St. John Paul II Award winner has fed the multitudes

By Peter Finney Jr.
Clarion Herald

Klara Buconic Cvitanovich has a standing rule for her back-of-the-house staff at the iconic Drago’s Seafood Restaurant in Metairie: No one who comes to her restaurant looking for food ever goes away hungry, even if they can’t pay.

Feeding the hungry has been personal both for Cvitanovich and for her late husband Drago, Yugoslavian immigrants who met in New Orleans at Mardi Gras in 1958, married three weeks later in Buras and lived and worked at a Canadian lumber camp for three years before finally getting a U.S. visa to begin their American dream life in 1961.

During and after WWII, both Klara and Drago, who did not know each other in Yugoslavia, experienced deprivation and hunger.

Two loaves of bread
One of Klara’s most vivid childhood memories is of a young man nicknamed Spenja, who worked at her father Stjepan’s grain mill before WWII, secretly dropping off two loaves of freshly baked bread every Sunday to the Buconic family at the second-floor bathroom window of their home in Dubrovnik.

“That was the treat of the week, and I never forgot this,” Klara said. “So, when I see hungry people, I have to help, because I know the feeling.”

The Catholic Community Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans (CCF) will honor Cvitanovich for her lifelong generosity and stewardship with the St. John Paul II Award at its annual dinner Oct. 6 at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, ironically the same hotel where the Cvitanovich family took a risk by opening a second Drago’s restaurant in 2006, a year after Hurricane Katrina nearly wiped New Orleans off the map.

After Katrina, Klara and Drago responded to the vast community needs by serving more than 77,000 free meals – initially to first responders and later to residents returning to the New Orleans area to pick up the pieces of their lives. They did it without accepting a penny from the government.

St. Dominic food station
After shifting the free food operation from the front parking lot of their restaurant in Metairie, they went in October 2005 to Lakeview, where they got emergency “authorization” from former Archbishop Philip Hannan to set up in the plaza in front of St. Dominic Church, which had been inundated with 8 feet of water.

“In this country, we were able to live the American dream to the fullest,” Klara explained. “Giving back makes us feel good, especially here in our own community. The people of New Orleans have been the key to our success. One thing it taught me is that it’s much easier to be on the giving side than on the receiving side. I just felt that we had it and other people didn’t, so we had to give it away. For me, it was a moral obligation and also my way of saying thank you to the city of New Orleans and the United States for all they had done for us.”

Over the years, Drago’s has held fundraisers for many Catholic schools and churches. Klara also served as a travel agent who coordinated pilgrimages to Medjugorje – not far from her Croatian birthplace of Stupa – in the 1980s and 1990s.

Feed My Sheep
In 1991, when war broke out in Croatia, she and Archbishop Hannan formed a nonprofit called Feed My Sheep that sent shipping containers full of food essentials, clothing and building supplies to her native country.

CCF executive director Cory Howat said Klara’s philanthropy comes from her deep Catholic faith and her gratitude for God’s blessings.

“Oftentimes, people can attribute a list of things that they’ve given back,” Howat said. “But then you come across people who try to give everything back. She’s one of those people who, literally, in every aspect of her life, has been trying to give it all back – in the restaurant, with her family, in parish life. She just sticks out because it’s not that she’s returning a couple things; she’s truly making a full return.”

Loved Pope John Paul II
Klara said she is humbled to receive an award named after Pope John Paul II, who fought so valiantly against communism during his ministry as a priest and bishop and later as pope.

“I’ve gotten so many awards, and they are all well received,” she said. “I’m proud of each one of them. But this one is super special. He was my favorite pope who fought communism. And this was what my father was involved in. This is what motivated me. He was a Polish friend. He was love. So, it means quite a lot.

“All the awards that I have received, I was not looking for awards. The goal that I had in front of me was important. And when we did feed people in New Orleans, we did it wholeheartedly. I was out there in front of Drago’s Restaurant and St. Dominic serving food every single day. I never got tired, never complained. When I went to Croatia (after the war in the 1990s), I did it because I knew I was helping somebody. Every action I took, I can say the goal was to help and to make somebody feel better with something little that they didn’t have.”

Drago passed away in 2017 at the age of 94.

“He would be saying, ‘Baby, I love you,’” Klara said.

Past winners of the award
Previous winners of the St. John Paul II Award are Joseph Childress, 1996; Frank Walk, 1997; the Honorable Lindy Boggs, 1998; Juliette Maquar, 1999; Alden J. “Doc” Laborde, 2000; Jane and Paul Nalty, 2001; Dr. Elmo J. Cerise, 2002; Blanche and Dr. Norman Francis, 2003; Anne M. Milling, 2004; Mary Jane and John Becker, 2006; Mary Ann Valentino, 2007; Michael O. Read, 2008; Betty V. Lauricella, 2009; Deacon Everett Williams, 2010; Leon J. Reymond Jr., 2011; Dr. Jack A. Andonie, 2012; John P. Laborde, 2013; the Honorable Jay C. Zainey, 2014; Anne and Jack Dardis, 2015; Marilyn Quirk, 2016; Sharon Ryan Rodi, 2017; Miles Gordon Stevens III, 2018; Peter R. Quirk, 2019; Lloyd and Jane Tate, 2021.

For information on the Oct. 6 dinner, go to ccfnola.org/annual-dinner-reg or call Pam Richard at (504) 596-3044. Cocktails will be served at 6 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m.

[email protected]