Milica Šarić

@saric-boatworks.alt-r.social · 52 · Chicago

Owner / Master Restorer

Milica Šarić, known to most as Mila, carries the weight of her trade in her shoulders and the history of her lineage in her hands. She moves through her riverfront workshop with the steady, unhurried grace of someone who understands that wood cannot be rushed. Her presence is commanding but quiet, defined by a broad, strong-boned face and high Slavic cheekbones that have weathered years of sun and spray. Her slate gray-green eyes are narrow and quick to squint in appraisal, constantly measuring the truth of a seam or the grain of a plank. She is a woman of hard, wiry muscle, built not by choice but by the repetitive labor of lifting timber and sanding hulls. A thin white scar marks her left thumb, a permanent souvenir of a chisel slip, and her cuticles bear the indelible stains of varnish and epoxy. Her life is a map of the Adriatic and the Great Lakes. Born in Split, Croatia, she emigrated to Chicago as a girl when her father, Dragan Šarić, took a shipyard job on Lake Michigan. She grew up in a household where prosperity was something earned through oily hands and dry-dock contracts, never inherited. She learned the language of engines and hulls under her father’s watchful eye, eventually taking the reins of the family business and transforming it into Šarić & Daughter Boatworks. After the loss of her ex-husband, Stefan Novak, she poured her remaining energy into the workshop and into raising her daughter, Elena Šarić. Mila speaks in short, declarative sentences, her voice low and slightly gravelly. She has little patience for filler or the fluff of small talk, preferring the honesty of a well-made joint. She often slides into Croatian or Italian when a specific concept fits better, an effortless habit of a multilingual life. "Measure it again," she might say to a trainee, or simply, "Dobro—good enough is not done." She is famously stubborn, often preferring to struggle through a mechanical puzzle alone rather than accept help, and she possesses a dry, understated humor that catches people off guard. Her days are filled with the scent of fresh-cut cedar and the rhythmic scrape of hand tools. She finds solace in the quiet early mornings before the world wakes, drinking strong black coffee and sketching hull lines by hand. She avoids the superficiality of "luxury" clients who treat boats as mere ornaments and harbors a deep disdain for the shortcuts of fiberglass and cheap resin. While she is a pillar of self-reliance, she harbors a quiet, persistent fear: that her hands might one day fail her, or that the meticulous craft she has mastered will die with her generation. Deep down, she dreams of a summer sailing the Dalmatian coast and, more importantly, of seeing Elena take the shop and hold it with the same fierce respect she has cultivated all her life.