My mom’s paternal grandfather Leopold Koch came over from Czechoslovakia, where his last name was pronounced with a hard O and a guttural ch. But upon landing in “the new country,” he asked the Ellis Island immigration officer how he’d pronounce […]
Jerome: I never excelled in English. But that changed after spending five weeks at the Miami City Ballet summer program. Luckily, ballet is a universal language, but I still found myself a bit lost outside of the studio.
My parents were proud to be Young Democrats for Kennedy, but I never took my own patriotism very seriously until I landed at the School of American Ballet as a young dancer. The passion Mr. Balanchine exuded for all things […]
I stood in my tightest fifth position as the curtain came up. With the lights out in the pit, the orchestra began to play Vivaldi’s Baroque score and the crescendo of violins rushed over me from behind. Directly in front […]
I stood in my tightest fifth position as the curtain came up. With the lights out in the pit, the orchestra began to play Vivaldi’s Baroque score and the crescendo of violins rushed over me from behind. Directly in front […]
My parents settled in the Central Wisconsin city of Stevens Point, a “college town” with an active and energetic community. I was born and mostly raised in “Point,” as were my younger siblings.
My parents were […]
I think of myself as Californian far more than as American. I realized this identity inclination when I moved to another country a few years ago and was asked many times daily where I was from due to my accent. I […]
The PNB Box Office was the unlikely conduit in sharing a story and documents with me about my namesake and great-Uncle Norbert, a Second Lieutenant in the 522nd Fighter Squadron who died after his plane was shot down by German fighters while defending French soil during WWII.
Norbert,
My parents were born and raised in the Philippines. After they graduated college to become nurses and got married, they wanted to come to America to have a better life and future for us. They wanted their family and children to […]
For my family, America meant opportunity. It meant getting an education and having a better life. In the early 1990s, my mother came to the U.S. from Mexico at the age of 18. She originally came to visit her brothers (my […]
In the eyes of many, America is a symbol of freedom, opportunity, and a more stable way of living. For people like my mother America meant exactly that. At the age of 31 while pregnant […]