Anna Konatich, the vivacious, religious and hard-working Croatian matriarch of Tony’s Seafood Restaurant in Marshall, died on Oct. 30. She was 92 years old. 

Born on the tiny island of Iz on Feb. 15, 1922, Anna lived in Marshall since 1948. Her home was next door to the family’s bayfront restaurant, where she could be found on most nights it was open. In her later years, she was known for serenading customers with the Croatian version of the happy birthday song. 

“Every time she sang it, it was like she was doing it for the first time,” said Mary Halley, a family friend and the manager of Tony’s.

Spontaneously joining in when live bands would play was one of Anna’s favorite pastimes. “Someone would start playing the accordion and she would go over and start singing at the top of her lungs, just totally uninhibited,” Mary said. “In another life or another time she would have been an entertainer; that personality is very unique in our world—to be that comfortable putting yourself out in the world.”

Anna was born Srecka Anna Maria Sutlovich. Despite being born on a remote fishing village on the other side of the world, she was already an American citizen. Her father, Rudolpho, was part of a wave of European immigrants who emigrated to the United States as a young man. He gained citizenship in 1915, and when Anna’s mother, Stosia, later emigrated from Iz to marry him, she, too, was granted citizenship. The couple went on to have three sons in the United States before Stosia, pregnant with Anna, returned home to raise their daughter in Croatia. 

“I grew up like a princess—like a flower in the pot,” Anna said in a 2013 interview with The Story Shed, an oral history project. “I am the youngest, with three brothers. That’s why I was a princess.”

Iz is located on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea, opposite Italy, and is only seven square miles in area. Many men from her village had followed a similar path as Rudolpho: working on merchant ships and traveling the world until they reached an appealing port. Then they would jump ship, find jobs (often with the assistance of others from their home country), and send money home to their families. 

“We had people in New York City, people in Australia, and people in Canada,” Anna said. “They all gathered their money, and sent it home. That’s how we had electricity—which no other village had.”

The village also boasted other rare amenities, such as sidewalks and, eventually, a doctor who moved there from the mainland. And because Rudolpho had a particularly good job, Anna’s family was a little better off than most of the other families, owning the only cow in town. 

As a young woman, Anna worked as a seamstress. She recounted taking great pleasure in making people clothes they liked; jackets and blouses with zippered pockets hidden in the lining were especially popular. Sometimes the village girls didn’t have enough money, and though Anna said she told them not to worry about it she would often be paid anyway—in fish. 

After World War II, when Anna was 24, she and her mother decided to return to America. They took the second boat from Italy to New York after the war, Anna said. Six women were crammed into the bunk beds of a second-class berth, and the boat never stopped moving until they reached the mouth of the Hudson River. 

Shortly after arriving in 1947, Anna and Stosia moved west to Seattle. It was there Anna reconnected with her future husband, Felix Konatich, her childhood schoolmate on Iz. Felix’s father, Tony, was another of the many Croatians who had come to the United States by jumping ship (in his case in San Francisco) and starting a new life. 

“This area is basically on the same line that Croatia is, so the climate is really similar to what it is over there,” said Anna’s son, John Konatich. “As people came up the coast, if they liked what they saw, they would settle in.”

Tony must have liked what he saw in Marshall. He found a job fishing for Nick Kojich, the founder of Nick’s Cove, who had also emigrated from Croatia. Once Tony had saved enough money, he brought his wife and children to join him in 1937. 

Felix and his father continued to work for Nick and save their earnings. 

It was nearly 10 years later that the family made the trip to the Pacific Northwest to visit family in Portland, and continued on to meet the newly arrived Sutloviches in Seattle, where they heard stories from home. Letters between Anna and Felix followed, and in 1948 Anna moved to Marshall.

Tony’s Restaurant opened the same year that Anna and Felix married, and it meant nonstop work for the young couple. From the beginning, the venture was a partnership—Felix and Tony would fish, Anna would wait tables and cook, and the business was open seven days a week. 

“I used to work up to 18 hours a day,” Anna said last year. “One day I cooked one ton of crab. Do you know how many crabs are in a ton?” 

John said his mother cleaned crabs, shucked oysters and did whatever it took to keep the restaurant open while his dad and granddad were out fishing. “She used to wait all the tables in the main room by herself every day of the week,” he said.

Mary said she would give meals to vagabonds who traveled up and down the highway. “She was very much about giving to those who had less. In the end I think people were her biggest passion and hobby: spending time and talking with people.”

As Anna and Felix’s children—Katharine, John and Antone—grew older, they worked in the restaurant, too. Felix had them standing on stacked Coca-Cola cases and peeling potatoes as early as age 5, Anna said. 

“I remember going out and pulling the net with my granddad when I was 5 or 6 years old,” John said. “He was 75 years old, still pulling nets, catching fish on the bay.”

Religion was also an important part of Anna’s life. She wouldn’t miss a mass if she could help it, and she rang the bell at Saint Helen’s Catholic church in Marshall every Sunday until the church closed its doors.

“If she wasn’t in your sight, she was probably somewhere with her prayer beads,” John said. “Religion was her number one thing, but she didn’t pressure us one way or another. She didn’t push that on anyone.”

Mary said Anna loved to read stories of religious sightings and books on the history of religion. “If there was a shadow on a rock somewhere that looked like Mother Mary. That fascinated her,” she said.

Anna also took care of the church—cleaning it, giving donations and raising support for repairs. But she gave generously in other areas as well; she volunteered at the thrift store in Point Reyes Station, donated to St. Anthony’s soup kitchen in San Francisco, and loved to help the homeless. 

In the early 1980s, Anna and Felix retired, and their sons took over the
restaurant. 

“I was teasing Anna earlier this year that she’s now been retired for as long as she worked,” Mary said. “She and her husband ran it for 33 years.”

In their retirement, the couple began to travel, and they reconnected with their Croatian roots. They bought out Anna’s father’s childhood home on Iz—a 400-year-old building that shares walls with its 600-year-old neighbor. Every year or two, the couple would go back to the island. One year, Mary went with Anna and Katharine. 

“Anna was about 75 at the time, and she was cannon-balling off the pier into the water, and down on the beach in her swimsuit,” Mary said. “She had an incredible energy and youthful vibrancy about her.”

Despite her lifelong connection to Croatia, John said Anna’s heart was in West Marin. “As far as she was concerned, she was from Tomales Bay, and that’s where she wanted to be,” he said. 

Earlier this year, the family was planning a trip to Iz. Anna wasn’t feeling well. “She said if anything happened over there, she wanted to come back here and be buried,” John said.

 

Anna is survived by her children, Katherine (Gene) Haley, John Konatich and Anton Konatich; two grandchildren; and one great-grandchild, and many friends and relatives. Contributions in her memory may be made to St. Anthony’s Foundation Food Kitchen; the Tomales Regional History Center; and Hospice by the Bay.

 

If you want to hear Anna and John talking about her childhood and the history of Tony’s Restaurant, you can listen to an interview with her at http://thestoryshed.com.