When I was an undergraduate at Orono I got to know an ethnic Chinese from Indonesia who was studying papermaking in grad school. He aimed to settle in the United States and, very naturally, wished to retrieve his wife. This involved my father acting as sponsor and arranging for the sale of some diamonds. My father, who had spent eight years in China, was convinced that America’s power and greatness would be guaranteed for a century if the country could annex 60 million of the best and brightest Chinese to our citizenry. So he was happy to oblige and the deal was concluded. When last heard of, Liem had been elected to public office in Oregon.
Fast forward ten years when my elder sister was working in Guam. There she got to know a highly skilled jeweler originally from Taiwan. The firm he worked for went bankrupt, leaving him without employment. So my 12-year-old niece brought him to Maine. My father gave him a job at Frary Wood Turning Company while my mother put out feelers to find him employment suitable to his skills. (The fellow could carve out a perfect coral rosette in less time that it takes me write this column.)
His initial job in my father’s mill was drilling and sawing turnings. Whenever he had a little down-time he’d go out to the lathe room and watch the hands at work. That conforms to the Chinese apprentice tradition. Keep your mouth shut, ask no questions, watch and learn. Thus he promoted himself to higher pay as a lathe-hand. My father had found him a rooming house in Dryden. On his own initiative, despite a poor command of English, he established contact with a blind man in the neighborhood who made a living caning chairs. They struck a deal in which the jeweler cooked and the caner bought the groceries.
In a few months my mother fixed him up with a job at Tiffany’s I assume he prospers still if he’s not retired.
In 1976 I gave a short speech at a banquet celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Steve Gallen’s immigration from Hungary, coupled with his final mortgage payment on a three-million dollar property. He and a friend had escaped to Austria during the 1956 anti-communist uprising. They didn’t know a thing about the United States, so they went in search of the West German embassy. Misdirected, they ended up at the East German Embassy. So they went to the nearby American Embassy to get accurate direction. There they met a journalist who spoke Magyar and he suggested they might want to emigrate to the U.S. They couldn’t see why they would wanted to do that, but the journalist pointed out that the flight over would be free and they could get a free ride back if they chose.
So they caught the plane and found themselves at Camp Kilmer, NJ. Steve recounts how, when the refugees first queued up for breakfast, one man in the line filled his plate with scrambled eggs, causing others in line to loudly condemn his greed. Did he want to bankrupt his hosts!! Before long Steve figured out that the country was a lot richer than he thought possible. Americans bought their eggs is boxes of a dozen, and not singly! Then he found that a factory job paid him enough to pair of shoes inside a week. Best of all, he discovered that in the state of New Jersey citizens of affluent suburbs placed all kinds of perfectly serviceable goods on curbside to be picked up for junk. That proved to be the foundation of his business as a used furniture merchant and all-round wheeler dealer.
About that same time, in the month of January, Tabiri Onuoha Chukunta showed up in my office at college looking for advice. He had recently arrived in this country dressed for a Nigerian winter with $60.00 in his pocket. As if that was not burden enough, he was in chronic pain from a stomach wound suffered while serving as an officer in the Biafran army during the 1968 Civil War. None of this distracted him from his determination to get an education. I helped him out with small sums from time-to-time and have tracked his progress down to the present day.
The whole tale of Tabiri’s assimilation as an American citizen is full of trials and tribulations which would make a lengthy saga. At the beginning of this year I received a copy of the introduction to his dissertation honoring me, among many others, for my very minor role the completion of his graduate studies. To sum up, he has two advanced degrees, is head of security and “risk” management at St. Peter’s Hospital, a huge institution with a 1,300-car parking garage, owns a house in the affluent suburb of East Brunswick and has six children with college degrees. He’s a registered Republican.
Tabiri was the first of an influx of Ibos to Middlesex County College. They formed a tight-knit community and I got to know seven of them well. All but one are now American citizens with advanced degrees in difficult subjects and property. The one exception was incapacitated by a stroke.
Come along another ten years to where I loaned six thousand dollars to a former student who wanted to go into business importing African art. As it turned out a Yoruba artist named Akeem Anishere was among his exports and after Osamah’s sister grew restless with Akeem’s presence in their Bedford Stuyvesant apartment he ended up a guest in my house. After Akeem and Osamah had a falling-out I became his de facto sponsor. (I should explain, Osamah was born Alton Curry in Anniston, Alabama and, in his militant phase, changed his name to Osamah Bin-Hakim. A rather unfortunate choice of first name as it turned out.) In this capacity I acted as ghost-writer for Akeem’s appeal to be accepted as a political refugee.
This makes an interesting story. Akeem has been trained as a painter in London, and I was able to arrange a painting exhibition at the college. But had broad artistic aspirations and spent a lot of time in my detached garage experimenting with sculpture. Among other things he modeled he produced he Bust of Frary Contemplating Undergraduates with the vague aspect of a well-fed, ill-tempered Roman Emperor. I was grateful for the effort, but insufficiently vain to come up with the funds required to cast it in bronze.
After about a year he arranged to apprentice himself to an Italian-American jeweler about a mile up Livingston Avenue. Today Akeem has his own shop and works on commissions from Tiffany, Nordstrom and Nieman-Marcus. The demand for luxury items being slack right now he is busy mastering computer art and animations.
A couple of oddities in his story are worth mentioning. When he was my guest he was a Moslem intent on making a pilgrimage to Meccas but devoted to beer. When he visited me with his American wife two summers ago he was a devout Christian devoted to cranberry juice. Go figure.
My point. Most Americans accept that initiative, independence, flexibility and resourcefulness are distinctive national traits. These are American stories about new American citizens. By contrast, I have a direct American lineage from 1632 but my personal history is one of moving from one established institution to another – a history that could just as well be European or Japanese.
what exactly makes the conversion to christianity worth mentioning? is that what you would expect from any well-behaved, assimilated immigrant?
Thanks John.
It goes to show just how lazy and ungrateful we at home are. We want everything given without doing the work.
I am glad that these guys are doing well. We sometimes forget that Americia is a free country, open to everyone.
After all, was not all our familes imigrates at one time? That is what this country is made of, we are all a mixed breeds. There is no such thing as a Americaian pure breed.
That was a very interesting and, I am sure for many, an enlightening op-ed.
In 1956 when I was about 9 yrs old my father sponsored a Hungarian war refugee and hired him as an upholsterer. I have always hoped that he thrived when he moved on.
I would be interested on your take on, what I consider to be the travesty of, The new State of Maine Republican Party platform.
One wonders whether all the initiative, independence, flexibility, and resourcefulness of John Frary’s mind would have been better spent in his family’s Maine business rather than squandered for 32 years at a junior college in Edison, NJ.
We’ll never know, but we’re still forced to listen.
…and since when did John Frary become pro-immigrant? Charlie Webster would not approve John.
Jonboy, as usual your liberal open mind has caused your brain to escape. This is an article about hard working immigrants who conformed to our society, unlike those today, and all you can do as usual is to bash Christianity. You should become a Christian and find that your outlook will change. You would find yourself being more helpful to society instead of just spewing off at the mouth and doing nothing about anything.
downtown shopper: congratulations. your comment is four sentences long. it contains not a single statement that is reasonable, rational, factual or founded.
my comment was in response to mr. frary’s assertion that the detail in question was “worth mentioning,” however he gave no explanation as to exactly what relevance to his argument it had. if it’s meant as a random aside, so be it, but it can hardly be called “worth mentioning.” unless, his argument, as yours seems to be, is that one must become a christian (your kind) in order to conform to society. as for your helpful synopsis of mr. frary’s article being about “hard working immigrants who conformed to our society, unlike those today,” i have to wonder, do you really believe that there aren’t people like that in our country today? or is this a bit of a slip in which you have revealed your paranoia that all immigrants are illegal mexicans?
while i’m not the least bit surprised that you assume, incorrectly, that i’m not a christian–because i don’t follow glenn beck’s (a mormon) ridiculously extra-biblical definition of one–i’m genuinely astounded that you accuse me of “doing nothing about anything.” on what do you base this assumption? for the record, i currently work 40 hours a week during the day helping homeless adults find employment–a hand up rather than a hand out, you might say. then, i work with homeless or at-risk youth to help them find their way off the streets at night. on weekends, i volunteer. what free time i have left i assure you, i am most likely doing something about something. so put that in your pipe.
furthermore, i have nowhere in this post or anywhere on the bulldog “bashed” christianity. what i may be guilty of “bashing” is the ignorant, misinformed, irrational and completely in opposition to the gospel kind of “christian” that i keep running into here. the kind that puts judgment before love, dismisses compassion, worships wealth, admires empire and is blinded by piety. what i do, i consider damage control. if you would like to have a meaningful discussion about the actual teachings of jesus i would be happy to oblige you.
an oddity worth mentioning (or maybe not): years ago, i had the pleasure of living among immigrants in a migrant workers’ village on the coast of maine. it was apparent that i was the only resident of that village that was working legally in the u.s. however, our religions were more or less the same, and language was no barrier–they were all from ireland. also, you might be surprised to learn how much of maine’s produce is picked and sorted by jamaicans.
Mr. Frary, nice article, you have a very interesting family tree. I dont get what Haszco is blathering on about you “squandering” your time. As far as I am concerned, people can squander what they please, whether it be money, time, whatever, as long as it belongs to them. This is still America right? We can still make our own choices about our own lives right? Its the people in government and socialists who want to squander what belongs to me that I dont like.And jonboy…..I have probably visited almost every town on our coast by land or from a boat and would be very interested to know where this Irish “migrant workers’ village” is? Was there another potato famine lately that we arent aware of? I have my map in hand, please tell all.
steve: this was old orchard beach in 1998 or so. perhaps i shouldn’t have used the word village. this was more of a neighborhood of one-room shacks occupied by as many as six irishmen apiece, all there for the work, rejected from similar arrangements in boston. it was, however, referred to by most of us as “the village.” of course we weren’t picking fruit. but if you’ve spent as much time inland as you have on the coast you should have no problem finding those locations as well.
Steve, Poor Dennis has some sort of Charlie Webster obsession. Hard to see why his name came up otherwise. The question of my “pro-immigrant” beginnings is answered in the article. You might say it’ was hereditary. How odd. As far as I know Dennis never did a thing in his life to help a single immigrant, yet he is supposed to be pro-immigrant just because he’s “liberal.” Clearly my father, a stalwart conservative was clearly pro-immigrant. My brother, more conservative than I, is an expatriate in the Philippines which seems to make him at least pro-emigrant. Another instructive case. Jordan Pine, one of my best former students should fit Dennis’s profile of an anti-immigrant conservative—-U.S. Airborne, a devout Christian and incurably Republican—visited me a couple of summers ago. His wife is a Pakistani-American. and Moslem. Out of respect for her beliefs he observes the dietary restrictions during Ramadan. It please her without offending his beliefs. Poor Dennis just can’t grasp that conservatives are real people living in the real world.
Jonboy has his own strange obsessions. The point about Akeem’s religion worth mentioning is that when he was a Moslem he was devoted to beer. As a Christian he guzzles cranberry juice. For larger point to these stories. Nigerians get a bad rap because of the Intenet swindles, but the characteristic quality of Ibos is that they take education seriously in a way that most Americans do not.
Another thing, who exhibits the traits Americans admire best—initiative, self-reliance, and enterprise—these immigrants or native-born corporate peons like Dennis Haszko?
Mark Ancker. I may submit a platform story to the Bulldog shortly. On the general subject of political ideology, I wonder what you think of socialism. This seems pertinent to the general subject of mainstream opinion since Chellie Pingree is a member of Democratic Socialites of America, an affiliate of the Socialist International.