Gunnar Rebne immigrated to the United States from Stor-Elvdal, Norway, a small town of nearly 1,000 where most parents started to teach their children to ski at the age of five. Rebne was a young man who wanted to see what the American Dream was all about, so at the age of 20 he decided to take a boat to ... Read More »
Larry Klein’s grandfather Lazar Kasofsky, born in 1884 in the rural town of Slonim, Russia, was the eldest of seven children in a Jewish family. Late 19th Century Russia was a dangerous place for Jews. In addition, the Russian army conscripted boys at age sixteen, many never to be seen by their families again. With these facts in mind Lazar’s parents, Jacob and Ester Hanna, decided ... Read More »
The apricot trees in Santa Clara Valley have been planted and watered to flourish into a fruitful county. The nutrients of the soil in which these trees were rooted remain plentiful in the legacy of Vincenzo Cortese. In the year 1911, thirteen-year-old Vincenzo Cortese followed his father and older brother to Chicago alongside his mother and sister. The journey from ... Read More »
He wasn’t always San Jose City Councilmember Kansen Chu. When he arrived in the States, he had been Kansen Chu the engineer and then Kansen Chu the waiter. Though he grew up in Taiwan and attended the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology with a major in electrical engineering, his parents and two brothers had followed his uncle to ... Read More »
My grandfather’s father, Hugh Crawford, came to the US from Ireland with his older brother, during the years of massive Irish immigration due to the potato famine. As young men of 16 and 18, they purchased a farm in Ohio with their portion of their family farm. Soon, their parents and younger siblings joined them, selling their farm in Northern ... Read More »
My father was an adventurous scientist and my mother was a modern mother in Japan. They brought our young family over to United States when I was a toddler in 1957 and then back again as a first grader in 1961. By age six, I had crossed the big Pacific Ocean by ship three times! I started elementary school here ... Read More »