Orthodoxy in America
This year, during our 85th annual “SerbFest” Serbian festival, St. Archangel Michael Serbian Orthodox Church had the privilege of hosting many parishioners, and friends for a weekend full of food, sports, and all-around community. Among our gathered friends, our esteemed guests this year included our many individual and company sponsors, as well as, Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro, and her staff.While attending SerbFest, Father Milan Pajic provided Executive Shapiro and staff a historic tour of our church, including the full church grounds, and some “behind the scenes” kitchen and prep footage of the festival. Father Milan also provided a summary of activities the congregation has been dedicated to over the last year, including both local and overseas charity passion projects.
In recognition of the hard work and dedication that our community has to making SerbFest a huge success, Executive Shapiro bestowed an official proclamation marking July 29-30, 2023, “Serbian Festival Weekend” in Summit County! This proclamation honors our heritage and culture while applauding the efforts of each individual whom helps promote our meaningful traditions. For the nearly 150 volunteers, hundreds of parishioners, sponsors, donors, and even more friends: this proclamation is for you! Without the combined efforts of each of you, such a successful event would not be possible. We thank each one of our volunters and sponsors for the continued support necessary to make such an event happen. We thank Mrs. Gerry Ostich of Akron Foundry Co. for her continued support of the church her generation built. We thank County Executive Shapiro for her time and heartfelt acknowledgments. Lastly, we thank all of you for coming to SerbFest and look forward to seeing you again next year.
Text by Jelena Topalovic
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Akron Foundry Co. |
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Srpski cetnici Ravna Gora |
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Akron Auto Center |
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Compass Holding |
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KSS Sveta Petka |
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R&R Truck Sales |
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J Rayl |
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Hilscher_Clarke Electric |
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Djosanovic Family |
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Digital Graphics & Signs |
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Zorn's Heating & Coolong |
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Alex Express Inc |
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SFD Gracanica |
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Belgrade Gardens |
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DPLine, LLC |
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TRL Express Inc. |
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MIA Express, Inc. |
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Anthony Funeral Homes |
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More Than Convenient Market |
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Serbian School "St. Sava" |
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Soldat Transport, LLC |
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Rapid Mold Repair and Mashine Inc |
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Dobrila and Zdravko Djuric |
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Very Rev. Deacon Zeljko Jurisic |
Our 84 th Annual Akron SerbFest was such a successful and spectacular event! In case you missed it, here’s a little synopsis, and hopefully after reading, you’ll join us next year.
The festival has seen wonderful growth throughout the years. This year, we had our usual delicious Serbian delicacies like ćevapi, krofne, and burek, live music and folklore dance group performances, kids’ activities like facepainting, games, and inflatables, and sports tournaments in soccer, table tennis, bocce ball, cornhole, and chess. We also hosted church tours twice each day during which visitors learned about the history of our parish and saw our recently added beautiful frescoes!
We opened our festival this year by making 100 homecooked meals and delivering them to the Heaven of Rest Ministries, which is a homeless shelter located in Akron. Our hope is to be able to do something like this every year for our community.
New to the festival this year were the Halyard Mission Exhibit presentations, organized by the Halyard Mission Foundation and Zastava Arms. During these presentations, we learned about the role the Serbs played in rescuing over 500 U.S. airmen during WWII. We listened to testimony from people who were involved, and we saw the great bravery all of those men and women portrayed.
This year we also had the immense pleasure of hosting the General Consul of Serbia consul Dragan Jovic and his team from Chicago. We had several discussions with him and his team about the Serbian diaspora and what we can do to promote our culture and mission while helping the communities around us, the communities back home in Serbia, and those throughout various regions in the Balkans.
We pride ourselves on having something for everyone to do, try, and enjoy, so we added two new activities this year that we plan to have next year as well. Twice each day, we organized games for our little ones to participate in—the games were a success as all of the beautiful smiles showed us!
The other activity we added was our very first chess tournament, which was held inside the hall and was open to all people 10 years old and up. We had a lovely tournament with good participation and even better competition.
Thank you to everyone who volunteered, donated, and visited us! Akron SerbFest is a wonderful family event and a destination, so we hope to see everyone again next year. Like any culture, the Serbian one is unique and joyous, and we’d absolutely love the chance to share its beauties with you and your loved ones
Serbfest Akron 2022 Art of Light Photography by Dragan Veselnov
St. Bishop Nikolai, Nikola Tesla, Mihailo Pupin, 100 years of the Serbian Orthodox Church in America, prepared for 83rd Serbian Festival in Akron
Author: Uros Djosanovic
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The 2009 Serbian Festival was a huge success thanks to all of our guests! But, if it wasn't for all of the volunteers who worked thousands of hours planning, preparing, laboring, cooking, baking and organizing this event it would not have been possible! Our deepest thanks to everyone! Please enjoy the photos and slide show to the right. Remember our festival is planned for the last weekend in July every year! Hope to see you there! Овогодишњи Српски Фестивал је огроман успех за све нас захваљујући нашим гостима! Али, без наших парохијана који су добровољно радили приложивњи тиме хиљаде радних сати планирајући, припремајући, кувајући, чистећи и организујући овај фестивал не би био остварен! Уживајте у постављеним фотографијама. Молимо вас да запамтите да је наш фестивал сваке године у задњи викенд у месецу јулу! Надамо се да ћемо се видети тамо!  |
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Many thanks to all of our guests and everyone who worked so hard to make the 2008 Serbian Festival this past weekend such a huge success!