America’s founders declared the pursuit of happiness to be an unalienable human right, on a par with the right to life itself. Despite an underlying streak of Puritanism, Americans usually accord a measure of tolerance and respect, if sometimes reluctantly, to […]
My family was a hodgepodge of national backgrounds, but my generation (late baby boomer) and our previous two generations were all American-born. My parents grew up in the Depression and were young adults during WWII, so my “American Story” was shaped […]
My great-grandmother, Amelia, was born in 1854 and emigrated from Crewkerne, England, a grimy factory town. It took Amelia’s father three years to earn passage for her mother and two sisters, after he found work […]
My mother grew up on a dairy farm in central California as part of a very close knit Dutch community. My mom’s side of the family has only been in the country since the 1920s where they settled in Minnesota. While my […]
My American Story begins with Swiss emigrants in the mid-1700’s who left their homeland to settle in the fertile farmlands of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When I visited Switzerland, I was amazed at the similarities in barn designs and covered bridges that are […]
A few days after my birth in Florence, Italy, in 1938, my mother read the headline in the Italian newspaper: “The Jews are not of the Italian Race.” An Italian Jew with roots in Ancient Rome, she […]
My mother and father (both Northwestern University graduates) taught vocal music for many years in the Tacoma School District. My mother’s father was an Army Finance Officer; her mother, a professional musician, once saw Mitch Miller play English horn on television and decided that […]
For my parents, America meant opportunity. Individually, they came to the US from Korea in the 1950’s, meeting for the first time in Chicago, and bringing with them their own stories of perseverance and […]
Built in 1902 by my great-grandfather, painted white to keep cool in scorching North Dakota summers, the simple, sturdy farmhouse in this photo has witnessed over a century of history: births, deaths, celebrations, and too many blizzards to count.
When I first saw Waiting at the Station it sure reminded me (quite literally) of something resonant with my own family. The story that follows is what came immediately to mind when PNB announced this project.