ANDRICA, THEODORE (9 Aug. 1900-1 Mar. 1990) chronicled the affairs of Cleveland's diverse ethnic population for 46 years as Nationalities Editor of the CLEVELAND PRESS. Born in Radna, Romania, he emigrated to the United States in 1920. He began writing nationality news for the Canton Daily News before being hired in 1927 by the new editor of the Press, LOUIS B. SELTZER, to cover the same beat in Cleveland. With Seltzer's encouragement, Andrica literally invented the field of "ethnic journalism." Naturalized in 1928, he married Mary P. Patrilla of Cleveland the following year. In pursuit of material for his "Around the World in Cleveland" column, he conversed in 6 languages and claimed to have attended an estimated 14,000 banquets. Affectionately dubbed the "Broken-English Editor" by his colleagues, he promoted a series of All-Nations exhibitions in PUBLIC AUDITORIUM and in 1932 sold Seltzer on the idea of sending him on annual visits to the homelands of their readers. He took thousands of messages, culled from mail-in coupons printed in the Press before his departure, from Clevelanders to their relatives in Central and Eastern Europe. After WORLD WAR II and a year at Harvard in 1943 on a Nieman Fellowship, Andrica resumed his European tours in 1945. Expelled by the Communist government of his native Romania, he chartered a jet liner to fly tons of clothing from Clevelanders to refugee camps in Austria following the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Retiring from the Press in 1973, Andrica edited a Romanian quarterly and authored Romanian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland in 1977.
