One of the few times that John Rukavina saw his dad, Joe, cry was after watching the movie "Flags of our Fathers" about the men who raised the U.S. flag on the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima near the end of World War II.
Joe Rukavina had been at Iwo at the time as a Seabee, a member of the Navy's elite construction battalion whose job it was to build aircraft landing strips and roads.
"At the end of the movie, a woman got up and said, 'This is my dad and he was there.' She put me on the spot so I got up and said, 'My dad was there too.' Everyone started clapping and came over and shook the hands of these two," John Rukavina recalled. "He was an ordinary guy who did extraordinary things with humility."
Joseph Thomas Rukavina died last month after a brief battle with cardio-renal syndrome and congestive heart failure. He was 91.
He left behind a legacy as a father, a teacher, a coach and a veteran who never forgot his Iron Range or his Croatian roots. He was Mr. Ruk to his students at White Bear Lake High School where he taught for 31 years and coached wrestling for 12 years. He was "Deda" to his 13 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
"When I was in school people always said 'You're Joe's kid,'" recalled son Steve. "We didn't appreciate that so much when dad was chaperoning the high school dance. But now we can acknowledge that we were so lucky to be Joe's kid."
Rukavina was born in Virginia, Minn., on Feb. 4, 1922, to Croatian immigrant parents, Thomas and Lucy Rukavina. He grew up in a home where only Croatian was spoken.
After two years at Virginia Junior College, Rukavina served three years in the Navy where he received a commendation for heroism for his duty on Iwo Jima. After the war, Rukavina got undergraduate degrees from the University of Minnesota and St. Thomas and eventually earned a master's degree in education from the U.
