A Double Golden Anniversary
William and Annamaria Radosevic celebrate 50 years together this year, in marriage and in business.
Both stories start in the 1960s, in a chance meeting to rival a Hollywood movie romance.
After a career in the Navy, Radosevic began collecting Mediterranean art while working for NATO in Naples. He admired the colors, the subject matter, the beauty, the light.
He also came to admire a young Italian woman he met on the beach in the summer of 1965.
He had the use of a small beach house overlooking the blue waters of the Isle of Ischia. When his shift was over in the early afternoon, he traded his work clothes for beach attire and relaxed in the sun on a beach chair, feet elevated on the fence surrounding his house, cold drink in hand. The public beach stretched before him.
One day, he opened his eyes to see a beautiful lady near the fence, children playing about her. He asked her, in Italian, “How are your children?”
“These are not my children,” she answered. “They are my nieces and nephews.”
“Oh, good,” Radosevic remembers thinking.
His Italian was good, and they talked. When Annamaria told him that the next day was her last of vacation, he reacted quickly, asking her where she lived and worked.
Their first date took a few tries. Annamaria’s father was not impressed by this American. “My father did not understand,” Annamaria said, smiling in recollection.
Eventually her father relented.
The love-struck couple married in 1968 and moved back to the United States. Annamaria taught herself English and became a citizen, taking the oath in Baltimore many years ago.
Meanwhile, Radosevic and old shipmate Jim Fletcher considered their future.
In Naples, Radosevic had noticed that he was not the only one to appreciate Mediterranean art. Officers and enlisted men alike bought paintings. So he came up with a plan: Fletcher, who was returning to Italy, would buy oil paintings and send them back as rolled canvases. Radosevic would sell them wholesale in the States.
“My wife and I went up and down the East Coast, with rolled canvases to sell to art galleries,” Radosevic says.
“It was a lot of work,” Annamaria recalls.
The work paid off, and so was born Medart, which as a venture buying, importing and selling Mediterranean paintings has grown into the multi-generational family business Medart Galleries in Dunkirk.
A Growing Family, a Growing Business
In 1979 Medart Galleries opened its first retail location on Andrews Air Force Base, and within a few years was a concessionaire at military bases including Fort Belvoir, Bolling Air Force Base and Fort Meade.
Meanwhile, the family had grown and moved to Calvert County, where son Frank and daughter Teresa attended and graduated from Northern High School. In 1992, Medart moved to the Dunkirk Market Place. In 2012 they relocated down the road to a bigger shop on Town Center Drive.
Radosevic, now 88, and Annamaria, 84, taught their children how to run the business and work together. “Since birth,” Teresa says, they have helped tend the shop after school and on weekends.
Teresa transitioned to full time after graduating from Frostburg State University, where she met and married the late Michael D. Schrodel. “I graduated on Saturday, and I was in the shop the Monday after,” she says.
Today she oversees the retail side of the business and office duties, while Frank does custom framing, an ever-larger part of the business.
Frank also worked at the family business while studying photography at the Corcoran School of Art. In class, he would present his work beautifully matted or even framed, he said. Soon his fellow students were his customers.
When he graduated, Frank, too, went to work full-time at Medart, using his framing skills to grow the business.
“We try to provide the best customer service and the best product,” Frank Radosevic says.
“Our label does not go on back of the frame until it’s perfect,” his father adds.
The Radosevics now have a third generation. Teresa’s daughter Carmen is a freshman at James Madison University. Frank’s daughter Madeline is 14. His nine-year-old son Liam often works in the store alongside his father.
Will they carry on the tradition?
“Nobody’s pushing anyone,” Teresa says.
“We want them to do what they want to do,” Frank adds.
And so it goes for the 50-year-old family business. Babo, as Radosevic’s grandchildren call him, still comes in on Thursdays to receive frame deliveries. And Nona, Annamaria’s name to the grandchildren, makes sure each frame edge is perfect, brush in hand at her own custom-made work bench.