Mr. Totio Djoubrailov

Totio Hristov Djoubrailov passed away peacefully on September 12, 2023, with his two sons by his side.

Totio was born on April 2, 1941 in Aprilovo, a tiny village in the mountains of central Bulgaria. For secondary school he moved to Gabrovo, a nearby town, where his strength and tenacity earned him recognition as a promising track and field athlete. Totio’s favorite discipline was shot put in which he won numerous competitions and became a national champion. In the army he was trained as an operator/driver of a T-34 tank but was transferred to the military athlete’s team where he suffered a knee injury which ended his competitive career.

Totio was admitted to study in the capital city of Sofia and earned a bachelor’s degree in Engineering and Systems Automation. Upon graduation he moved to the coastal city of Burgas where he worked as an automation engineer at the Neftohim oil refinery. In 1969, Totio was accepted into a professional development program in London, United Kingdom. He lived in London for a year while training in advanced machine automation. In the early 1970s, Totio decided to return to academia and pursue a PhD. He spent a semester at the Moscow State University as a researcher in the computer science department. It was in Moscow where Totio’s love for computers and ice cream were born.

After defending his dissertation, he became an associate professor at the University of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy in Sofia where he taught for the next two decades. His academic career combined his passion for technology, innovation and teaching. He authored numerous textbooks, attended international conferences and spent a year in Copenhagen, Denmark as part of an academic exchange program. Twenty years after his first visit to the United Kingdom, in 1989 Totio was invited back to London to lecture as a visiting professor of Computer Science.

During the 1990s, Totio helped Keppel FELS, a Singaporean shipbuilding company, open its very first engineering office in Eastern Europe. What followed was a decade of economic and political turmoil subsequent to the collapse of the communist regime. Instead of riding out his tenure into retirement Totio embarked on a new adventure. In December of 1999, together with his family, at the age of 58 he arrived at Dulles Airport as a new immigrant pursing the American Dream. The next several years he worked his way up; first he started as a building attendant and a security guard then he found a job as an IT contractor and ultimately landed a permanent job as a Database Administrator for Nextel/Sprint.

Throughout his life journey Totio’s greatest gifts were his humble intelligence, endless energy, perpetual perseverance and most sincere and gentle love for his family.

Totio loved music, enjoyed nature, and found joy in the simplest and purest things in life; he was warm, charming and authentic. He would never say no to a chocolate cookie or a cup of ice cream and his wit and sense of humor would inevitably bring a smile on the faces of people around him.

Totio is survived by his life-long soulmate and wife of 55 years, his two sons, three grandsons and two granddaughters.

Service will take place at 11 am on September 20th, 2023 at Saint Luke Serbian Orthodox Church, McLean, VA.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests those who wish to express sympathy to consider making a donation to The Bulgarian-American Society (BAS), a non-profit humanitarian organization founded in 1991 in Washington DC. Donations can be made via Zelle at jploetz@bulgarianamericansociety.org or via Venmo to Rod Moore (Treasurer) at @balkanrod