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Living the American Dream
Ted Klarman. Who the heck is that? And in that little box where you put the subject, there was "no subject." Looked like spam that my spam-catcher didn't catch. Someone wanting to help me lose weight, improve my love life, hook me up with a "hot girl" from Outer Insbuckstan, or help me get a bunch of money out of a bank in Nigeria (all they need is my bank account number so they can deposit the loot there). Two clicks of the mouse and it's gone. But I didn't click. Something about the name was familiar. Warily I opened it. And instead of a link to a place I shouldn't go, there was a letter. And it began: Dear Professor Harvey H. Jackson, Today, December 28th, 2007, will be remembered as the day I received one of the best Christmas gifts ever. (OK, I thought, he got the gift, so he is not trying to sell me anything. It continued ...) My name is Thaddeus Klarman, better known to you as Tadeusz Klarman. Yes, I am the Taddy in your op-ed column, "Taddy and Christmas as it should be." Wham! Shazam! "Taddy!" A few weeks ago, without an idea for a Christmas column for the Anniston Star, I reprinted one that was published back in 2004, one that a few of my few fans had mentioned that they enjoyed. "Taddy and Christmas as it should be" was about a Polish refugee boy (Tadeusz "Taddy" Klarman) who with his mother lived in my little south Alabama town for less than a year. He would have left little impression on me had it not been for the story told of how he gave a classmate whose name he drew the gift (a cap-pistol set) that he, himself, wanted most. That, to me, was what Christmas should be. I ended the piece on this note. "I don't know what became of the Klarmans after they left. I hope they lived out the American dream. But I know this, come Christmas, I always think of Taddy." And here he was. Although Grove Hill was long ago and far away, Ted (as he is now known) remembers it as a place of "firsts" - where he first learned our language and customs, owned his first bicycle, had his first newspaper route and such. So, from time to time he goes on the computer and looks up Grove Hill. When he did, he found my column. I learned this when I wrote him. He wrote back and told me that when he and his mother left Grove Hill in the summer of 1952 they went to Detroit so Mrs. Klarman could escape the hot weather and find "Polish people she could associate with." In Detroit they separated for a while - Ted at a Catholic school, his mother caring for an elderly couple - but eventually they were able to rent a place of their own and "life became more normal." In 1956, at the age of 18, Ted joined the U.S. Marines. After leaving the service he became a tool-and-die maker, got his U.S. citizenship and landed a job with Chrysler, where he worked until retiring in 2004. Life had its ups and downs, but now things were up. Married to a "very good Christian woman" and happily settled near Holly, Michigan, north of Detroit, he and his wife attend a nondenominational church nearby, where they are "leaders in DivorceCare ministries" and head a senior-citizen's group called "Young at Heart." And, he added, "after all these years in Michigan, I am still not a Yankee." (A little time in Alabama can do that to some folks.) "There is more to say," Ted concluded, "but I don't want to write a mini-novel." Well, maybe he should. Maybe, with all the controversy surrounding immigration today, someone who came here looking for a home and found one should tell the story to help us remember how immigrants became Americans - tell of how they learned the language and the customs without laws telling them they had to, tell of the work ethic they brought with them (I still marvel at Taddy delivering newspapers he could hardly read), and tell how they became American citizens without forgetting what they once were. Taddy, Ted, came to this country hoping for better than what he left behind. He sought a place to fit in and found it, he adopted America and America adopted him, he served his country, worked hard, weathered problems at home and on the job, and in the end found peace and happiness in retirement. Reading his letter brought back to me the hope I expressed in that first column, the hope that wherever Taddy went, he would "live out the American dream." All things considered, I think he has. Harvey H. Jackson grew up in Grove Hill and is a professor and chairman of the history department at Jacksonville State University. He said Ted Klarman will pay a visit to Grove Hill later this year. E-mail Jackson at :
hjackson@jsucc.jsu.edu
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