Central Maine Morning Sentinel, ME
Kennebec Journal, ME
Dec 5 2004
Some pride has nothing to do with fads
I have never understood the pride fad.
The attraction of bumper stickers with statements such as “Proud to
be an Irish-American” (and I am one) escape me. My father’s father
came from Ireland, which makes me half-Irish, of which I am neither
proud nor embarrassed. It is just a fact.
A lot of people identify themselves as “a proud American” or a proud
Hoosier or march to express their pride in being gay, etc. They
insist on being prideful of something that is nothing more than an
accident of birth.
I can understand being proud of an accomplishment, say a baseball
player who is proud of throwing a no-hitter. But someone who is proud
of being, for example, a Red Sox fan has done damn little to earn
that pride. (OK, maybe that is a bad example. Red Sox fans do have
their suffering to point to, but, generally, fandom does not require
much more than a TV and time to spend in front of it.)
But an involuntary glow of pride popped into my head the other day
and really surprised me. I said, to myself, “I’m proud of America.”
It happened on Ellis Island, that former sandbar in New York Harbor
that is now a shrine to the American immigrant.
While there is much shameful in America’s treatment of immigrants,
such as turning a blind eye to many who tried to flee Nazi Germany,
there is also a history of generosity, decency and openness. And a
trip Ellis Island brings it all out, the good and the bad. You can
literally walk into the same rooms that 12 million immigrants entered
from 1887 to 1938, some of them perhaps your grandparents or great
grandparents.
The statistic that got to me was this one: Of those 12 million who
arrived at Ellis Island, only 2 percent were turned away. The main
reasons for rejection were contagious disease or proof that the
immigrant’s passage was paid by a U.S. employer in return for working
here as a virtual indentured slave. Everyone else was accepted, no
matter their country of origin, religion, language, social class,
etc. In fact, most were poor refugees, fleeing famine or political
and religious oppression.
Although their trip over, often in steerage, was harrowing, their
time at Ellis Island was made as quick and comfortable as possible.
Most were processed in five or six hours in a beaux-arts style
building erected just for this purpose and so beautiful it won
international design awards. Yes, the immigrants were herded through
various inspections process, checked for heath and mental capacity
and some had to stay longer if they were deemed seriously ill or
mentally deficient.
Those rejected had the right of review by a Board of Special Inquiry
and five out of every six cases were reversed and allowed into the
country.
Dormitories and hospitals were erected to care for those who were
ill. Some were eventually sent back to their country of origin, but
others were treated, cured and allowed into the country.
Visitors to Ellis Island can see the actual menus served to the
immigrants who had to stay longer. They got three meals a day,
nothing fancy, usually beef stew as the main meal, and Jewish
immigrants were offered a kosher meal.
The main building at Ellis Island is a museum now, with displays of
photos, clothing, artifacts and other items that represent the
experiences of different ethnic groups that made their way through
Ellis Islands.
Two million people a year make the trip via ferry from Battery Park
on the southern tip of Manhattan (the ferry also stops at the Statue
of Liberty). The wait for a ferry is often two hours or more, but
that does not dissuade many. Odds are that many of those in line are
descendants of immigrants who came here through Ellis Island. The
museum records show that more than 100 million Americans “trace their
ancestry … to a man, women or child whose name passed from a
steamship manifest sheet to an inspector’s record book in the great
Registry Room at Ellis Island.”
That included me. My grandmother (on my mother’s side) came through
Ellis Island in 1920, a 21-year-old refugee from Armenia. She walked
those wide steps up the Registry Room, was questioned and inspected
by the strangers in starched white shirts and admitted to the United
States of America. Her finance (also Armenian) was already here and
they were married right away, at Ellis Island.
They moved to Dover, N.H., and had six children. Shortly after the
sixth was born, her husband died and she raised her kids herself,
surviving the Depression as what we now call a single mother.
Now that is something to be proud of.
John Christie is publisher of the Kennebec Journal and the Morning
Sentinel. He can be reached at [email protected].