SERBIAN WOMAN FROM AMERICA ABOUT 4 DECADES OF FRIENDSHIP WITH STEVE WOZNIAK! Bižić: He wanted our passport, THIS IS A REAL WONDER!
"Steve Wozniak, our Woz, told me that he was interested in securing a Serbian passport because it is one of the best passports for travelling around Europe and he always has speaking engagements somewhere. Woz is already acting on Serbia’s behalf all over the world and he really wants to help promote Expo 2027. This news has already made him new friends in the Serbian community", says Mim Bižić, a legendary Serb woman from Pittsburgh, who was born in America as the third generation of Serbian immigrants and who can teach all of us a lesson or two about Serbia and Serbian history.
Baba Mim, as she is known among Serbs and beyond, has been friends with the co-founder of Apple for almost four decades. The computer genius and engineer Steve Wozniak was recently presented with a Serbian passport in Belgrade at the beginning of December last year by President Aleksandar Vučić. On the occasion, Wozniak said that he was now a Serb living in America. Mim Bižić was especially happy to hear this, as well as sorry that she couldn't go with him to Belgrade.
"When he first told me about his plans, I told him that he should take me with him to Serbia, to which he replied that I was one of the main reasons why he wanted to do all of this", says Mim and adds that Wozniak has since been worried that the whole business about the passport now has a political connotation.
Mim was one of the first people who knew that Wozniak was preparing for this trip.
"He told me that he was thinking of going to Serbia, after going to so many other countries to speak one after another, but I told him to slow down because he was travelling too much in such a short time frame. You saw what happened in Mexico (he ended up in the hospital in early November 2023). He suffered from a mild heart attack and dizziness. I was shocked as the whole world was, but not surprised. The fact that he was still able to go to Serbia was a small miracle.”
“He is so very precious to all of us, to the world”, Mim underlines.
How does a Quaker Valley Edgeworth Elementary School teacher from Sewickley, PA know the Apple co-founder so well? And who is she anyway? Milana Mim Karlo Bižić was born on July 30, 1941, in Pittsburgh, a city where the Mamula family (1898 and 1900) from Lika moved to in the late 19th century. Her mother Latinka (Laura), was the youngest of seven surviving children. Not long after the Mamulas, her grandparents (Samojilo Karajlović and his wife Stana Batalo Karajlović) also arrived in the US from Kordun, in 1907 and 1912 respectively. Their son Milan was the oldest of 8 surviving children.
At a Serbian event in Pittsburgh on Vidovdan in 1962, Mim met her future husband Gus (Kojo) Bižić. They wed in the St. Elijah Serbian Orthodox Church in Aliquippa, PA, in 1963. Baba Mim says her greatest treasures are her dear son, Nikola Nick Bižić and granddaughter Jocelyn, now 17 years old.
Mim was far more than a teacher who nurtured Serbian traditions and customs. This amazing woman was ahead of her time! She realized a long time ago that the future lies in computers, so she began to use them creatively in classes with her students, as well as for teaching her colleagues.
"My students and I won first place at the Apple international competition in 1985 in Washington DC, and that's where I first met Woz, who gave me a computer for our school. We won our computer adventure with our Ancient Egypt project. As a reward, Apple sent me to MacWorld in California, where I saw Woz again. We also won in 1986 with the Ancient Greece and Rome project, and then again in 1987, with the China and Japan project. Then I was inducted into Apple's Hall of Fame, but I couldn't compete for two years. The rationale for that was - "No one has a chance against you! No one can come close to you!" Mim remembers.
As a consolation prize, they sent her to Hawaii where she worked on writing lesson plans for Apple Computer Clubs.
In 1989, when her "ban" expired, Mim and her students won again with the theme "Etching Women Back Into History, But Using Our Computers To Do It!".
“In that Women's study unit, we proudly presented Mileva Marić Einstein and planted Serbian spruce in her honor in our Edgeworth Elementary School yard in Sewickley, PA. It’s still there”, she says and adds:
“In 1990, Apple asked me to write lesson plans for a new permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian called "Flight Enters the Computer Age." These plans had to be written for teachers who could physically take their students to the museum in Washington, DC, but also for teachers who could travel there only virtually, from as far away as the state of Washington. These activities led to the fact that the Smithsonian Museum named me the National Science Teacher in 1990”, explains Mim.
Steve Wozniak came to Pittsburgh in 1988 for Mim's Apple Pitts Computer Club, which was reported by several newspapers, and then again when she was retiring as a librarian in 2004.
There were, says Mim, so many wonderful anecdotes with Woz.
"When I met Woz in Washington in 1986 for the second time, he said that he would like to send his son, Jesse, to be in my class. That was such a great honor! And when I bought my first iPhone the first day it went on sale from the Apple store, I immediately sent him an email via my iPhone, telling him that I had just bought it. He answered me immediately: “You, too?” At first, I was sceptical, but now I love it! The young Apple salesman was flabbergasted to see an email from Woz!
Years later, when we met at the University of Akron (Ohio), I got him to sign my original iPhone at a restaurant we went to after his lecture. He had warned me that everything he signed with his pen would fade, but I didn't care because I had my iPhotos to show that he had done it", Mim reminisces.
"He sent me an email when he was performing on 'Dancing with the Stars' and so many fans voted for him for many weeks. Unfortunately, he didn't have the best partner and was later eliminated as she was too stiff for his fun-loving personality. But they are still good friends."
She keeps in touch with Wozniak almost every day, she points out.
"I just wrote to him that we should go to the Tesla conference in New York on January 13, but I know he's too busy", Mim notes.
“I wish everyone in Serbia, especially the Danilović, Karajlović, Mamula and Marković families, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Mir Božji, Hristos se rodi!"
Jelena S. Spasić
Bonus video:
