August 30, 2022, is the one-hundredth anniversary of my father’s birth. He lived 75 years and passed away in 1997. His ashes now rest in the mountain town of Pavelsko in Bulgaria.
My father and I share the same first name, Atanas. It comes from Greek and means immortal.
But names are not the only thing we share. He was a forest engineer with a passion for the outdoors and the arts. I am a computer scientist with a passion for the outdoors and the arts. I have no doubt I inherited my passions from him.
In 1991 my father visited the US for the first time. He fell gravely ill, but doctors in Minnesota saved his life. When he returned to his native Pavelsko in Bulgaria, he learned English at the age of 70. Then he wrote the doctors a sweet Thank You letter. They received it right before Thanksgiving and posted it on the hospital’s public board. Everybody was so happy.
English was my father’s fifth language. He also knew Bulgarian, French, Russian, and Turkish.
Near the end of his life, my father authored three manuscripts in Bulgarian. He published the first one, a documentary on nature preserves in Bulgaria. We published the other two after his death, a reference book on the Bulgarian forest, and a memoir.
My father’s memoir is titled From Pavelsko to America. His readers tell me they appreciate the descriptions of children’s games in Bulgaria in the early twentieth century as they do the stories of his student life in post-war Sofia and of his trips to America in the 1990s.
During WW2, my father served in the Bulgarian Air Force. For a brief period of time, he bombed retreating German troops until his plane crash-landed in a field. My father refrained from talking about his airforce service, and I didn’t know much about it until after his death when I read his memoir manuscript.
I have prepared a separate Bulgarian language page about my father and his books, Атанас Раденски – баща.
