Today would have been my Dad's 96th birthday.
He was born in 1918 and lived 12 years into the 21st Century, passing into eternity in 2012.
Dad was first-generation in the United States, with both parents coming from Sicily. He grew up in a household where Italian was the primary language spoken. From the very beginning he was immersed in two cultures - going to public school where he learned English and the American culture; while having strong roots to the "old country" within his own home, and neighborhood. My grandparents lived in a section of a New Jersey town that was heavily Sicilian.
He was less than a stone's throw away from an Italian baker, and an Italian grocer. His friends were mostly kids of Italian parents who had very recently gone through Ellis Island, which was a tipping point for one of the biggest migrations in human history.
When I moved to New York City as a young adult, one of the first things I did was take the Number One IRT subway to its downtown terminal stop at Battery Park. I got out and took the ferry to Ellis Island. Back then (this was in the mid 1970s) the Island was in a state of disrepair. It was mostly abandoned but you could still walk through some of it under the watchful eye of a park ranger.
I count myself fortunate to have experienced Ellis Island in that state because it made the whole experience very surreal. I remember walking into the Great Hall and looking up at what seemed like a mountainous series of steps. It wasn't too difficult to imagine what my own Grandfather must have felt, decades before, getting off the boat, full of hope yet full of anxiety. The park ranger explained that those steps, along with everything else on the Island, had been built for a reason.
Back when tens of thousands of immigrants came through Ellis Island daily, there would have been doctors stationed at the top of those stairs, carefully looking at each person as they walked up. If a person was slow, or stopped along the way, or got to the top and was breathless, they were marked with a "L" for "lungs" with chalk on the back of their coat, indicating the possibility of an infectious respiratory disease, which would be grounds for quarantine and possibly being sent back to their home country.
Such tests were crude, but they were necessary when there were so many people speaking different languages and of different cultures going through the immigration process, with 99 percent of them not knowing English. Hence they couldn't respond to any questions asked during a typical physical exam.
So my Grandfather went through Ellis Island and passed. So did my Grandmother, a few years later. Eventually my Dad was born into a family that already had a few kids ahead of him.
My Dad, as many children of immigrants, was exceptionally smart and practical. Among the things I inherited from my Dad were:
. an appreciation for education
. an appreciation for following current events
. a respect for the institution of journalism, as the guardian of truth
. a deep sense of humor
. an appreciation for the ironies of life
. a natural empathy for the "underdog"
. a love for social justice
Dad, on your Birthday, I want to say "thank you." I am truly grateful to be one of your children and to have had you as my Dad.
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