By Howard Steiner, October 10, 2019 — My mother came from Latvia, a Baltic country. She came to America on a boat with her mother, father, three brothers, and two sisters. They were on the bottom of the boat because they had something called steerage. Steerage was the cheapest way of coming to America and was the part of a ship providing accommodations for passengers with the cheapest tickets. The trip was at least a week to ten days; when my mother finally got to America she went to Ellis Island where all of the immigrants are processed. They processed them for diseases and so that they don’t spread germs in our country. My mother did not speak a word of English. She absorbed English by going to school.
This is how times were back then. My father came here and got a horse and buggy and sold fruit in his neighborhood. My mother, the one thing she was very proud of, she didn’t become a citizen until she was much older, when I was maybe 13-14 years old. My mother was very dedicated to America, she loved America. She wanted my brother and me to be true Americans too, therefore, she never spoke Yiddish in the house. This impacted me and my happiness and success very much because my mom was very smart and wanted us to get a good education. She worked very hard. When I was a little boy I had to go down and get bread and rolls and learn how to work and mend for myself. My mother was such a good influence. The reason they immigrated was because they lived on these concentrated little villages and the Russians would come and as the kids got older they would round up all the kids and take all the boys away. [They] came to America to escape the Russians. Overall, this influence has shaped who I am today and how I learned to be successful and proud as an American citizen.