27-01-2012, 04:27 AM
Dear Peter,
Thank you for that illuminating and interesting personal history. I was very touched by it because I was the child of two immigrants from Finland (before World War I), and I could relate to much of what you said. In the rural upstate New York area where I grew up and where my parents moved from NYC during the Great Depression, we had neighbors who were Finns, Russians, French, Spanish, Italian, and African-American. And, even one family, not very close, who lived in a very old farmhouse where Major Andre, a spy for the Brittish Army during the American Revolutionary War had spent the night when he was on the way to meet with the British Army and captured later before he reached his destination. Anyway, apparently, the family who lived in that old house were descendants of Matthew Brady who was the photographer famous for his photographs of the US Civil War. One of my grammar school teachers also was a descendant of Matthew Brady. My father had a good friend at work from South America, an Inca Indian, and his family would visit us often. That rural community was like a little United Nations, or a history/geography textbook.
Many immigrants came to the United States to escape oppression, persecution, and to find a better life. My mother sought an operatic career, after singing for Jan Sibelius, the Finnish composer. He encouraged her to go to America because cultural life in Finland under the Russian czars had little to offer. My father came because he had fought against the forces of Baron Von Mannerhein, a former Czarist General in the Russian Army who overthrew the first Finnish independent democratic government. My injured father had been captured and sentenced to be shot by firing squad, but he and his cell mate, also so sentenced, escaped the night before their execution and went to Sweden by fishing boat. From there, my father came to the United States and eventually became a US citizen after he met and married my mother. Incidentally, Baron Von Mannerhein was named the first Fascist in Europe by Historian Samuel Harper, the son of William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago.
Speaking of fascists, I recently found this two-part article submitted to DPF last year by Magda, under the topic "Black Operations". In case you have not seen it, here is the link. I am mentioned in Part 2. (Thanks, Magda)
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...Lie-Part-1
Hank Albarelli's book will be available in April, and is titled "A Secret Order."
Thank you for your life story. I loved it.
Adele
Thank you for that illuminating and interesting personal history. I was very touched by it because I was the child of two immigrants from Finland (before World War I), and I could relate to much of what you said. In the rural upstate New York area where I grew up and where my parents moved from NYC during the Great Depression, we had neighbors who were Finns, Russians, French, Spanish, Italian, and African-American. And, even one family, not very close, who lived in a very old farmhouse where Major Andre, a spy for the Brittish Army during the American Revolutionary War had spent the night when he was on the way to meet with the British Army and captured later before he reached his destination. Anyway, apparently, the family who lived in that old house were descendants of Matthew Brady who was the photographer famous for his photographs of the US Civil War. One of my grammar school teachers also was a descendant of Matthew Brady. My father had a good friend at work from South America, an Inca Indian, and his family would visit us often. That rural community was like a little United Nations, or a history/geography textbook.
Many immigrants came to the United States to escape oppression, persecution, and to find a better life. My mother sought an operatic career, after singing for Jan Sibelius, the Finnish composer. He encouraged her to go to America because cultural life in Finland under the Russian czars had little to offer. My father came because he had fought against the forces of Baron Von Mannerhein, a former Czarist General in the Russian Army who overthrew the first Finnish independent democratic government. My injured father had been captured and sentenced to be shot by firing squad, but he and his cell mate, also so sentenced, escaped the night before their execution and went to Sweden by fishing boat. From there, my father came to the United States and eventually became a US citizen after he met and married my mother. Incidentally, Baron Von Mannerhein was named the first Fascist in Europe by Historian Samuel Harper, the son of William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago.
Speaking of fascists, I recently found this two-part article submitted to DPF last year by Magda, under the topic "Black Operations". In case you have not seen it, here is the link. I am mentioned in Part 2. (Thanks, Magda)
https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/sho...Lie-Part-1
Hank Albarelli's book will be available in April, and is titled "A Secret Order."
Thank you for your life story. I loved it.
Adele