ELLIS ISLAND MEETS DELBLOGGOLO

There are few experiences more valuable than when I visit a historic landmark that has to do with this great country of mine. Growing up in Brooklyn, New York and living in a neighborhood filled with immigrants, I never realized how many heroes lived right next to me!

Imagine if you would, moving to a country where you don’t understand the language or culture, a strange place, filled with strange people. How brave would YOU be?

I had the great pleasure of visiting Ellis Island and seeing how it was for an immigrant like my grandfather or grandmother, the ordeal they faced in steerage for two weeks as the ship that carried them across the ocean deposited them in NYC. It could have been Boston or Philadelphia, but NYC was the biggest city to take in the huddled masses, and ancestors were part of that.

The voyage alone was a great ordeal, something I would never want to face, but they did! They are my heroes: they gave me freedom of choice, to pray, and to elect. They gave me a country where I didn’t have to fear the police, army or a tyrant. They gave me my heritage, and said it is Italian, don’t be ashamed of it. They gave me my faith and said don’t forget to use it once in a while, and they gave me this whole beautiful country and said: You are an American, be the proudest.

 

I witnessed the immigrant build this country, some injured from working long hard hours, some tortured trying to provide for their families and working long hours after their jobs were done for the day and they began a night class to become an American citizen, or to better themselves.

America wasn’t always kind to them, sometimes those who were here first took umbrage at anyone who was different, who couldn’t speak the language or was a threat to their job. If you wished to marry someone of another nationality, sometimes that became an issue, and was discouraged by others. But the laws that founded this great nation made it so that they survived for the most part.

GRANDMA FRANCES

As I watched the film on the immigrant experience at Ellis Island, it left me teary eyed, thinking about my blood, my grandparents and uncles and aunts, and how they must have suffered and struggled, and how very dumb we kids were, to never look into the past and appreciate what they did.

But in time, because this country is so great, the opportunities started to come to immigrants and their children, and the immigrant children began to mix, making the greatest country to ever exist.

There is nothing that can compare to the USA, nothing that can do for its citizens what America does. When I look out at the Statue of Liberty, sitting in the harbor, I know she is the mother of all freedoms, and I know that I can never, ever repay my grandparents for what they did for my children and me. my children.

I owe them all my happiness. Thanks you Grandma Frances, Grandpa Joseph and Vito, that you all the immigrants that came here, and still do.