John Barovich

John Barovich, a Montana legend, died of natural causes in his home, Friday morning, June 2, 2006. He was 92 years old.
Born in Niksic, Montenegro (part of the former Yugoslavia), on Feb. 3, 1914, John and his family emigrated to Bearcreek, Mont., in 1921, when John was 7 years old. They were processed through Ellis Island, where, for three days, John was accidentally separated from his family. John was always proud that his father, Simo, who had worked on the railroad and mined in Tonopa, Nev., returned to his homeland to fight in the Balkan wars. Simo later returned to the United States with his wife, Mileva, and their young children John, Mike and Margaret. They settled in Bearcreek, where Simo joined the ranks of hundreds of Europeans who mined coal for a living. Sadly, John's family lost their mother when John was a senior in high school and, in 1943, their father perished in the Smith Mine disaster.
Coming from a culture that honored the oldest son, John was able to spend his teenage years in Bearcreek shooting basketball hoops, leaving the chores to the rest of the family, particularly his brother Mike. John's skill in and obsession with basketball lead him to become an All-State Center from Bearcreek High School, whose team took third place in the state championship. This was at a time when divisional championship teams from all over the state, from the very small schools to the largest ones, competed against each other for the state title. Upon high school graduation, John received multiple scholarship offers to play basketball, including one from Stanford. According to John, he chose Denver University, where classes started earlier, in an attempt to escape his father's pressure to return to the old country and become an Orthodox priest, an expectation falling upon the oldest son in a lineage of priests (on his mother's side of the family). At DU, John played basketball for a year and pole vaulted for the track team in the spring. Nonetheless, it was there where he sustained the football injury which caused him to temporarily lose his scholarship. But Montana State College (now MSU-Bozeman) offered him a full scholarship, even though he could not play basketball for a year. Although John finished his education at Bozeman, he missed his graduation ceremony in order to court the woman he fell in love with, Mary Stimpson. They married that summer of 1936 and moved to Edgar, where he taught high school and coached the basketball team, turning around the team's losing record.
In 1938, John was hired by Columbus High School to coach basketball, football and track, and to teach history and chemistry. In Columbus, his basketball team narrowly lost the title for the state championship against Helena. During those Columbus years, his children, Betty, John and Mike, were born. It was also at this time when John began a lifetime career of selling life insurance to supplement his teaching income. He found clients by driving through every back road into every farmyard in the surrounding counties.
In 1946, the family moved to Miles City where his twin daughters, Mary and Marny, were later born. There, John coached for a year while getting his life insurance business off the ground. After his business became successful, he quit coaching and bought his first airplane, which enabled him to cover and service the expanded area of his clientele. He flew for over 30 years.
The family moved to Billings in 1958, where John became extraordinarily successful as an insurance agent. He designed benefit plans which he, along with other agents, marketed to large insurance companies. He was invited twice to deliver presentations on his B.E.S.T. plan (Business Employers Sectional Trust) to the business school at Purdue University. Over the next 22 years he became the top salesman for, and received innumerable awards predominately from, Western Life Insurance Co. and Western States Life. John never officially retired.
While in Miles City, he bought the Custer Club, a local supper club, and entered into his first real estate venture by purchasing two farms. In 1951, John bought a polo ranch in Big Horn, Wyo. That ranch provided an opportunity for John and Mary to entertain current as well as potential business clients. The Barovich ranch was a place where large numbers of family and friends could gather to swim, ride horses, play tennis, fish or simply sit back and enjoy the beauty of the Big Horn mountain country.
For years, piloting his plane was the only way John traveled across the United States. John and Mary, along with another couple, once flew their planes to Cuba during the early years of the revolution. John remarked, when flying low over the Sierras, that they could see evidence of skirmishes below between the Batista and Castro forces.
John's flying experiences were renowned. His numerous flying accidents were usually due to unnecessary risk taking, such as giving his attention to a cribbage game rather than putting down his landing gear in time, and flying low over restricted airspace to avoid radar detection while taking a shortcut home. In spite of it all, people felt "hesitantly" confident about flying with him, thinking that "someone up there" was looking after him. (People had no such optimism about the outcome of being a passenger in his car.) It was during one episode of flying low that he flew through four power lines, shearing off a fuel tip tank and causing a several hour power blackout over eastern Idaho. Actions like jumping fences separating agricultural fields alleviated the boredom of flying long distances. John also tempted fate by not worrying about his fuel supply, making many emergency landings on state highways and military bases where personnel were not pleased to see him land; once, he made an emergency landing on a military runway across which soldiers were shooting rapid fire artillery. After his last airplane crash, the FAA printed a book entitled "This is Your Life John Barovich," comprised of a collection of photographs and articles, as well as accident reports, of every one of his airplane crashes. A special section of the book, "Recommendations," was devoted to listing every flight school in the United States. (It should be noted that at one time both his driver's and flying licenses were revoked simultaneously.) One of the happiest days of wife Mary's life was when John sold his last airplane.
It was also in Billings that he learned to play the game that would define the rest of his life: golf. John won numerous tournaments, competing in the annual State Seniors Tournament until he was 90, far outscoring those in the same senior class who were 30y years his junior. His golf clubs went wherever he did.
Golf was his passion - no doubt he hit more golf balls on a practice range than anyone on the planet. His discipline was such that he practiced every possible day, chipping, putting and hitting his long shots on the driving range. Golf offered him diversion, stress relief and the challenge of competition with himself and against others. It also offered solace, particularly after he lost his beloved wife Mary and daughter Betty. John was practicing his chip shots up until the day before he died.
John was an incredibly generous person. He never failed to support family and friends in time of need. Early in their marriage, he and Mary welcomed into their household some of their own siblings, as well as others who needed a temporary home. Later, he sponsored and housed relatives from Yugoslavia, as well as provided jobs to friends and strangers in need of work, including the youth from the Miles City Pine Hills School for Boys. One of the friends he helped was the recently widowed Bernadine Jovanovich, who became the right arm of his business; Bernie later became a city council member and remained a lifelong friend. Throughout his life John was a driven, fearless, independent man and an inveterate rule breaker and risk taker. He strove always to do better and to be #1. John never gave up. This May, he finally made it to his college graduation when he attended the MSU-Bozeman 2006 graduation ceremonies. There he and fellow classmate, Ken Goering, were honored as the sole representatives of the graduation class of 1936, 70 years after officially receiving their diplomas. It was during these festivities that John addressed the assembled alumni and stated that the best thing he had ever done in his life was to have married the woman he could not let get away 70 years earlier, his wife Mary Stimpson Barovich. In addition to his remaining children (John, Mike, Mary and Marny), seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, John is survived by his sisters Margaret and Luba, and his brothers Mike, Louis and Nick. He is also survived by his constant golf cart and driving companion, (and co-pilot during his last car accident), Nuisance Anne Gilbert. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to the Shriner’s Hospitals for Children or to the charity of one’s choice. Services will be held Friday, June 9, at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, 310 N. 27th St., at 2 p.m. John Barovich was larger than life.
This obituary was originally published in the Billings Gazette.