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Rev. Lawrence Siersbeck .. arrived in 1906;t impressionsknow where you were going,” he ;aid with a thick Italian accent.‘My dad never even talkedabout the trip with us.”Pellegrino’s father, a railroad ivorker, had been a regular com-Tiuter between Racine and astrolibero, their small home town in Italy. He bragged he :ould make the entire trip for less than $50.After World War I, however, le decided to bring his family aver, and the Pellegrinos landed n New York on Oct. 30, 1920.“It was late afternoon when ve got there,” said Pellegrino, 1705 24th Ave. “We saw the itatue of Liberty and I asked my lad all kinds of questions aboutt.”He told us it was there for he purpose of showing how peo-le were more free here than in Surope,” he continued. “I never loubted it. I never doubted one word my father said.”The main hall at Ellis Island vas a huge room,” he recalled, where “the few who didn’t makehe grade were put to the side.”/“My father said it was just ough luck for them, they had to »o back to the motherland,” he laid. “We didn’t have any trou-le. We weren’t well-to-do, but ve weren’t what you’d call on elief, either.”They belonged to Mt. Carmel latholic Church and Pellegrino rent to public schools, getting pecial attention because he poke little English. Although he ad completed two years of a ricklaying apprenticeship in lastrolibero (bricklaying was an educated position,” there, e said) Pelligrino had no hance to complete his appren-iceship here. He worked at a ariety of jobs instead, retiring rom the Simmons Mattress Co. fter 31 years.Lawrence SiersbeckThe Rev. Lawrence Siersbeck can recall several vivid images of Ellis Island from the spring of 1906, when he arrived at the immigration center with his family from Denmark.He remembers the large, dark interior of the main building, where he was forced to stand in line for several hours, surrounded by the babble of immigrants from many different countries.He remembers seeing an occasional glimpse of a “normal” person, someone dressed like a Dane. And the semi-retired pastor of St. Mary’s Lutheran Church remembers being poked, prodded and tested by immigration officials before being allowed to go outside with his brothers to wait for his parents on a park bench.“It was a nice April day, sunny and warm,” recalled Siersbeck, 84. “We took our caps off and some people — I don’t know who they were — came by and put money in. They may have felt sorry for us, although we didn’t consider ourselves at all poor.”Too young to be stung by condescension, Siersbeck and his brothers pocketed the money and waited for an “interminable” time until their parents came out. They were going to a farm in upstate New York rented by Siersbeck’s uncle, the man who had catalyzed the big move during a visit to Denmark.Siersbeck graduated from Dana College, a Danish school in Blair, Nebraska, and eventually became a Lutheran minister. He was president of Dana College during World War II and senior pastor of St. Mary's from 1952 to 1968, where he still works part-time.
Newspaper Details
Kenosha News Courier
Kenosha, Wisconsin, US
Wed, Jul 02, 1986
Page 17
Full Page
Clipped by
Uw -.
WI, USA 08 Apr 2019
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