Flag of Montenegro will be 123rd added to Oregon State collection

Stevan Jeknic, 18, is Corvallis born and raised. He graduated in 2010 from Corvallis High School, he’s a freshman member of the University Honors College at Oregon State University. He lives on campus and plans to major in chemical engineering.

However, Jeknic has dual American-Montenegrin citizenship. His mother was pregnant with him when she moved to the United States from Montenegro in 1992, and his father, Zoran Jeknic, followed soon after.

Zoran Jeknic is a faculty research assistant in the horticulture department who did graduate work at OSU. He and Jeknic will pay tribute to that heritage today by presenting the Memorial Union with a flag of Montenegro.

“He’s proud of his heritage, and so am I,” Stevan Jeknic said.

Montenegro’s flag will be the 123rd to join the collection hanging in the Memorial Union Concourse. The MU display of these flags began during World War II, when staff members hung flags of the 26 countries that made up the Allies who fought together against Germany, Japan and the other Axis nations. After the war, the Memorial Union began to hang flags from the countries that made up the growing United Nations.

Over the years, international students whose home country’s flags were not represented have presented flags to the Memorial Union themselves or through their embassies. Local host families and visiting dignitaries also present previously unrepresented flags on behalf of international students.

Though he’s never lived in Montenegro, Jeknic learned about his culture through eight different trips he’s taken to the small southeastern European country with his father and younger brother.

The family has uncles and several cousins in the area, but they usually stay for several weeks with Jeknic’s grandmother, who still lives in his father’s hometown of Kolasin. There, Jeknic said, his grandmother churns out all types of pies made with phyllo dough — meat, potato, spinach — and fries up the fish that Jeknic and his family catch during trips to the mountains.

“She makes everything there is,” Jeknic said.

Montenegro originally was part of Yugoslavia before it declared its independence in 2006 to become Europe’s newest country. Jeknic’s parents cherished their heritage, and so he learned Montenegrin along with English.

Jeknic credits his father for working with the Memorial Union to set up Wednesday’s presentation. Although he’s excited that his family and Montenegro will be honored, he isn’t planning to get too dressed up for the event.

“I have classes all day,” he said. “I’m not going to walk around in a suit.”

Original story: http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/local/article_9b0d0dec-5a9e-11e0-a430-0...