Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 5, 1993 TAG: 9311050182
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
"Would have paled Joseph Heller," said another.
In the end, Crnojacki walked into her Washington Street apartment for the first time in a year Wednesday to find that her husband hadn't moved a thing while she was gone, stranded in London, a bureaucratic victim of U.S. sanctions against her native Serbia.
"It was too absurd to be possible," said Crnojacki's husband, Larza Boskov, also Serbian and a doctoral student in engineering at Tech. "Rules are rules - everything was legal - but it was not fair."
Crnojacki's odyssey through bureaucracy started in October 1992 when she interrupted her doctoral studies at Tech to fly to London for a family reunion. When she went to get her visa renewed at the U.S. Embassy, it was denied.
"I thought it would be routine," she recalled Thursday. "They rejected me, and I went into shock. Uncontrolled shaking. I couldn't believe it."
A few days later she tried again. When that attempt failed, Boskov knew they were in trouble. He called Ben Johnson, Crnojacki's professor at Tech.
So began construction of the elaborate web of contacts that helped Crnojacki return to the States. Countless Tech administrators and professors worked with four U.S. agencies and contacted British immigration officials to head off her deportation there.
Sen. Charles Robb's office joined in, the senator himself vouching to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that Crnojacki's return wouldn't compromise sanctions against Serbia.
"Frankly, there was a lot of confusion in Washington as to who could say yes and who could say no," said Bernard la Berge, assistant dean of the graduate school.
"She had left Yugoslavia in 1987 on a Fulbright Scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania. Then she had come to Tech to do a doctorate in landscape architecture," said Ralph Byers, Tech's director of government relations.
Boskov joined her here and they were married. He arrived just as the Berlin Wall fell and the Iron Curtain cracked - before Yugoslavia turned on itself in a civil war that rages on.
In London, Crnojacki's visa was denied because she couldn't prove to the U.S. consul's office that she intended to return to Yugoslavia to work after her schooling, a condition to which she'd originally agreed. Admittedly, she said Thursday, her studies and finances had kept her here.
But, said Byers: "She didn't even have a country."
What she did have was a specialty that ultimately cracked the bureaucratic blockade. At Tech, Crnojacki had worked on a project sorting through public concerns surrounding the proposed Appalachian Power Co. power line that is to stretch from Wyoming County, W.Va., to a station east of Roanoke.
"As it turned out, I knew one of the Apco lobbyists in Richmond," said Byers.
That set off a flurry of more calls. In the end, Tech officials emerged with Crnojacki's trump card. Tech's Management Systems Laboratory, part of the College of Engineering, is under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy to do work similar to Crnojacki's specialty. And if the Department of Energy could use her knowledge, she could return to Blacksburg.
"When we were able to get the Department of Energy to say, `This person has skills that are beneficial to the U.S. government,' that seemed to carry the day," said Ron Simpson, deputy director of the lab. He had known nothing of Crnojacki until his department was contacted about the problem.
She'll be working with the lab as she finishes her degree.
It's a job that ultimately took a year to land, as paperwork shuffled back and forth and Boskov spent hundreds each month in phone calls. They studied as they could, trying to keep the faith.
Because she couldn't work, she spent her days serving as nanny to Kristina, the 2-year-old daughter of her London-based sister, Ruzica.
While in London, Crnojacki met many Serbians who had fled the war in the former Yugoslavia.
"People who used to live in Sarajevo, people whose families were killed, people who used to be professionals. It is hard to believe, because at the time I was living in Yugoslavia, there [were] not, at least visible, signs that the five or six nationalities that lived within what used to be the borders could just turn against each other so violently.
"I lived in a multinational city," she said. "It makes it harder for me to understand."
As hard as she fought to return to the United States, it may be only temporary. When Boskov completes his doctorate in engineering, and she finishes her dissertation, the couple hopes to return to their hometown, the Serbian city of Novi Sad.
What they've fought to learn here, they'll take there. They'll help rebuild their country.
by CNB