In 1946, newly returned from serving in southeast Asia in World War II, a Swedish farmboy from a northeastern Nebraska town of roughly a thousand people married a 20 year old Bostonian, daughter of Greek immigrants. They settled about two hours south of that small Nebraska town in Lincoln, where the man took a job with the railroad—a job he held for nearly 40 years. Two sons came in rapid succession, one in 1947 and another in 1948. Then nine years later a daughter came. Out of this remarkably unlikely and deeply American union, a family was made.
I am the recipient of that story, being the grandchild of Bertil Clifford Fredstrom, the eighth child and sixth son of Swedish Lutheran immigrants who spent their lives as tenant farmers, and Marie Panosopoulos—a woman I only knew in her final years as "Grandma Mary" and who was her parents' only child that survived into adulthood. We have a painting of Marie's father, Constantine, who came to America as an immigrant and then fought for her in World War I. You can see it at the top of this page. He is even wearing the jacket that many American soldiers wore while serving overseas in that war that failed to end all wars.
It never seemed odd to me, as a kid, to think of them together. I had no memory of Bert, who died before I turned two, but the pictures I saw of them seemed obvious to my eyes and all my memories of Mary are lovely. Why wouldn't they be together? It would never have occurred to me to consider it.
Yet it is enormously unlikely: In the first place, Swedes and Greeks didn't often have occasion to meet prior to their mass arrival in America during the Ellis Island immigration era when both Bert and Marie's parents arrived here. In the second place, Bert was raised Lutheran and Marie was Greek Orthodox. Her father, my great grandfather, was a cantor in his parish. After marrying they both ended up leaving their childhood churches and became members at a small Christian and Missionary Alliance congregation in northeast Lincoln. Third, there was some small amount of prejudice that might have separated them even in the American context—Greeks, though generally more welcomed than other peoples of the Mediterranean world have been, still were not regarded as altogether American when they first arrived. One of my grandfather's brothers once referred to my grandmother's father as a "pagan," in fact. Moreover, if one thinks in racial terms, the Greeks were a good example of a people whose "whiteness" was sometimes in doubt.
There are, then, any number of reasons the relationship ought never to have happened or ought never to have worked. And yet 43 years of marriage, three children, and six grandchildren attest to the fact that it did, to say nothing of the countless children who attended in-home Bible clubs led by my grandmother. Indeed, nearly 80 years after Bert and Marie settled in their northeast Lincoln neighborhood our family can still be found there.
This happened, first of all, because of the providence of God, obviously. But the means through which God's providence worked, in this particular case, are quite obviously the radical ideas that underpin American life and tradition—the idea that one can become American, that the opportunities available to Americans can be available to anyone who would become American, and that in America things that might never have happened in "the old country," as it were can happen all the time.
Though this is the most obvious and essential way my life is unimaginable without those ideas, it is not the only way. There are relatively small, ordinary examples I can readily think of as well. Our family's mechanic is a man who I sometimes describe to people as "Vietnamese Trad Catholic Ron Swanson." He loves people, he loves being generous, he loves using his considerable ability as a mechanic to help poor or disadvantaged people, and he loves Our Lord. He also detests big government and big business, and reserves a special well of hatred for credit card companies.
If you try to pay with a credit card he will ask you for cash or check, not because it saves him money but because he hates credit card companies and doesn't want them to get any more money than they already have, which, in his judgment, is already too much. The first time I attempted to pay with a card he put his hand up and asked if we could pay cash. I said yes, but that I didn't have that much on me and this was easier. "No!" he replied. "Don't give them money. Here is your key. Drive to the bank, get cash, and pay me that way. They don't need the money." If you visit his small, modest shop, staffed only by him and one other mechanic, you'll hear Ben Shapiro on the radio, see a clientele consisting almost entirely of immigrants (many of whom he helps at a significant discount or even for free, I'm told), and on the wall you'll find a papal blessing from Pope Benedict XVI.
Only a few months ago he saved our family over $2000 on repairs relative to what a larger chain autoshop wanted to charge us. He even threw in free brake pads and rotors with the work since he already had everything off the vehicle he needed to access the pads and rotors and, while they weren't in terrible shape, they would, he said, need replacing eventually. So he just did it and didn't charge us any extra.
Men like that are a credit to their community and they make that community stronger, healthier, more generous, and simply better. And, perhaps to bring it full circle: He came from the same part of the world that my Swedish grandfather had been in while serving abroad in the US army. Thus the grandson of a US armed servicemen comes to receive aid and blessing from a man whose own ancestors may well have met my grandfather—or other men like him, and perhaps not under altogether friendly circumstances. That is made possible because of those same American ideas.
Another example: Just yesterday my parents and I got lunch at a Salvadoran food truck in their neighborhood. The owner recently became a US citizen. This is how the business announced it on Facebook:
Over Memorial Day week Mario became a Citizen! After 30 years in the making and working hard in this country he finally received his greatest ambition! Mario has that story where he left what was his home and came here with nothing but a backpack with clothes and some change in his pocket. He built a whole life and family in Nebraska and now runs Anna's Pupusas.
He can finally call this place his country and now his home!
The American Dream is very much alive!
So this man left his old home, came here with virtually nothing, worked and worked and worked for three decades, and now he owns his own business. Incidentally, that business is in the same northeast Lincoln neighborhood my grandparents came to nearly 80 years ago. The neighborhood that welcomed the descendants of Swedes and Greeks who dreamt of what might be possible in America now welcomes Salvadorans.
When my mom congratulated him on his news he smiled and said "thank you." Then he pointed at the American flag he now had flying from the window of the food truck: "Now I can fly my new country's flag at my business," he said.
Or, still another example, the one nearest to my own heart, I think: Most mornings in the summer and on weekends and most afternoons after school during the school year we will at some point hear a knock at our back door. It will be our neighbor's son, who is best friends with our oldest son.
Our neighbors are Afro-American and we, obviously, are white. Yet our son has no memory of any time in his life when he and our neighbor's son were not best friends. They have been close for the entirety of their remembered lives. Given the especially horrific history of Afro-Americans in the US, which represents one of our nation's greatest betrayal of its professed values, it is no small thing that today it is quite ordinary for a young Afro-American boy to knock at our door so he can play with his white best friend. And it is no small thing that their children are fully welcome in our home (once the dad came over to retrieve his kids and when he knocked on our door it was one of his own children who came to the door and answered) and ours are similarly welcome in theirs.
America is certainly an imperfect country. Indeed the twin sins of our history of racial injustice and our disregard for the unborn cry out to heaven for judgment. There is much in our story to repent of and much to lament.
Yet our sins are not the totality of who we are. As with all nations and peoples, our legacy is a mixture of beauty and horror. But also ours is unique, in as much as we are first and foremost a nation built not on ethnicity, but on an idea. That unique notion, that a nation could be defined by common objects of love that are not determined by ethnic group or cultural identity but might actually transcend ethnicity and culture, is a remarkable thing. Indeed, in terms of the natural goods I experience in this world virtually all of them are downstream from that idea.
It is for that reason that I celebrate the 4th of July, remembering the dream that was America—a republic of laws, not of men, a still unfinished symphony, where Swedish farmboys can marry big city Greeks, where Vietnamese immigrants can give their skill and time away for the betterment of whole neighborhoods, where Salvadorans can build a new life and new businesses and happily embrace the same flag my great-grandparents first saw flying in New York Harbor, where Black and white boys can join together in indissoluble bonds of friendship forged around the memories of childhood and shared joys.
It is not a perfect place, but it is my home.
We have become American because we could.
Long may it continue.
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