But the story is bigger than such exploits. Radovan left his close knit family in Croatia in 1900, when he was 18 and conscription into the army of Austria Hungary loomed. His name, Radovanovich, was shortened as he passed through Ellis Island, Ringsmuth writes. He made his way to Alaska to help build the Copper River and Northwestern Railway and, after he settled in McCarthy to work on small mines peripheral to the big Kennecott operation, he married a “pretty Norwegian bookkeeper,” Augusta Ive
