Senior Deni Lakovic is thankful to his parents for facing and making the decision of leaving their home country, changing their entire way of life and providing him with the opportunity to live in America.

According to Lakovic, there were several factors that contributed to his family fleeing their home in Bosnia.

“Education [was a factor to coming], because Bosnia at that time was under civil war,” Lakovic said. “I don’t know who it was against, but my parents don’t really speak about it. It’s mainly a civil war, that’s what they call it.”

Lakovic speaks of how his parents have told him stories about their “escape” from Bosnia, although he tells that it wasn’t much of an escape. His parents boarded the last bus to exit Bosnia at that time. In Germany, Lakovic was born and two years later, his family came to America.

“Coming to America was just usual; I mean it’s starting out new but the only thing is that you have a lot of background to you from Europe,” Lakovic said. “Now that’s the tough part, because at that time my parents were speaking German because we stayed in Germany for a while. They were also speaking Bosnian. That also got me messed up as a young kid.”

Upon arriving, his parents had trouble adjusting to the English language. According to Lakovic, it was humiliating for them to learn English.  But in the end, they learned it. However, even today they still have trouble spelling some words.

“[They learned English] through television and talking to people on the street, asking things.” Lakovic said. “And all they had was a little handbook translating from Bosnian to English.”

Lakovic can listen and understand both Bosnian and German language, yet he has difficulty speaking them. Because of the variety of languages that Lakovic was exposed to, he began showing speech issues during his early childhood. He would stutter and have stress saying certain words. It became very noticeable and his parents became concerned.

“Luckily the school that I went to, it was a Richardson School, [it] was a classical magnet school,” Lakovic said. “They had a teacher specialist for a speech class, [and] they enrolled me into that. They made sure I spoke more properly.”

Since the beginning, Lakovic’s father was somewhat reluctant about moving away from Bosnia. His mother was very much in favor however, considering all the benefits that Lakovic would enjoy here.

“I would only like to know Bosnia before the war happened,” Lakovic said. “My parents always tell me, under that time, it was the best place to live. That’s probably the only sad thing, because I didn’t know what it was like to be [in Bosnia] before the war. But I don’t want to be there now.”