Most of us take our American citizenship for granted. Others, not so much!
As we waved our flags at our community’s 4th of July parade last Thursday, we heard this interesting saga.
For Mathews resident Elena Siddall, it was a long and circuitous venture starting in 1945 when she was just a 3½-year-old toddler spirited away from her home in Latvia to escape invading Russian troops. After spending nearly five years in various camps for Displaced Persons around Europe, her family was brought to America to a sponsoring family in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley. Her parents quickly became U.S. citizens once they qualified, but the rest of the family was erroneously told they needed to get their own citizenships.
During high school Elena went through a citizenship proceeding, but due to some “snafu,” she did not get her papers. Again, as a freshman at Mary Washington College, Elena went to Washington, D.C., to be naturalized but, only days after having been feted for her new citizenship status by her dormitory friends, she was notified that because the wrong oath was administered and that, she still was not yet a citizen.
Elena’s sister, who was going to graduate in the fall, was eager to have Elena accompany her to Europe before school started. To earn money for the trip, Elena took off for far-away Cape Cod where waitressing paid well, but she didn’t confess to her sister that she still only had her green card, not the citizenship documents necessary to get a passport for their trip. Elena so wanted to join her sister, but the chances of her getting properly documented were getting slimmer.
Amazingly, an envelope, forwarded to her from her father in Virginia, arrived in Cape Cod at the end of June for Elena. It contained an invitation to take part in a Naturalization Ceremony on the 4th of July at Monticello back in Virginia! It was an answered prayer—if only she could make the 600+ mile trip in so little time!
The manager of Mildred’s Chowder House in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod graciously granted her time off during the busy holiday period and a friend drove her to the Greyhound station in Boston as soon as she got off her shift. With her heart racing, she boarded the next bus headed toward Charlottesville! Elena had gotten acquainted with fellow travelers who created a cheering squad wishing her well after some 20 hours of travel.
When the bus finally arrived in Charlottesville, the driver flagged a cab to take her to Monticello. She arrived with less than an hour to spare to be one of the 39 new American citizens officially conferred citizenship at Monticello that day.
Until Elena saw the flyer from Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello foundation at our Independence Day celebration Thursday, she wasn’t aware that the ceremony she participated in back in 1963 was not only the first Naturalization Ceremony ever held at Monticello, it is likely the oldest Naturalization Ceremony held outside of a courtroom in the United States.
