Local Immigrants and Descendents of Immigrants Share Oral Histories

Oregon Reads 2009

Cedar Mill Community Library has posted its first oral history project podcast. Podcasts will be updated weekly.

These interviews on the immigration experienceties in with the Oregon’s sesquicentennial and the statewide Oregon Reads project. They will be added to the library’s permanent local history collection.

The Oregon Reads project encourages Oregonians to read Stubborn Twig, Bat 6, or Apples to Oregon—books with an immigrant theme.

Community members who have immigrated, or have family members who immigrated, were invited to share their stories. Under the direction of Sunset High School history teacher Matt Hiefield, students interviewed and recorded the participants’ stories.

Cedar Mill librarian Mark Richardson then edited and posted the stories as podcasts on the library’s website.

The response has been very positive.

The library anticipates a gradual roll-out, posting one oral history per week on the website over the next two months.

Following is a brief biography on the first nine participants.

Gloria Rivera: I was born in the Philippines in 1947 and came to the U.S. in 1973. I attended school in the Philippines through college, graduating from the Far Eastern University in Manila with a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing. I taught in a newly opened nursing school in my hometown of San Fernando, La Union, Philippines. In the U.S., I have worked as a neonatal nurse in the NICU at Legacy Emanuel Hospital for 33 years. My husband and I have built our beach house in the Philippines and are excited to spend time there during our retirement years.

Wayne Hess: I am a 74-year-old retired CPA and have spent much of my retirement years building houses with Habitat for Humanity in Guatemala. Both of my parents were descended from Oregon pioneers who immigrated from Switzerland and Germany in the 19th century. My grandfather’s farm bordered on the land now occupied by Sunset High School. Another relative of my great grandmother donated land for the first school in the Tualatin Valley.

Kathy Foldes: My parents both emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary to escape Hitler in 1939. My mother wrote a short story about how she and her family were able to get a tourist visa for her by pretending her family was wealthy. She was 15 when she came and never saw her parents again. My father came at age 18 with his mother. They were able to qualify under the Czech quota which was larger than the Hungarian quota because the town where my grandmother was born had been in that country at the time she was born there. My grandfather didn’t immigrate with them but he survived the war which is also an interesting story. My parents both lived in New York City after they landed there and met the next year at a poetry reading at the Hungarian Club. My father was able to expedite getting his US citizenship by enlisting in the army. He married my mother and left to fight the next week and didn’t see her for 2 and a half years.

Jim Tsugawa: I am Japanese, a native American, born in Hillsboro, OR. I attended David Hill and Chapman Grade Schools until the internment of all Japanese citizens in 1942. I was in Boise, ID 1943-46. After the war I came to Cedar Mill and attended Lewis & Clark College. I served in the U.S. army 1951–1953. Attended OSU 1955-1962 and took up my long-time career in dentistry. I retired in 1996.

Sitcho Karste: I am a Tibetan and currently live with my family in Bethany. I came to the U.S. in June of 1993 via India, where my parents had escaped from Tibet in 1965. I was one of 1,000 Tibetans who were accepted to the U.S. under a program by President George Bush, Sr. We were chosen by lottery and I was picked, but my husband and daughter had to stay behind. They finally joined me in the U.S. in 1998.

Rosemary Mead: My ancestors came across the plains in 1852 in 2 covered wagons. Along the way, the parents died but the children continued on. One of those children became my grandmother. I am 90 years old and would love to share some of the story my grandmother told.

Dolores Fallon: My great grandparents were Thomas and Ann (McGlone) Leahy. They came to Portland, OR sometime before 1863 with a brother, Dennis Leahy. The Washington County property the Leahy’s purchased in 1865 was first given to two children of a deceased Private in the Captain Thompson Company of the Oregon Militia Cayuse War. It was sold to two different families between the years 1860–1865 before the Leahy’s bought the land. Another set of my great grandparents came from Ireland in the mid-19th century, travelling around Cape Horn into San Francisco and continuing on to the “gold country,” Calaveras County California, in the year 1853.

Eva-Maria Muecke: I was born and raised in a small village in West Germany. After I completed 10th grade (age 17), I completed an apprenticeship in the hotel business and subsequently worked in restaurants and hotels in Germany, Switzerland, and California. While in California, I met my now ex-husband, got married and started my college education. I have a BA in Biology and a PhD in Zoology and teach at Pacific University. Coming to the US clearly changed my life’s trajectory because I would not have had the opportunities I encountered here in Germany.

Julie Dennis: My father-in-law arrived in the United States from Poland at the age of 12, coming with his 14-yr old brother and mother, to rejoin the father he had never seen. His mother was a truly courageous woman who was determined to make a better life for her children even though it meant that one child (her 18 yr-old daughter) was rejected at Ellis Island for TB and forced to return to Poland alone.