Letters submitted by BDN readers are verified by BDN Opinion Page staff. Send your letters to [email protected]
A family story is set at the supper table in an Aroostook County farm kitchen in the mid-1930s. My father — then 7 or 8 — recalls his mother asking, “Ray, have you told the people at the Boundary Line that you’re living in Maine?’ “I don’t believe I ever have,” he replied, looking around at his three U.S. born sons. My father also remembered helping Grampie, who had a sketchy seasonal school attendance until entering the workforce full time at 13, study for the citizenship exam.
Two of those sons survived to adulthood, served in World War II and went to college on the G.I. Bill (an outstanding public investment, though applied with great discrimination in the Jim Crow South). Both had careers in secondary education, eventually earning master’s degrees. Their seven children went through the University of Maine System, earning degrees in engineering and education, as did nigh a dozen so from the next generation … all productive citizens and taxpayers.
But under the sort of draconian policies campaigned on and proposed by Donald Trump, my grandfather would have been deported.
Bo Yerxa
Waldoboro
