Petar Radielovic, a prominent member of the Southern California Croatian community passed away on January 23, 2005. He is survived by his wife of 49 years Brigitta, their daughter Mira and their son Marko.
 
Born March 21, 1929 in Breza, Bosnia and Herzegovina, he attended the Jesuit school in Travnik. As a 16 year-old he survived the Bleiburg death marches and then attended Zagreb University where he studied medicine until his studies were interrupted by the Communist authorities. In 1954 he fled to Austria and freedom.
 
He served in a Polish unit of a labor services company under the auspices of the U.S. Army in West Germany for several years. Mr. Radielovic then emigrated to the United States in 1956 where he obtained employment at an iron works company in Wisconsin as a common laborer and pursued studies in commercial art. That year he married Brigitta Heinrich whom he had met earlier in Heidelberg.
 
The Radielovics  moved to Los Angeles, California in 1961. There Petar worked for the Prebble markets as a commercial artist. In 1966, he opened his own printing business, Graph-o-lith Printing, which he operated until his retirement.
 
Petar Radielovic was an active member of the local Croatian parish, St. Anthony’s Croatian Catholic Church and a founder and director of the Parish school.  He sang for decades in the parish choir. He led the Croatian Radio Program in Los Angeles for 15 years and was the primary announcer. At the annual Parish festival, Pero could always be seen, standing  out in midst of the smoke of  his popular cevapcici pit, with a broad smile, and wearing his trademark fez.
 
Above all, Petar Radielovic was a Croatian activist whose love for Croatia knew no bounds, and whose pride of his native Bosnia could not be contained. He was a member of the Croatian Catholic Union as well as an active participant in the Croatian National Congress (HNV) during the waning decades of Communist Yugoslavia. He was a founding member of the Alliance of Croats of Bosnia and Hercegovina in the post-Yugoslav period.
 
During his lifetime he published numerous books and pamphlets on Croatian political themes. He published the magazine American Croat. He testified before the U.S. Senate at the nomination hearings for the then ambassador-designate Lawrence Eagleburger. He was a visible presence on California television on issues concerning Croatia and Yugoslavia and was quoted widely in the print media.
 
The Croatian community world-wide misses him dearly.