HER STORY

"They weren't swimming... they were dead."

-10 day voyage to the United States -24 hours on the USS Harry Taylor on the deck in a raging storm!

She lost it ALL

"It was midnight and we were driving by

the river to get to the German border when I was three and my mother told me I couldn’t look out the window,” Dorica -Doris- Haggard said, as she turned left onto Kansas Ave. into the parking lot of Delia’s Grinders in Riverside.

“Well of course like any other three-year-old, I looked. I asked her what was wrong

with looking…people were swimming. But they weren’t swimming,” she said

solemnly as she shifted her white Toyota

pickup truck into park.

“They were dead.”

After watching a quarter of the Notre

Dame game, her and her husband William

-Bill- wear matching shirts every game, we sat down in her large, blue counter-topped kitchen with a small photo album

filled with dates from birthdays, anniversaries and deaths of Doris’s family

and friends.

Her and her husband’s fifty-fourth

wedding anniversary is approaching on

Nov. 25.

“Dwell on the good and positive and let go

of the negative,” Doris offered as her secret to marriage.

“It’s not easy,” she went on to say as

she sat back in her chair with a blush

and a smile. Her husband Bill takes a

different approach to marriage.

.“Let her do anything she wants!” He

said loudly with a gleam in his eye, earning a laugh from Doris.

Doris's family wasn’t particularly easy for Bill to win over. He had asked for her hand

in marriage just nine months after meeting

at Los Angeles City College.

Doris’s father George immediately said

yes, but just as fast, her mother Blanka

said no.

Bill’s response you wonder?

“He said ‘I don’t care what you think, I’m

not marrying you, I’m marrying your daughter’,” Doris said laughing.

Her own parents, George Vogel and

Blanka Runkas fell in love in Zagreb, Croatia and married on June 19, 1939.

Both families came from wealthy

backgrounds. Blanka’s father was the

Secretary of the Zagreb Oprah and

George’s father made pool tables that were still circulating around Europe in the

1980s when Doris and Bill took a trip to

visit family.

George had moved in during the 1920s

with his aunt who couldn’t have her own

children and whose husband’s family

business was exporting and importing furs

and silk.

Coming from wealthy families implied that George and Blanka’s children would have

a rich life and many promising adventures

ahead of them. But little did any of them

know, their world would soon be in turmoil.

In 1945, when Doris was three years old, the

Germans and Italians began eradicating

Jews, Germans and Catholics.

Doris’s German father George decided to

hyphenate his last name to Vogel-Cačič. She

hadn’t ever known what the reason for this

was, but as soon as it was changed, Doris’s

carefree life of wealth and maid service were

gone forever.

Around midnight in either March or April 1945, the Vogel-Cačič family fled Zagreb with

nothing more than the clothes on their backs

and Blanka’s precious jewelry, some of which

sits safely in Doris’s bedroom right down the

hall.

“They’re beautiful,” Doris gushed about her mother’s jewelry pieces. The pieces that aren’t with Doris today, were sold for food

back in 1945 as her family fled Croatia.

George and Blanka were the only members of both of their families to flee Croatia, but Doris

still keeps in touch with her distant relatives

overseas.

“I try to send around two or three hundred

dollars a few times during the year,” Doris said

looking through her binder of family history.

Her family in Croatia has struggled over the

years and Doris and her daughter Kelly

Haggard used to send their old clothes and

shoes to them until they found out that their family was paying to get the used clothes.

“Once we found out about that, we just decided we would send money instead,” Doris

said matter-of-factly.

Doris knows the feeling of not having clothes

or money.

In 1945, after her family fled from their home in Croatia, they boarded a train to

Austria.

Once in Austria, Doris’s family moved from

town to town, living in short periods in one

bedroom rooms with other families.

They l i ved i n Klagen fu r t and

Schorottenburg, two Austrian towns that hold many memories.

Doris remembers that her father had a job

with the English Army and worked 16-20

hour days and then came home to barely

anything.

Her parents had been so desperate for food

that they turned to the black market for sugar cubes.

Sometimes they would use leftover bacon

grease that when cold turned into a paste

and spread it on top of bread as a meal.

In Schrottenburg, their residence was a

hotel that held a restaurant on the main

floor. Doris recalled that one day when she

was five, an older man had approached her as he came out of the restaurant and asked

her to go to the forest with him to pick

flowers for her mother.

“He took my hand and took me to the

forest...he touched me inappropriately,” Doris said almost nonchalantly.

“I blocked it out of my head and never told

my mom.”

A few years later, she had seen a

newspaper with the face of what she

believed to be the same man on the front.

He had been arrested for taking children into

the forest and murdering them.

After moving a few more times around

Schrottenburg, Doris got sick with pneumonia

at 8 years old and was sent with the Red

Cross on a train to Sweden where she

recuperated under the care of another family

for five months.

“I had no idea she had ever even been to

Sweden,” her 51-year-old son James said

with a shocked look on his face.

Doris had previously been speaking Croatian

at home and learning German at school before she left for Sweden. While there, she

continued her German studies and after a few

months, returned home to a baby brother named Miroslav.

Shortly after her return, the family applied for a sponsorship to the United States and was

approved.

From there, they traveled to Salzberg, home

to ‘The Sound of Music,’ where they stayed at a refugee camp and learned basic English.

“I remember two songs they taught us,” Doris

said, leaning forward on the counter.

“Red River Valley and Oh Say Can You See.” She began humming Red River Valley and her 2-year-old german shepherd, Ziva, yes Ziva

as in the detective from NCIS, looked up at her curiously.

Ziva is the ninth german shepherd for the

family and only the second to be allowed

inside.

“It makes such a big difference,” Doris said

about having Ziva inside. “She is so sweet,” she said, sharing a look between her and

Ziva.

“In 1951,” she said, turning the attention back

to her photo album again, “we traveled to the

port in Bremen, Germany.” They then boarded

the USS Harry Taylor, an army transport that later sunk in Korea, to leave Germany for the

United States.

“We were given the option of going to

Argentina or California.” Doris shifted her thin

glasses on her freckled face.

“I don’t know why my parents chose California

but I’m happy they did.”

Because her brother Miroslav was so young, Doris, her mother and brother were given an

officer’s room to stay in during their ten day

voyage to the United States while her father roomed with all of the other passengers in a

big open space with three layer bunk beds.

“The doors were this thick in our room so

water couldn’t get in.” Doris held her fingers a

good 12 inches apart from each other.

“Someone accidentally shut the door on my

finger.” She poked her ring finger out on her left hand, to show off the indent that had

stayed on her finger and nail for life.

“It was barely hanging on,” Doris said, running

a finger along the scars.

“All I got was a popsicle stick and tape.”

They encountered many storms along their trip, but one storm was so bad that they were

forced to stop the boat in the middle of the

ocean for 24 hours and everyone was forced

to sit on the deck in life jackets as huge waves

pounded against the vessel.

On top of experiencing life threatening storms, Doris faced other firsts on her journey as an 8-year-old on her way to the U.S.

Before leaving Europe, she had

never seen anyone of a different skin color. It wasn’t until she

boarded the USS Harry Taylor that she saw someone of African-American.

I asked Doris what her first impression had been of a Black man

and without hesitation she smiled

warmly and said “chocolate hand” as if she were on jeopardy.

Once in New Orleans, the family

boarded a train headed to Union

Station in Los Angeles where they

would meet their sponsors of the

National Catholic Welfare Center at St. Stephens Catholic Church, where Doris was later married and

had her two eldest sons baptized.

“I was born into it [religion] and I rely

on the support of God always being

there.”

“Without religion, I wouldn’t have survived through losing Steve,” Doris said with an expression

of pain and love showing on her face. Steve was her first born son who passed away in a car accident in 1996.

Doris was immersed into fourth grade when she enrolled at Precious Blood Elementary

School in Los Angeles and because she was still learning English, she kept mostly to herself until she could meet up with other refugee children at recess.

The first day of school was a spelling bee. She smiled as the memories began to flood back.

“I couldn’t spell anything, but the I was the only one who spelled communion correctly.”

In sixth grade at Our Lady of Loretto, she met her life-long friend Pat who she still talks to “all the time

She met her husband her first and only year at Los Angeles City College which she

recalls gossiping about with Pat.

“He used to wear these horrible lime green

and yellow checkered golf pants,” Doris

recalled with a laugh.

“They were my favorite until she threw them

away,” Bill said.

Doris went through many jobs from as

young as 14 years old, starting with binding

books at 80 cents an hour, to working at department stores like Bullocks and

Wetherby’s until settling at at the United

California Bank where she worked after her one year of college.

Later on, she created a job titled ‘Academic Evaluator’ at Riverside Community College which she

stayed at for 28 and a half years during which she earned an Associates degree.

She graduated on the same day as her two oldest sons Steve and James. At their ceremony they held a

banner that read ‘Haggard Triple Slam.’

“I got in trouble at work, but it was worth it!” Doris said excitedly.

Her biggest accomplishments in life she says are, “My four kids.” She slaps a hand to her chest. “Oh my

god! And my grandkids.” Another chest slap.

“And I should probably say my great grand child too.” She smiled.

Her short golden hair had fallen beautifully, cupping her chin and blue eyes.

“I kinda liked her when I first saw her. Right there,” Bill said, pointing to Doris’s high school graduation picture that has a permanent home above their piano.

“She was very pretty.” He glanced at her as she walked down the hall. “She’s still pretty, a little chubby, but still pretty.”

An all too familiar phrase escaped Doris’s mouth, “Oh Bill!” Her other secret phrase to marriage.

Trevor Clarke, sub-editorinfo@migrantwoman.com Dear Mr. Clarke, Here is a fascinating adventure of a 78 year-old woman, Doris Haggard, who migrated from Croatia to the United States as a young girl. Her family had a passion and will to come to the United States and with that, she was forced to sacrifice all of her belongings and friends in Croatia. They left behind extended family and took a tumultuous boat ride to America. Upon arriving, she fell in love with her new home and has never looked back. This article delves into her personal recollection of what happened during that whirlwind of a move and how her life has developed since coming to America. I am currently a journalism student at Cal State Northridge and have written many articles for highly praised and well-trained professors and I believe that this article would be perfect for your magazine. Pictures will be included.Thank you for your time and consideration of this article. I hope to hear back from you soon.Sincerely, Kate Haggard311 Meadow LaneMonrovia, CA 91016kate.haggard.774@my.csun.edu