimart Irrigation District. The extent of all improvements have been based on the coordinated need of each facility and its relationship to the integrated marketing program of the entire acreage.

Every emphasis has been placed upon the growth of grapes which can be held in cold storage pending sale at the time of favorable prices rather than having to deliver grapes to markets at the time depressed prices prevail (usually at the peak of the season). Of the grapes which can be held in cold storage, there are the following in present production: Thompson Seedless - 1200 acres, Emperors

1000 acres, Ribier - 480 acres, Calmeria and Almeria, combined 450 acres. For nonstorage type grapes, the acreage consists of Muscat (Alexander) - 140 acres, Red Malaga - 100acres,ltalia 70 acres, and Perlett, Cardinal, Crystal Exotic, Queen, Black Rose and Khandahar, 40, 35, 23, 20, 20, 15 and 10 acres, respectively. In addition, the operation includes 800 acres of wine grapes, including the following types: Muscat, Alicante, Pettie Sirah, Salvadora, Ruby Red, Royalty, Calzine, Valdopino, Suzana, Ruby Cobarine, Grenache, and Carignan.

The early Croatian emigrant, Peter Divizich, now a retired American citizen, has seen many changes in the United States in his time. He himself has inspired many of them, the conversion of the Delano-Ducor tumbleweed acres into his once world-famous vineyard being an outstanding example.

A respected American citizen, he still maintains an understandable love for the land of his birth.