A Worldwide Influencer THERE’S A LOT THAT COULD BE SAID ABOUT MILANA “MIM” BIZIC and her influence in the classroom, on Serbian culture in America and within her Pittsburgh community. But perhaps Steve “Woz” Wozniak, Apple co-founder and philanthropist, said it best in 1988: “You will probably never realize or fully believe what an important inspiration your example has been to me, mostly in education, but also in kindness and friendliness. This inspiration has kept me moving the last couple of years toward my goal of teaching and helping youngsters. I wish the Mim Bizics of the world were more abundant and more in control of things.” The two met when he presented her with her first of four Apple Computer Awards for her work introducing students in grades first through sixth to computers. They became friends, corresponding over the years, and Woz even made a visit to Edgeworth Elementary School, where Mim taught, upon her retirement in 2004. “He always did so much for me and impacted my life in a positive way,” Mim said.
Born to Teach Mim is quick to pass the credit for her drive and success to her parents. Both her maternal and paternal Serbian Orthodox grandparents immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now known as Croatia, in 1897 and 1908. They didn’t have a lot of money but had plenty of honesty, loyalty and bravery.
12
Winter 2020 Issue
“I had two hardworking parents,” she said. “My father was 100% deaf by age 17, and my mother was crippled from an accident at age 7, but they never let their handicaps get in their way. Milan Karlo worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. They were changing things he wrote, and his editors told him to go with the flow. He wouldn’t, and he quit. It was the best gift he ever gave us – standing up for what he believed.” Her mother, Laura Mamula Karlo, attended Carnegie Tech. She taught database skills for Kaiser in California to 40 women from Oklahoma who fled the Dust Bowl, and back in Pittsburgh, worked at the family’s store and in a factory. Growing up on the southside of Pittsburgh, Mim’s whole family – aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents – lived
within a few blocks of each other, making for a wonderful upbringing. Her fifth grade teacher, Ms. Veronica Wolfe, made a permanent impression on Mim, even after saying her name, Milana Karlo, incorrectly. “I was so embarrassed,” she recalls. “She finally asked me how to say it and replied to me by saying, ‘It sounds just like a movie star.’ She was a wonderful teacher and such an inspiration.” Mim taught for 42 years, mostly in Quaker Valley School District, as well as at Penn State’s Beaver campus, covering graduate level courses on integrating computers into the curriculum. “It was beautiful because you had such creative, dynamic, productive parents;
