The papers that are on the exhibit on the web site are my grandfathers citizenship papers, as he became a citizen of this country and my grandmother's birth certificate. We were asked as students for our final project to choose an event, person, place, and text, which will add to the exhibit. I chose an event that happened during the time of the industrial revolution coming to America.. I chose my grandfather’s papers to show how he was proud to become an American citizen. Like Kracha in the book Out of This Furnace, he left his native homeland in Italy to come to a better place from the poverty and oppression that they left in their countries. He was around when the industrial revolution took place, world war one, little steel strike of thirty-seven and great depression. I can't imagine how they survived that time in history although they did it. He worked as a painter in Ravenna, Ohio. I can relate to some things that held them back, like World War One, the Great Depression, Little Steel strike, and the ethnic and religious discrimination.

My grandfather's he immigration papers tell  me that his family immigrated from Italy to the United States in the early twentieth century. It was very important to him to become an American citizen on September 9, 1916 at the age of 26. He was a painter by trade and who specialized in painting automobiles. He lost his job during the Great  Depression but found work as a shoemaker.
 

My grandmother, Dorothy Dicola, was born in Italy in 1892 in Pietro, Italy. In 1910, she came to American as young woman indentured to her cousin’s family. She married my grandfather in 1912.  She had seven children and later became an employee of Cleveland Woolin Mill in Ravena. 

The family still practices many of holiday traditions brought by my grandfather and grandmother from Italy. What are the holiday traditions. For example at Christmas, my family always puts nuts and fruit into stocking on Christmas Eve and have a meal with fish and homemade pasta, sausage, root beer, and wine. My aunts and I, especially remember the fresh bread coming out of the oven and watching the butter melt on the warm bread.

What my grandfather’s immigration and naturalization papers represent to me that immigrants survived difficult conditions in order to live the American dream. I feel that his life, and that of other immigrants, is an often untold part of  our local history. It represents the strict rules under which immigrants came to this country and why it was important event that he became a citizen of the United States of America. Grandpa’s immigration papers are like me getting a college degree at 55 years of age: how proud he must have been.

I would like to dedicate this exhibit to you, grandpa, for becoming a citizen of the United States.