Mark,

I'd forgotten about those t-shirts! Tom Bernardin made those also, from a silk screened sketch by another ranger, Joe Craig. They were originally just for those of us who were rangers, but so many visitors saw our shirts and wanted them that he made a lot more. Tom couldn't sell them at the island as a ranger, but I don't remember what he did. Maybe had a friend sell the from a pushcart at the Battery? I remember I had a lot of extras. I still have some around here!

Only 2 percent of those passing through Ellis were deported, a number that is in the neighborhood of 250,000. The total numbers of those processed vary (remember, records were burned for five years of processing) from 12 to 16 million. I think they tend to use the 12 million number now. Many immigrants don't remember their time there, because the average was only a couple of hours.

The stories I could tell! I met some marvelous park visitors with wonderful stories. The first year I worked there the idiocy of the government was such that they said we were invading people's privacy if we collected stories, so they forbade it. On second thought, the next year, it was allowed and encouraged. Typical park service. :-(

Okay, just one story, since I can hear the wheels turning.

A smallish group (~40) arrived on a sunny late spring morning, the first tour of the day, over from New York. In the group was the family of an older gentleman originally from the Ukraine. He was 80, he said, and had been a young man when he passed through Ellis with his brother. He stood about 6' tall, had the tanned skin of a farmer, loads of character in the wrinkles on his trim, healthy face. With a shock of white hair that had once been black like his bushy eyebrows, a chizeled jaw, and a deep resonant voice with a wonderful accent, this man was absolutely charming. On the front steps, before entering the building, we spoke while waiting for the tour to assemble, and I asked if he'd been through Ellis. He had, and we spoke of it briefly.

From there, we walked into the ground floor and I spoke about the process of travelling--what to bring when you had to carry everything, how you most likely got there (steerage), what the shipping lines required, how long it took, etc. Then we walked to the great hall upstairs, and everyone was seated. At this point in my tour, I would normally ask if anyone had any stories to tell the group. But this man spoke right up, asked if he might say something. Even to think of it now brings a shiver up my spine! He told them everything I would, but in the first person! His voice was rich and carried in the room with his mix of good English and a wonderful accent, and he would have been perfect to narrate the story on tape or film. (But this was the time when we weren't allowed to collect stories or names--so many times I kick myself and wish I'd broken that stupid rule and gotten his name!)

The tour group was in tears, even though his story had a happy ending. They'd been delayed downstairs, with a chaulk mark put on his brother's coat. He brushed it off completely, so they were ignored by the officials at the top of the stairs in the Great Hall. It was just so marvelous to have him tell his story, and for all of us that was a tour in a million.

There are many, many equally affecting stories about Ellis. It's part of what Tom wanted to include in his cookbook--he doesn't claim that one can cook all of those dishes, because some of them use such ingredients or methods that they simply aren't made these days. It's the history and traditions people brought with them that are as important as the recipes (but his cardamom cookies are to die for!). And to get more of the story of being an immigrant, because in the end getting through Ellis was the easy part, you might want to visit the Tenement Museum and go on their tour on Orchard Street. I did that last summer, and have to say it was the most amazing place I'd visited in a long time. The building is like a time capsule, closed up for decades, and purchased by the museum before anyone had a chance to touch it. It may well become one of the Manhattan Sites in the NPS, or so I hear tell.

SRS