Alex N. Dragnich

DRAGNICH, Alex N. Alex Dragnich, 97, a retired professor of political science, died August 10, 2009 in Maryland. Prof. Dragnich joined Vanderbilt University in Nashville in 1950, retiring in 1978 after having been Chairman of the Political Science Department, President of the Southern Political Science Association, Vice-President of the American Political Science Association, a visiting professor at the US Naval War College, and elected to Who's Who in America during the 1960s. Following research and lecturing at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, CA, and Washington & Lee University in Virginia, he retired briefly in Spokane before moving to Charlottesville, VA, and then to the Washington, DC area where he continued to author books, journal articles and Op-Eds until a few months before he died. Among his eleven books, Prof. Dragnich was the original author of the textbook, Major European Governments (1961), which is still used worldwide forty-eight years and nine editions later. He wrote several books on Yugoslavia and Serbia, including a short monograph in 1992 for general readers that went through multiple printings as the Balkans erupted into conflict. A frequent panelist at Washington policy gatherings, Prof. Dragnich also appeared on the MacNeil/Leher News Hour. The Serbian Government awarded him the "Yugoslav Star, First Class" in 2002 in recognition of his efforts to foster a positive image of Yugoslavia and Serbia in the United States. The son of Serbian immigrants from Montenegro, Prof. Dragnich was born in 1912 on his parents' homestead outside Republic, Washington. When he was nine, the Ferry County truant officer found their log cabin in the mountains and informed his father that education was compulsory in America. He and two siblings entered a one-room, rural schoolhouse not knowing a word of English, the first of their kin to ever sit in a classroom. Although his education was frequently interrupted by Depression-era poverty, including an entire year spent cutting logs and building roads during college, he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Washington in 1938, and completed work on his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley in 1942 (wartime service delayed his Ph.D. until 1945). A keen gardener whose belief in homegrown vegetables reflected his farming roots, Prof. Dragnich left the tending of flowers to his wife, Adele, who died in 2000. Survivors include two children, Alix Sandra Lombardo of New York City, and George Dragnich of Geneva, Switzerland, and three grandchildren, Marisa, Paul, and Alexander. His ashes will be interred in the Republic Cemetery with those of his late wife and a son, Paul, who predeceased him.