Governor Sunshine
From our November 2003 issue: Things could not be better for Rod Blagojevich. He loves politics, and he has won every election he has entered (with help from his father-in-law, a clout-heavy alderman). The govenorship is his focus now, he insists, but this look at his personal history suggests he hopes for much, much more.
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Millie Govedarica grew up at Ashland and Fullerton avenues, one of eight surviving children of immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and although she was determined to be as American as anyone, she met her future husband, Rade, at a Serbian function. He was born in 1911 in a small village outside Belgrade, a child of pig farmers. He and a brother, Milorad, were artillery officers in the Yugoslav army and were on leave in their village when the Nazis invaded in 1941. They surrendered after the Nazis threatened to exterminate the entire village if all the soldiers didn't turn themselves in. Rade and Milorad-for whom the governor is named-spent four years in prisoner of war camps in Germany. After the war, the Serbian Orthodox church in Libertyville brought the brothers to Chicago. Neither spoke English or had any money.
Rade and Millie-she was 11 years younger-married in 1950. Their sons, Rod, born in 1956, and his brother, Rob, older by 16 months, attended Henry D. Lloyd Elementary School, off Armitage and Cicero avenues, near their five-room apartment at 1925 North LaCrosse Avenue in the Cragin neighborhood.
Rade was improbably optimistic and cheerful. "I don't remember him ever being in a bad mood," says his younger son. "Rosy, rosy outlook. A lot of it had to do with being in the U.S." But Rade had arrived here with a lifelong hatred of Communism and the men-among them, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt-who he thought had imposed this evil system on his beloved native country. A staunch Republican, Rade adored General Eisenhower, whose army had liberated Rade's POW camp, and Richard Nixon, who made his name outing those he labeled Communists.
Millie, on the other hand, considered herself a Democrat and liked FDR. Today, Rob, an executive with the Fifth Third Bank in Nashville, Tennessee, remains a rock-ribbed Republican.
Rod's early political leanings are a bit hazy, although the state's top elected Democrat admits voting for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and thinks he voted for the elder George Bush in 1988. He says he is certain he voted for Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and for Al Gore in 2000.
Millie borrowed money from her credit union to buy her boys a set of World Book encyclopedias. Rod, then nine, loved the books, especially the life stories of U.S. Presidents. He hero-worshiped Theodore Roosevelt and John Kennedy, and admired Richard Nixon for emerging victorious from his hardscrabble boyhood.
To save money, Millie and Rade never lived in anything but the most modest rental apartments. For Rade, who spoke broken English, no job was too demeaning. For a time, he was an exterminator, coming home each evening smelling like the chemicals he used to kill cockroaches. "He dealt with everything the same way," says Rod. "He just saw it as an opportunity." He made one attempt to go into business for himself, opening a laundry at Ashland and Grace. He washed, folded, and packaged the clothes, but he failed to anticipate the advent of self-service coin machines and went bankrupt. One August night he took his sons to his latest place of business, the steelmaker A. Finkl & Sons, so they could feel the heat of the furnaces. "This is how hard I work," he said to them in Serbian, the language the family spoke at home. "This is how hot it is here. You guys can choose to work like this. It's honorable work. You can make a good living. Or you can choose to be good in school and be a gentleman."
Millie, who spent 20 years as a CTA ticket taker, was practical, level-headed, funny, and sweet, and she gave her boys her own love of all things American, including, in Rod's case especially, Elvis Presley, John Wayne, Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. "That my brother and I are reasonably normal people is because of our mother," says the governor. She took a break from the CTA while the boys were young and worked in a factory across the street from their apartment so she could go home to make them lunch. And she kept them out of trouble after school by setting them up in the lobby of the factory with a shoeshine stand.
Rade insisted that his sons attend Serbian school to learn his country's history and culture and to absorb, in Rod's words, Rade's "love of freedom and hatred of Communism." Growing up in a tough blue-collar neighborhood surrounded by factories, the brothers dreaded standing at a bus stop carrying their tamburicas, Serbian instruments that resemble mandolins. "I'm going to get my ass kicked if somebody in the neighborhood sees me with this," Blagojevich recalls thinking. The younger son became what he calls a "mini attraction," singing in churches until in eighth grade his voice began to change and he could no longer hit the high notes.
The brothers shared a bedroom, but differed in skills and temperament. Rob was the more gifted athlete. "His sport was anything he wanted," recalls Mike Ascaridis. "Rob's talents created a determination in Rod to try harder." Rob was also more focused and mature, less inclined than his kid brother to childlike enthusiasms for baseball greats such as Ron Santo and Billy Williams. Rob was all chiseled features and disciplined meticulousness, while Rod was chubby cheeked and baby faced and full of impossible dreams. He looked like his mother, but he had his father's sunny personality. "I never saw him in a depressed mood or upset," Danny Angarola says.
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