Milijana, Mileva and Mara Sretenovic created the new scholarship and full-time undergraduate students with demonstrated academic merit are eligible for it.
Years after they received financial support to pursue degrees at Ohio University, three alumnae are giving back so that students can attend OU through the newly created Sretenovic Family Scholarship.
The three sisters, Milijana, Mileva and Mara Sretenovic, created the scholarship, which will be for full-time undergraduate students who have demonstrated academic merit, according to a university news release.
“I was very fortunate that I was able to go to college and it did have a really big impact on me,” Mara, a 1971 OU alumna, said in the release. “I’d like to see other people have the same opportunities.”
The sisters' father is from Yugoslavia and served as an Ally soldier in Germany during World War II before becoming a prisoner of war. After the war, their father was released and met his wife Christa. Mileva, Milijana and Mara were born in Germany and through the Displaced Persons Act of 1948, the Sretenovics moved to the U.S. and were sponsored by the Piketon Methodist Church, according to the release.
“They made so many sacrifices when you think about the hardships that they had coming to a country where they didn’t even speak the same language,” Milijana said in the release. “We had absolutely no money for anything, even the basics.”
It was through scholarship money, the work-study program and various jobs that the sisters were able to attend OU.
“We all worked very hard. I was never even able to go to football games because I was always working,” Mileva, a 1968 OU alumna, said in the release. “Going to class was like the break between work.”
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After graduation, Mileva spent 38 years in the U.S. Navy.
“I am forever indebted to those who were generous and kind enough to help us earn our degrees and this is a way of paying it forward,” Mileva said in the release. “It’s our way of paying back and maybe in the future we’ll be able to give more. It’s a blessing to be a blessing.”
The new scholarship qualified for the OHIO Match program, which commits to matching 50 cents for every dollar donated to scholarships established under the program’s criteria. The program dedicated $25 million toward the Promise Lives Campaign, which met and exceeded its goal by raising more than $500 million in gifts and commitments in June.
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