Why Are You Here?

I am back in Fort Lee after a week in eastern Florida, two weeks in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and a four day Society for Values in Higher Education conference at Elmhurst College in Chicago. Time away was wonderful:  In Florida my daughters and I visited lots of different beaches, in Maine I listened as my younger daughter asked several different artists about painting techniques. I spent two days working in a stained glass studio, and did lots of kayaking, reading and ocean gazing.

I also have an idea for a project that should keep me writing more regularly.  Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (Random House, 2010) is an engrossing and thorough analysis of the migration of African-Americans from the South to the North and West from 1917 through the 1970s. She recounts the journeys of three people, and surrounds their stories with historical context.  What would make someone leave the home they love for a distant city, without many of the friends and family and without much if any safety net?  Wilkerson tells these stories in ways that name the universal dimensions of migration. It’s beautifully written and uncovers the profound ways in which the Great Migration shaped our nation.

Hence, my idea. Have you ever wondered how the residents of Fort Lee came to live here? There’s the first answer for me: my then husband taught at Columbia and Good Shepherd had an HIV/AIDS program and a congregation interested in spiritual formation; they hired me. But I was born in southern California, coming to New York via study in Boston and marriage. My parents were both born in Seattle, Washington. Their parents were also born in various parts of the United States, but grew up in Seattle. My mother’s grandfathers left Germany with their parents around 1919, and the families slowly migrated West. So did my father’s grandparents, but their families had lived in the United States since before the Revolutionary War—we are somehow related to Patrick Henry. Most of the moves were part of a search for greater economic opportunity. The second answer is a concatenation of various trajectories—love and employment and study and a generations of mobility.  

What made the core of Italian-Americans, whose families have lived in Fort Lee for generations, come here? How do Korean citizens hear about Fort Lee and come here in the 21st century? What brings Russian immigrants here, or Mexicans, or Nigerians, or ?? . . . at School One several years ago we learned of at least 67 different languages spoken in students’ homes. What were some of the opportunities and struggles along the way? I’d like to interview people and share their stories in this blog: how many generations do you have to go back before “your people” entered the U.S.? What was the geographical journey of parents, grandparents, many generations, and one or two stories that illustrate both the need to leave “Home” and the joys and challenges along the way? What does Fort Lee provide that makes it home now? 

I’m going to ask some of my friends first, and then branch out—anyone who’d like to have me share their story can contact me at churchofthegs@verizon.net for an interview that shouldn’t last more than 30 minutes. Over time I hope we’ll see some similarities and differences, and have a better understanding of our neighbors—we’ll see. Watch for the first interview report by the end of the week!