Charlie’s Tony Kristic Story

My name is Tony Kristic and I immigrated from Bosnia to The United States when I was 5 years old.  I had a sister that was born premature and lost her vision.  My parents traveled around the world visiting doctors to help my sister with her health.  While they traveled I had to stay with my Grandmother and other relatives.  While my parents were away, a war broke out in my country.  The war kept getting worse.  Sometimes when I was playing soccer with my friends I would see bombs exploding in the distance.  We were all scared and we ran home.  My family was not able to travel outside of the country anymore.  Since they could no longer fly we had to wait a year before we would be able to drive during the war.  While we were driving out of the country we were stopped a lot of times by the police and Army.  One time, a  general that had stopped us searched our car for weapons after I had told them I had a gun.  I was only 5 years old and the gun I had was just a toy gun.  Once our family got to Croatia we took an airplane to New York.  From New York, we went to Boston so my sister could be treated by a doctor there.  We decided to stay in New York so my sister could get the help she needed as a disabled person.  Another reason we decided to stay in New York was because it was not safe in Bosnia.  When I went to school here I was not able to speak the language.  While living in NY, I met a writer from Croatia who helped me learn how to speak english.  I also kept developing my soccer skills throughout school and college.

Charlie