Today, I met a nurse from Millbrae. She helped me with a few medical things. She is very good at what she does. However, that’s not why I am sharing her story; it’s because of her story that I am retelling it.
Her dad was born on USS Cleveland. In 1948, when his mom (the nurse’s grandmother) was coming from China (Canton) to the Bay Area, she had married a Chinese man who enlisted in US Navy. The ship’s captain named the boy Cleveland. Now that’s a real fresh-off-the-boat story.
The nurse’s mother was a third-generation Chinese woman. Her family came to build the railroad. Her grandmother was born in the Bay Area, as was her mother, and so was the nurse I met. So are her brothers, who are engineers.
That’s an American story. Ordinary. And extraordinary. This is yet another immigrant story.
