Ned Payne:  Nedelou Pain

This is a first in a series of stories I hope to share with our  AMERICAN SRBOBRAN readers of our Serbian immigrants from stories my father Milan Karlo, author of EARLY DAYS: Serbian Settlers in America (@ the West) with his wife, Helen Vukovich Karlo, started to research, but were not able to finish before passing away.  During this Corona VID-19, I found so many of their stories just waiting to be told…..

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Come with me on an immigrant safari, a “bear-bare” hunt to learn more about the famous Ned Payne, successful entrepreneur, big game hunter and movie producer from Chicago.  Our story must begin with finding Ned’s father, Cveto Pain, who was born in Banat in1870.  He died in 1944.  Cveto came to America with his wife, Prona Nikolin, also born in Banat, but in 1884.  Cveto worked as a laborer in Philadelphia until 1918 when he decided to move his family back to Banat, right in the middle of WWI.

Our Tarzan-like hero, Nedelou Pain-Nedeljko-NED, was born in 1912.  ALL the Pain children were born in Philadelphia:  Jelena, Vika and Ned.  After several hard years, the family came back to America in 1923, but this time to Chicago where father Cveto worked in the Molding and Building trades. Ned’s mother was an expert in sewing, particularly in pleating, and worked in a sewing factory.  The family lived on Clybourne Avenue, which Ned called “The Avenue of the Serbs.”

The family went back to Banat in 1927 after having bought farm land.  Once back for the second time in Becicheroul, Romania near Timisora, his mother and father never wanted to return to America.  Ned begged his parents to let him come back to America alone if they didn’t want to, which he did at the age of 15 in 1928. (See photo.)  It took him 7 days to travel on the SS MAJESTIC.  

Once in America, Ned stayed with his Aunt Kosa and Uncle Mladen Lazarov, (Norma Nedin’s parents). On 4/13/1932 he petitioned to become a citizen and on 3/6/1935, but because of shifting borders, he had to renounce Carol II, King of Romania in his Oath of Allegiance to the United States.  His name was changed, too, to Nedeljko (Ned) Payne.  Ned got a job in a machine shop where he soon became skilled in machinery.  How he managed to survive and thrive is quite an interesting story.

In an interview with my father, Milan Karlo, Ned said he was lucky to get a job as a janitor in a Fraternal Building for $35 a week and tips.  While working there, Ned helped the boss’s son work out in the gym that was rarely used.  With this experience, he got the idea to open his own gym–called the Mid-City Body Builders and ran it for 9 years until WWII broke out, and then, because of his expertise in machinery–he was conscripted as a shop worker, and after only 90 days, became a foreman with 200 men under his supervision. He worked there until the war ended in 1945.  

Ned’s WWII draft card shows he was born on February 2, 1912 in Temesvar, Austria Hungary, but was living in Chicago, registering on October 16, 1940. His employer was Simon H. Weiss.  He weighed 210 lbs at 5’11” and his next of kin was listed as his uncle, Michael Lazarov.
When he worked as a Hoover Vac Cleaning salesman, he met two men from a Defense plant who told him the Government was selling machines, so he and two men bought the machines, made precision parts for them, and Ned was part owner in business known as the American Machinery Company. 

They soon had a $5 million dollar corporation with 150 skilled laborers in Oak Park, Il.  During this time, Ned’s company made precision parts for rockets and missiles and outboard motors.  He said that Bob Djidich also had a precision factory, but made smaller parts.

Interestingly enough, Ned said his father knew the very famous Peter Zebich, the Serbian strong man.  Cvetko Pain was in the Army with Zebich and used to frequently repeat the story of how Peter Zebich could break a rifle in half.  When Zebich came to America’s Chicagoland, he stunned his admirers, pulling horses and a trolley car with his strength, beating them both. “Zebich toured the whole country and all the Serbs were so proud of him,” Ned said.

Ned went on to say he started his Outdoor and Hunting and Photo Tours in 1954.  He went to Africa and was there for three months when Ernest Hemingway and Bob Rourke were also there.  He took photos of primitive people as well as native animals.  In all, he made 4 trips to Africa, 14 trips to Alaska, and to Australia and India on shooting trips.  Our U.S. Government sponsored him on a trip to India where he made the film “Someone Who Cares.” 

He made many more travelogue films for TV and movie houses.  His well known film “Outdoorsman” ran for three years from 1968-1971.  He made “Trail of the Hunter” with actor Victor Jory in 1969.  At the time of this interview, he was doing a film “Fishing Around the World” in Australia, India, Alaska and Costa Rica on his own.

Ned had a huge collection of animal heads he had collected from all over the world.  He sold some and donated the rest to the then new New Gracanica Monastery in Gray’s Lake, IL.  In his travels, he covered over 100 countries.  He was also a member of Safari International and the Adventurers Club.
He finally sold out his share of the American Machinery Company’s Precision business to his partner and bought a restaurant on the Fox River in McHenry, IL, with someone named Sasha as his Chef.

His photo equipment was phenomenal-2 Ari>flex 16 mm motor driven cameras—also a Hasselbad camera (the kind the astronauts took to outer space)!  Heat was always a problem for his film so he took along a kerosene Servel refrigerator.  He had almost 10,000 feet of film and kept them in cork-lined boxes in the fridge when he was traveling.  Ned says he always loved animals and nature and he was most proud of a picture of a white tailed deer giving birth to twins.

His Alaska trips were memorable—taking photos of Eskimos and animals.  It was always very cold.  He had to wear insulated boots and underwear, but even at 25 below it was comfortable except that the cameras needed special handling.  The cameras needed to be winterized.  He could never bring the camera directly into a room as the lens would fog.  He had to wrap the cameras in a blanket and then let them thaw out slowly.  The planes would bring in food for eating, even though they ate plenty of fish, seal meat and walrus.

When they stalked animals for pictures, they had to stay downwind. Payne stated that his biggest thrill was to get close enough to an animal by stalking and then to capture that picture on film.  His best was a tiger in South Central India.  Animals are afraid of human beings, he said, the only fear they have.  But he did have a hair raising experience in Mozambique when a big hippopotamus came up to the jeep and put his head in the VW.  Ned put his big camera into the Hippo’s mouth, but then, couldn’t get it out.  So the hippo put his huge jaw on the hood of the VW and lifted it.  Scary, but they got out of it when the hippo left.

In 26 years, Ned said he traveled over 1/2 million miles. In Alaska it was by bush planes and dog sleds. In the jungles by jeeps and canoes.  He never lost any film.  He would ship the film in vacuum packed cork-lined boxes to Eastman Kodak when he got to a town with a hotel and a post office. 
Ned had been to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and shot film of black marlin and tiger sharks in 1979.  His felt his best film was on salt water fishing.  He reported that when he finished his “Fishing Around the World” film, it would be time to stop at the age of 70. 

Ned was married from 1935 until he passed to Florence Lust, a divorcee with two sons Gerald and Frederick Hauser, from Monroe, Wisconsin.  He said he never had a dull moment, filming all his life.  He did his own editing of his films and interviewing and tape recording.  A 26 minute film then cost about $18,000, not counting the travel and cost of film.
Ned shared the chairmanship of the Golf Tournament in Mundelein, IL in 1974 and felt that was the very best of all Tournaments.  He loved attending the tournaments whenever he was home.  His obituary states that he died on January 1989 in his Palos Heights, IL home, with his wife, his photographs and his animals.  Florence passed away 2 April, 1993.