Caroline Puskarich Bahr Inducted - San Jose 1982
	Caroline Puskarich Bahr, one of six daughters of Thomas and Mildred Puskarich of Monroeville, Pennsylvania, was born on March 14, 1937.  All of the girls learned to play the tamburitza while living and helping on the family farm.  Caroline went on to college at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and like two of her five sisters, Rose (Husnick) and Marilyn (Repasky), danced, sang, and played tamburitza in the Duquesne University Tamburitzans, during which time she also taught several children's tamburitza groups.  She earned her teaching credential at Duquesne and in 1960 moved to teach in the Los Angeles Public School System.  In 1962 she married Alfred Bahr and they established their home in Mountain View, near San Jose, where they live today.  They have two children, Tom and Anne, both of whom play tamburitza.  Caroline earned a degree as a Registered Nurse at DeAnza College in Cupertino, and is currently engaged in her nursing career at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View.
	But once a tamburitzan, always a tamburitzan, and Caroline missed the playing, singing, and kolo dancing that she had enjoyed in Pennsylvania.  In the early 1960s, tamburitza groups in northern California were few and unstable, yet there are about 20,000 Jugoslavs in the Bay Area.  So in 1965 Caroline gathered a group of fifteen adults who began practicing on instruments imported from Jugoslavia, meeting in various homes and then in a fruit-drying shed on the Sulaver Ranch in Cupertino.  The group progressed to instruments of a higher quality ordered from Pennsylvania.  Shortly thereafter, Caroline organized and began teaching a group of junior tamburitzans and kolo dancers, and although she already had a strenuous schedule, she then organized and began teaching both tamburitza and kolo dancing to smaller children.
	These groups, the Veseli Seljaci Tamburitzans and the Santa Clara Valley Junior Tamburitzans, and the four smaller children's groups, now total nearly 100 members.  Rehearsals now have to take place on three nights of the week to accommodate all of the groups.  For the past 17 years, Caroline has dedicated her time, efforts, and enthusiasm to keep this sizeable undertaking going.  Meanwhile, from Caroline's young people's groups, several new leaders and teachers have developed, both in tamburitza and kolo, so that more teachers can help carry on the work started by this pioneering woman among Jugoslav people of the Santa Clara Valley.  This development of new leaders is one of the most promising and satisfying outcomes of Caroline's 17 years of work.
	The original Veseli Seljaci Tamburitzans has now grown to 22 members and has been presenting its annual concert for 12 years, in addition to playing many church, private, and lodge events in many California cities.  Caroline has also extended the awareness of kolo and tamburitza to the neighboring state of Nevada.  The Veseli Seljaci, under Caroline's leadership, has appeared at three Tamburitza Extravaganzas, and recently performed during the halftime ceremonies at the East/West Shrine football game, along with the Santa Clara Valley Junior Tamburitzans.  The juniors performed at the National Junior Tamburitza Festival in Denver in 1980, the first time a West Coast junior group has ever participated in the festival.  The Veseli Seljaci have recorded three successful records, and the Juniors have just recorded their first disc.  None of this would have been possible without the years of selfless work and devoted enthusiasm of Caroline Puskarich Bahr.
	Caroline's greatest contribution has been to help create in the Santa Clara Valley a more cohesive body of Jugoslavs whose cultural and ethnic awareness was scattered and occasional until she began her tireless work to spread the music of the tamburitza.  She is the unifying force of a new sense of commitment and belonging among the Jugoslav people of the Santa Clara Valley.
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