Celebrating Our Ethnic Pride

Haralambos was only fifteen when he left his native Greece. He hugged his widowed mother assuming he would never see her again. As it turned out, he never did. Making his way from his small mountain village to the big city of Athens, he boarded a ship bound for America.

Tears filled Haralambos’ eyes as the boat that carried him and all his earthly belongings approached the harbor of New York City. A miniature silhouette on the horizon gradually became the colossal image of a woman holding a torch. The seeds of imagination began to germinate in this young immigrant’s heart. Though homesick and missing his family in Greece, Haralambos reached his destination, a nation of people who were free to pursue whatever they dreamed possible. His new identity celebrated what his adopted country promised. AMER  I  CAN.“If I can dream it,” he thought, “then I can!”

Within weeks Haralambos discovered that “the land of the free and the home of the brave” was not the Garden of Eden. He learned firsthand that democracy did not preclude prejudice. His dark complexion and broken English were not a popular combination in 1907. In spite of his ready smile and willingness to work, he was branded an outsider. The pain of rejection began to penetrate a heart already pining for the familiar coastline of the Mediterranean Sea.

Thinking that an American name might better his chances at acceptance, Haralambos abandoned his Greek name in exchange for one that sounded less ethnic.  He started calling himself Harry. And although his experience of prejudice continued, the young immigrant proudly persisted at making his way. Within a few years Harry met and married a young woman from Virginia by the name of Margaret. Together they raised a family of six kids near the Spaulding Mission in northern Idaho.

I know this story quite well because Haralambos was my paternal grandfather. Haralambos Athanasius Asimakoupoulos, the proud American, became Harry Kenneth Smith. He claimed a new name, but he never lost his love of his homeland or his ancestry.

On a hot August day in 1957, my Greek immigrant grandfather succumbed to a heart attack at home and died. As a five-year-old I, Greg Smith, stood at his grave where a granite marker calls attention to the final resting place of the patriarch of the Smith clan. I grieved for someone who I didn’t get to know as much as I would liked to have. How I would have loved to hear from his lips what it was like to grow up in Greece. How I would have loved to hear what it was like coming to America.

On another hot August day, twelve years later, I stood with my parents and my brother before a Superior Court Judge at the Chelan County Courthouse. Proud of his Greek heritage and not wanting it to be lost, my father petitioned the court to have our family name changed from Smith to Asimakoupoulos. 

This past week marked the fifty-sixth anniversary of that legal action. As I began my senior year at Wenatchee High School, I had a new identity. I have referred to that milestone in our family’s life many times. But this year, as we anticipate the 250th anniversary of our nation’s birth, I am reflecting on my dad’s action in 1969 from a new perspective.  Mindful of the debt we owe to immigrants like my grandfather, it is appropriate that we embrace our ethnic diversity as Americans and celebrate our roots with pride. Recognizing the hardships and prejudice many of our ancestors faced, we would do well to honor their sacrifices by saluting their countries of origin.

While politicians debate open and closed borders and disagree on what constitutes legal avenues to citizenship, the place of immigrants in the American tapestry is without question. May Liberty’s torch, that welcomed my grandfather a century ago, continue to light our way forward as a nation as we seek to be a place of refuge for those desiring a better life.

The Christian Gospel, that I have articulated as a pastor for the past five decades, celebrates the fact that the family of God consists of all ethnicities. Our heritage as an American people celebrates the same.