TO MY FATHERLAND

Devoting this version of my memoirs to the people of my fatherland, I feel great excitement. I need to tell my Bulgarian readers too many things but words do not come easily.
My father was born on January 6, 1876, at the time of the preparation of our people for an uprising against the Turks. Before the outbreak of the uprising, the Turkish governors forced the people of the village of Boyadjik (present Boyadjik, Yambol Region) to leave their houses and then they burnt them. As my grandfather ran with his son in his hands, followed by my grandmother, a group of Turkish soldiers shot him in the chest. The bullet, which killed him, left a scar on the forehead of my father for the rest of his life.
My grandmother married twice more after that. My father was 13 years old when he arrived in the United States and at 15 he became an orphan. After this incredible start in his life, he finished the Colgate University and married my mother, an American whose grandfather fought in the Civil War between the North and the South. My father wanted to take his wife and children to Bulgaria but he did not succeed.
I have always felt that the heritage of the two peoples in my blood has kept my spirit.
And now, as I am growing old, I am even happier for my good fortune. My father's people have met me warmly and have given me a high prize ­ the Cyrille and Methodius Order (First Class). I was elected a foreign member of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and I am in touch with many friends in Bulgaria.

John Atanasoff

Alice and John V. Atanasoff are greeted according to the old Bulgarian custom, by offering of a special bread and salt,
by the villagers of Boyadjik, December 1970