Memory Boat

Tell Us a Story

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Name: Roger

Age: 64

Occupation: Record producer, engineer, and owner of Bong Island Sound Recording Studio

THE WORLD IS YOURS

I was working at Digital Services Recording Studio. I started working there in 1986. It was the only state-of-the-art studio between here and Dallas. We had all sorts of cutting edge digital recording equipment, world class microphones, reverbs, and mic preamps.

Anybody who could afford to record there, would. We had the equipment and reputation. So, that’s how I started working with Rap-A-Lot Records. They were just one of the clients. They had their own engineer, but we always had to have somebody from the studio there to be the assistant. To do what needed to be done in the room, because we knew the room.

I don’t remember how it came up, but somehow they learned that I was a bass player. And basically, as soon as they heard me play, they asked me to be on a lot of their records. So I played bass and worked as the room assistant. By that time, I was doing some recording for Rap-A-Lot, and I guess my name got around. From there I started recording and mixing for UGK, Scarface, The Almighty RSO and a few others.

I ended up getting a gold record for my work on Scarface’s “The World Is Yours”. On that, Mike Dean did about 98% of the engineering, and all the mixing. I maybe overdubbed a few vocals. But I did play bass on a couple of things. In between tracks, Scarface would have these minute and a half long “commercials”, and he used one of my original chime diddys. That was my biggest contribution to the record. But I got a gold record out of it, so that was pretty cool.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming next week.

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Name: Marlo

Age: 60

Occupation: Co-host of KPFT’s Open Journal

SOUTH BY DUE EAST

I was a music publisher in Nashville while also managing bands and artists. I worked with punk bands, new wave bands, and country western acts. So I’ve had a lot of experience in the music business. All the acts that I’ve worked with have had one thing in common: they all created original music.

So when I came back to Houston in the late 1990s, to take care of family, I met Guy Schwartz. He’s kind of a force of nature. He’s a musician and band leader with the New Jack Hippies. He introduced me to this internet radio station, Earthwire. It was a cool little performance venue. Very underground. Very hip. If you knew about it, you loved it. It ran 24 hours a day.

Having been in the music business, I looked around at all these great, local talented people and none of them were actually involved in the business side of things. Well, everybody knows about South by Southwest. I was around when it started. I knew the guys who started it. Originally, it was supposed to be a festival where artists got signed. It’s changed into something completely different now and I can’t stand it. I got really fed up a few years back when the only two “representatives” of Houston music were a cover band and a country band that no longer lived in Houston. So I figured, why not start our own showcase?

We set it up in a Houston bar. Guy Schwartz rented a video camera and, after the showcase, he took five or six bands over to Earthwire and recorded them on video. It was amazing! There was so much creativity there. We felt like we needed to turn it into an annual showcase. We decided to call it South by Due East. We’ve been doing it nearly 15 years now.

So now, we’re able to give bands, who create their own music, an opportunity to get the type of press kit they need. We make sure they have multitrack recordings and video that they can share online to get bookings. And it’s also part of an archive to really get a snapshot of what the Houston music scene is like in any given year. I can’t tell you how it amazing it feels knowing that our little idea flowered into this multi-day festival.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming next week.

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Name: Guy

Age: 65

Occupation: Musician, Producer, Director

GET READY

I don’t remember how it happened, but when I was 15, this guy came around and hired me and my little band. A three-piece band of 15 year olds. He wanted us to play with a singing group that he was managing. Essentially, to be their backing band.

He picked us up in his Cadillac, took us down to a studio on South Park Boulevard-- which is now Martin Luther King-- and we rehearsed with his group. They were four, young, good-looking black guys in their early 20s. They wore matching suits, sang covers of The Temptations and had matching dance steps.

We played at Ray Barnett’s clubs. Ray had a little more than half a dozen clubs around Houston, including the Cinder Club and the Latin Worlds. He advertised on the radio, and everybody knew about Ray Barnett’s fabulous clubs.

All eight of us would pile into his Cadillac, get to the first club, perform for 12 minutes, get back in and drive off to the next club to perform the same set. These guys loved The Temptations, so we would do their songs. The newest hit was “Cloud Nine”. We’d start off with that, then slow it down for “My Girl”, then finish with the big show stopper, “Get Ready”.

The one that goes: “I never met a girl who made me feel the way that you do, you’re alright. So get ready. Get ready, here I come.”

During “Get Ready” the guys would each have a dance solo. It was the big ending. People just loved it. All the girls went crazy for us. We’d play all seven clubs, then do the whole circuit all over again the next night. Three to four nights a week. $28 dollars a person, per night. Get ready. Get ready.

I learned a lot of lessons during this time, including how to be a professional musician. The main one they kept telling us was to keep playing no matter what. If a fight breaks out, you keep playing. If something goes wrong, you keep playing. It was the most important lesson.

Well one night in Bay City at the Club Astronaut, a fight broke out while we were doing our set. The whole place emptied out, and we kept playing like we’d been told. Three minutes, five minutes, eight minutes. We heard gunshots. We kept playing.

All of the sudden, this man in a green and red plaid suit and a Pork Pie hat came running through the door. He was holding his leg with one hand, and a gun with the other.  He was waving the gun around and bleeding profusely from his leg, and he started running toward the stage. Straight for me. And we’re playing, and he’s yelling something at me. And, remembering what they told us, we kept playing. He’s at me yelling something. We just kept playing. He got right up in front of me. I couldn’t hear him, but I could tell he really wanted to talk to me. So I mustered up all the courage I could, and bent forward and said, “I can’t hear you. What are you saying?”

He waved the gun in my direction and says, “Do y’all know ‘Get Ready’?”

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming next week.

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Name: June Age: 60s Occupation: Retired Sales Manager 

TRAVEL OFTEN

One of the best times of my life was when I married my husband, and we moved to Europe. He’s Swedish, and had been wanting to return to Europe, so a client of my company was able to offer him a job. We moved to England, where I worked as a regional sales manager. The territory I covered included the UK, Ireland, Scandinavia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan. We both love to travel, and living in Europe it was very easy getting around. My husband worked as an airline pilot. Normally, I’d go along with him to his conferences, and he’d come with me to mine. As the chief pilot for a Swedish airline, I’d go with him to a number of international conferences. I had several conferences in Geneva and he’d come with me to those. Normally, right after the conferences, we’d do our own little mini-vacations. These were partially paid for by the company, which made it fun. We had a wonderful time meeting people and seeing how they lived. It’s something that I think more people in the United States should do. It’s quite fun and educational. Because when you travel, you begin to understand that people all over the world are the same. They want the same things that we do. They want a good family. A good job. They just want to be happy. My husband has reminded me, numerous times, that Americans have the least number of stamps in their passports. Of course, I defend my country, because I love the United States. I always remind him that we’re a very large country and it’s a lot more difficult to travel abroad here. Traveling is still very important us. Now that he’s also retired, we usually plan a couple of trips a year. So far, my favorite destination has probably been Monschau, Germany. It’s such a beautiful little town. It looks like something out of a Walt Disney film.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming soon.

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Name: Claudia Age: 63 Occupation: Retired Journalist

HOMECOMING

My mom, Lore Feldman, grew up in the shadow of Adolf Hitler and the hatred he spewed. In 1935, she and other Jewish children in Ulm, Germany were kicked out of exercise clubs, off sports teams and out of swimming pools. In 1936, the same children who were ordered to the back of their classrooms, pelted with rocks on the way to school, were eventually expelled altogether. In 1937, when she was 14, her widowed mother had the wisdom and wherewithal to grab her children and flee to the United States. Mom hated talking about Germany. It seemed the subject was always closed. So when the invitation to attend a synagogue dedication in Ulm arrived in the mail, we all knew there was no way she was going to go. The trip was all-expenses-paid for the city’s Holocaust survivors; it was to be Ulm’s first new temple in 74 years. The old one had been torched during 1938’s Kristallnacht. Then everything changed with a phone call from a beloved niece who was also making the trip. That evening, Mom told me she wanted to take the transAtlantic journey. She wanted to see Ulm and her German relatives one last time. That was when we-- her children, son-in-law, and grandson-- realized, we were all going to Europe. At 89 years old, my mom used a walker and struggled with Parkinson’s. She was fragile. Still, she was able to let her anxiety wash away and gain renewed strength for the journey. When we got off the train and she saw the station from her childhood, she wept. Before the dedication, we visited the Christmas market where we ate foot-long sausages and washed them down with mugs of hot gluhwein. We listened to a lecture from historian Dr. Nicola Wenge. She talked about how Hitler came to power in January 1933. That March, Nazis occupied Ulm’s city hall. That November, some area Jews were arrested and tossed in an early concentration camp. “We do this work,” she said, “so it never happens again.” Several branches of our family came together in Ulm from different corners of the U.S. and Germany. Various combinations of us seemed to have the same feet, or the same wrinkles, or the same love for ridiculous knit caps and cool German shoes. I wouldn’t say that my mom unpacked all the pain after so many years. But she was better after the trip. I think she realized that her many fears about the visit didn’t come true. She had more stamina, more strength, more hope for the future than she thought. When we got back, she actually started talking to us about Germany. And I got the sense that the words no longer burned her throat.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming soon.

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Name: Glenn Age: 64 City: Houston, Texas

LOST AND FOUND IN COLORADO

I was born in Colorado. I was two years old when we moved to New Jersey. My mom was from New Jersey, and my dad was from the wild wooly west of Colorado -- quite a difference. He tried sticking it out in Jersey, but it was no comparison to Colorado. So he gave my mom an ultimatum and said, “I’m moving back to Colorado. Are you coming with me?” She said, “No, and you’re not taking the kids, either.”

I don’t remember any of that. Growing up, all I knew was my mom’s side of the family. And my dad was like a forbidden subject. We weren’t supposed to talk about him.

At some point in elementary school, we had to do a family history thing, where we had to go up to the front of class and tell them what our dads did. I totally freaked out because I had no idea who he was or what he did. I came up with this bullshit story that my dad had been killed in the Korean War, which made no damn sense. The teacher knew right away, but she just let it slide. She knew something was up. Since then, I was always interested in knowing what happened to him.

One of the colleges I went to was in Colorado, in my hometown of Durango, actually. So while I was there, I decided to look up my dad. He used to work right outside of Durango. I went to where he worked and I met a guy there. I asked him if he remembered a guy named Chuck, my dad. He said, “Aww, yeah! For sure!” And for some strange reason, he recognized me immediately and said, “You’re Glenn!”

He gave me my dad’s address. He lived in Lakewood, right outside of Denver. So I wrote him a long, lengthy letter saying how I felt sorry about how things had gone down over the years, profusely saying how I hoped I wasn’t upsetting him with the letter.

Eventually, a couple of weeks later, I got a reply. I couldn’t open it. My roommate came home. I told him I got a letter, but couldn’t open it. So he almost opened it. I said, “No, no” and finally opened it. The first words were, “I just received your most welcome letter.”  

He made arrangements to come down to Durango and visit. He’d gotten remarried. I had a stepmom. They came down. He knocked on the door. And after nearly 25 years of not knowing my dad, the first words out of his mouth were, “Well, Glenn, whatcha been up to?”

It actually was an amazingly good visit. We ended up hanging out a lot. We went fishing, and he told me stories.

At one point, he invited me to move up to Denver and live with him for a while. It was great reconnecting with him.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in 2016. New stories coming soon.

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Name: Merlyn Occupation: Craftsman and Tarot Reader City: Houston

NO ONE EVER REALLY DIES

I was born with Spina Bifida. I’ve had 25 surgeries. The most recent one being earlier this year. Both of my parents were doctors. My mom was a pediatrician. When I was 17, I had yet another set of surgeries. While I was in the hospital, there was this little African American girl. She was in the isolation room. I was in the hospital for a couple of weeks, and the entire time I was there, she never stopped crying. I was told that she had full blown AIDS. This was the summer of 1987. I remember her, one day, sitting right outside the isolation room. One of the nurses came up to me and said, “Don’t go near her. You’ve already got enough problems.” Even then, that just struck me as wrong. Fast forward later that year, I was in my mother’s office when she got the news that that baby had died.A little over a year old. It was the first time I ever saw my mother cry. So from very early on I knew that AIDS wasn’t about your orientation. It wasn’t about guilt or innocence. Once I moved to Houston, and tested positive, I spent a lot of time at Twelve Oaks hospital. Back then, they had particular floors for people with HIV. And going there, I vividly remember there being this crowd of people in the lobby. They were the family members of somebody in the ward. On the same day, this entire family was discovering three things about the person in that hospital: 1) he was gay, 2) he had AIDS, and 3) he would probably not live to see the end of the weekend. And I remember thinking, what kind of screwed up world is it that people have to hide all of these things from their family until they’re about to die? In my own life, I had the irony of finding out that I was positive during a display of the AIDS Quilt at the George R. Brown Convention Center, back in 1995. I was volunteering for the Names Project. I went from volunteering for the quilt, to the clinic where I found out I was HIV positive, right back to volunteering. And I can remember the man telling me, and my virtual lack of reaction to it. In the long term I’ve looked at it as, I’ve survived everything else. I’m not going anywhere yet. But what I struck me most about that day has nothing to do with me. It was about a woman sitting by one of the quilts. A young woman with long hair. She was kind of laying on her hands, looking at one of the quilts. She was there when I left for the clinic. She was there when I got back from the clinic. She was there when the evening ended. And she never stopped crying. Whoever that was on the quilt meant that much to her. And she never stopped. She just kept crying. But I’m an eternal optimist. I survived Spina Bifida and 25 related surgeries. I’m a firm believer that as long as one person remembers you were there, and speaks well of you, you never really die. And I say that thinking of the little baby, whose nickname was Leele Watson, to the person on the quilt in ‘95, to the most recent friend who died of something related to HIV last year. They’re still with us. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: Merlyn does Tarot readings around Montrose in Houston. If you are interested in a reading, contact us at [email protected] for his contact information.

This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming soon.

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Name: Juan Occupation: Data Reviser City: Houston

FAIR TRADE

I think I got on America’s Got Talent because of my personality and charisma. People like seeing me dancing and rollerblading. They come up to me all the time and say, “I love seeing you do your thing on Allen Parkway and Montrose.” You know, I’m not the best rollerblader in the world, but the impact it has on people makes me happy. After my first audition, while filming in New Jersey, the producers told us not to go outside. The fans were waiting outside the studio. I didn’t take them seriously. I went outside and they tore my outfit apart. Seriously, I was almost entirely naked! Everyone wanted a piece, and they nearly pulled it all off of me! But the story I want to tell you is when Nick Cannon came up to me after filming an episode. He said, “I’m going to give the first pair of shoes I ever wore on America’s Got Talent. They gave me a lot of luck and I want you to have them.” I said, “Oh my gosh!” Then he said, “But I want the first rollerblades you wore during the audition.” I said, “Hell no!” He said, “What do you mean? I’m giving you the first pair of shoes I wore on this show. They’re worth thousands of dollars.” After going back and forth, I finally agreed. But you know what? I forgot. I never gave him the rollerblades. So now the people who sponsor me here, the owners of El Tiempo Cantina, want me to donate the rollerblades so they can hang them up at their new restaurant, Laurenzo’s. I just hope Nick Cannon doesn’t go and see them there!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming soon.

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Name: Ellen Cohen Age: 76 Occupation: City of Houston Mayor Pro Tem 

MAKING CANCER HISTORY

I was a young mother of two small children. We were living in my late husband's hometown of Montreal, Canada, when it was discovered that I had breast cancer. I didn’t know what to do. In those days-- back in the 60s-- no one mentioned the word breast in public. No one mentioned the word cancer in public. And certainly, no one talked about breast cancer.

I was born in Cleveland. I didn’t know of one other woman in Cleveland, in Montreal, or the whole of Canada who had ever had breast cancer. I know that’s shocking to young people today. Nowadays everyone knows someone in their family, or a friend, or a mother of a friend who has had breast cancer.

So they did a biopsy and it turned out to be malignant. I was going to have to choose between a radical or a super radical mastectomy. And what shocked me was that I didn’t know of a single person I could talk to about this. To ask their advice on what types of prosthetic devices were available. How to tell my young children. What my relationship with my husband was going to be like afterwards. Would I be able to play the sports I enjoyed.

And so I heard of a program that had been started in New York City by a woman named Teresa Lasser. It was for women who were going through mastectomies. Women who had gone through them would be trained on how to go into a hospital room and talk to patients going through it. I flew to New York about 10 months after my surgery. I was trained by Teresa. I came back to Montreal, went to the Quebec Cancer Society and told them about the program.

I said, “I’ve got a great program for you.”

They said, “Where did you hear about it?”

I said, “New York City.”

They said, “We don’t want any program that was started in the United States.”

Then I went to a meeting of the surgeons. Of course, they were all men. I told them about it and they said, “We don’t want any do-good women in our hospital rooms.”

“And besides,” said one of the surgeons, “losing a breast is no big deal.”

My choice then was: do I just get on with my life, and hope I live long enough to see my kids graduate from elementary school, or do I decide no other woman is going to go through that? And that was probably my first real foray into activism.

Eventually, we got the message out there. We didn’t have emails. It was tough getting the word out. One of my husband’s cousins was a reporter for the newspaper, and she asked if she could do a story on me. I told her everything, and that prompted about 800 letters from women across Canada. We started attracting volunteers. We trained them and they trained other folks. By the time my late husband and I left Montreal, in 1977, the program was going into almost every hospital in the city.

That showed me that if you have a passion, and you really, really care about something, you can get other people excited about it as well.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was originally published in earlier this year. New stories coming soon.

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Name: Ali

Country of Origin: Iraq

Occupation: Director of Refugee Services at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston

THE COUNTRY OF SECOND CHANCES

I was born and raised in the south of Iraq. I’m a mechanical engineer, by degree. After 2003, I started working with the British and American troops in the south of Iraq. I mainly worked as a translator. Because of this affiliation, it was very dangerous and I had to leave. I ended up working with a Czech based nonprofit. We were doing relief and development projects. Again, I was threatened so I had to move to Jordan.

I lived in Jordan for two years. I applied for the refugee program, and came to the US in 2009 as a refugee. I resettled in Houston in April and started working as a caseworker for Interfaith Ministries in June. Then in 2010, I was promoted to Program Director and here you go. The rest is history.

I still have family back in Iraq. The south of Iraq is actually very stable. Much more stable than the rest of the country. I went back to visit after I got my American citizenship in 2015. I got to visit my mom, brother, and sister. Life is better right now. It’s not perfect. It’s definitely going to take more time. But it’s getting better.

I feel as American as anyone who was born and raised here. And I feel as Iraqi as anyone who was born and raised in Iraq. Those are my roots. I was born and raised there. I’m a proud Iraqi-American. But, honestly, I identify as, and feel American. To me, America is an idea. It’s a concept. It’s a way of life. It’s not about the country, or state, or city you you were born in. It’s about American exceptionalism, leading by example, the belief in hard work and family values. And most importantly, it’s a country of second chances. A country of immigrants and refugees. That’s the beauty of the United States. The same laws that apply to someone who was born and raised here, apply to someone who came to this country as a refugee. Which, honestly, you don’t see anywhere else. You don’t see this state of inclusion. We’re different. We’re different colors. We’re from different backgrounds. But we are all Americans.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston brings people of diverse faith traditions together for dialogue, collaboration, and service, as a demonstration of our shared beliefs. Their Refugee Services department acts as one of the five resettlement agencies in the city. For more information visit https://www.imgh.org/.

Part of our series covering refugees and the people and organizations that service them. For this series, we will be covering stories from people over and under the age of 50.

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Name: Ali

Country of Origin: Iraq

Occupation: Director of Refugee Services at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston

THE VETTING AND RESETTLEMENT PROCESS

I think most people don't fully understand the resettlement process. The United States Refugee Assistance Program (USRAP) is in charge of resettling these refugees from different parts of the world. So who is a refugee? A refugee is someone who fled his or her country because of war or persecution due race, religion, nationality, or affiliation to a social or political group.

The process begins when these people leave their country of origin to a country of first asylum. At that moment they become refugees. So to become a refugee you need to flee the borders of your original country.

The first step in establishing your status as a refugee is to register with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the highest U.N. body mandated to work with refugees. At that time there are three solutions for these refugees: 1) Voluntary repatriation. This means you go back to your home country. 2) Integration in the local community, which is the country of first asylum. With the Syrian refugee crisis, when we look at these countries, we’re talking about Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan. These countries are simply saturated with refugees. In Lebanon, one in every four person is a refugees. Because of this, there is a third solution. 3) Resettlement in a third country like the U.S.

Right now, because of what is happening in Syria, we are seeing the largest refugees crisis since World War II.

So once you register with the UNHCR, they refer your case to the USRAP. There, you will go through a lengthy process of 18 to 24 months of intake, interviews, background checks with multiple federal security agencies, and a final in-person interview with a trained U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Officer with the Department of Homeland Security. And at that time, if you are eligible as a refugee, and admissible, and they conclude you don’t pose any threat to the public, you will be granted refugee status and can come to the U.S. Before that, you still have to go through a medical screening and a social orientation.

There are eight federal security agencies involved in the screening of refugees, and six separate background checks. It’s a very lengthy vetting process. Refugees are the most screened, checked, and vetted individuals who come to the United States. More than any other travelers who come here.

So once the refugees have been granted entrance into the United States, the resettlement agencies get their information and we begin our services. We find an apartment, provide basic furniture and house ware, go to the airport and pick up the refugee family with someone who speaks the language. We take them to the apartment and give them an orientation. We process all of their paperwork, register the children in school, give them employment preparation classes, and find them jobs. The goal is that these refugees are self-sufficient within six months from the date of arrival. At Interfaith Ministries, our self-sufficiency rate is more than 90%.

The refugees that come here are very lucky. Every year there are between 120,000 to 140,000 people that are referred by the UNHCR for resettlement in a third country. Last year there were 30 countries participating in this resettlement process. The U.S. historically takes a majority of these refugees. But still, the people who are able to resettle in a third country are very lucky. They make up less than 1% of the total population of refugees worldwide that are in need of resettlement. At any given time, there are roughly 20 million refugees worldwide.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston brings people of diverse faith traditions together for dialogue, collaboration, and service, as a demonstration of our shared beliefs. Their Refugee Services department acts as one of the five resettlement agencies in the city. For more information visit https://www.imgh.org/.

Part of our series covering refugees and the people and organizations that service them. For this series, we will be covering stories from people over and under the age of 50.

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Name: David

Occupation: Self Employed

City: Houston, Texas

THE MACHINIST

I am the child of refugees. My parents came over shortly after the Fall of Saigon and South Vietnam. That was 1975. I was born in 1977. They had a minor detour in Guam, then from Guam they went to Buffalo, New York.

I was born in Titusville, Pennsylvania. It’s an hour south of Erie. Fun fact: Titusville is the first place they struck oil in the United States. My mother couldn’t handle the winters up there, and we got word that Vietnamese refugees were settling in the south. So we came to Houston.

I’m a third generation machinist. My father was a machinist and my grandfather was a machinist. When we were in Pennsylvania, an American family took us in. They essentially became my grandparents. They gave my dad a job doing janitorial work in their machine shop. At one point, my father kind of wandered off and they found him tinkering with one of the machines.  When they saw that he had employable skills, like manufacturing and engineering, they gave him a job doing that.

My parents saved money, and when they came down to Texas, they bought a couple of machines and started their own machine shop. Our first customers were the Vietnamese fishermen. We’d repair parts for their boats. In return, they’d pay us in seafood. My mom would then turn around and sell it to the markets at a profit. So from there we were able to build capital and buy more machines. Simultaneously, the Vietnamese population became a strong workforce in the manufacturing industries in Texas. We’ve been running our company in Houston for over 25 years.

I just celebrated my 40th birthday. I can’t tell you how amazing it is to be able to work with individuals that have known me for longer than I’ve been able to wipe my own ass. It’s really a family business.

I consider myself American. But I also consider myself Vietnamese. It’s not a matter of what comes first. It’s a matter of coexistence. I love my culture. I love my people. That includes both the Vietnamese culture and the American culture.  

America is freedom. Everyone should be able to live their lives and have the opportunities we have here. I’ve had people tell me to, “go back to my country”, even though I was born here. That level of ignorance tells me that some people don’t deserve to be here. It offends me to my core. I want to tell these people that my mother is more American than your mom. My mom stood up in front of a federal judge and said, “I want to be an American. I pledge my allegiance.” I want to ask those people, “What did you do?”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Part of our series covering refugees and the people and organizations that service them. For this series, we will be covering stories from people over and under the age of 50.

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Houston Blog Features Stories of Older Adults, Refugees

Valerie and Mani Nezami's blog 'Memory Boat' was inspired in part by their own immigrant families.

Here’s a link to the radio spot we did earlier today on Texas Standard.

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Name: Lal

Occupation: Artisan with The Community Cloth

Country of Origin: Bhutan

Our dream is the American dream, to earn opportunities, buy a house, and have a better future for our kids. (Lal lived in a refugee camp in Nepal for 20 years. She resettled in the United States in 2012.)

EDITOR’S NOTE: Through support, engagement and market opportunities, The Community Cloth provides local Houston refugee women opportunities to earn supplemental income and become entrepreneurs. It is their goal to provide continuous support, so that this community of artisans attain their personal and professional goals. To learn more about The Community Cloth visit http://www.thecommunitycloth.org/

Part of our series covering refugees and the people and organizations that service them. For this series, we will be covering stories from people over and under the age of 50.

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We will be on The Texas Standard today at 10:40 to discuss our ongoing refugee series. Tune in and support NPR and Houston Public Media News 88.7.

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Name: Anne Chandler

Occupation: Executive Director of Tahirih Justice Center Houston

City: Houston, Texas

HONORABLE WORK

I got involved in this work in law school, when I was presented with an opportunity to assist and represent a young girl from Guatemala. She had been kidnapped and spent the last three years of her adolescence in a man’s home, being raped everyday. Her family had no idea where she was and couldn’t find her. Once they did find her, they told her that if the man learns that you’re here, he’ll kill you and he’ll kill us.

So they sent this young 15 year old girl, on her own, through Central America just to reach the United States. She had to go through Chiapas, Mexico, which was in the middle of a war at the time. When she arrived in America, she was apprehended, kicked out and told not to come back. She came back anyway and was apprehended again. This happened a total of 18 times.

From that moment, I realized that when it comes to vulnerable children and asylum seekers, there is no structure in place. There is no government funded assistance. There are individuals whose lives are really on the line, and what they need is quality, high-stakes representation. Soon after that, I learned that Houston has an amazing community of attorneys who want to give their time. Folks who are dedicated to helping refugees and vulnerable children.

Pretty much from that point until today, in one form or another, I’ve continued to be incredibly dedicated to this cause. I’m always thinking about what we can do, as a community, to ensure those who are in need of protection under our law, are able to access it.

As the Executive Director for the Houston branch of Tahirih Justice Center, what we do everyday is protect immigrant women and children who are fleeing violence. The way we do that is through public policy advocacy, direct legal services, and outreach and training of professionals.

For Houston, the population we serve is incredibly diverse. Right now, we’re representing individuals from about 38 different countries. We rely on a lot of volunteers. Volunteer attorneys, volunteer interpreters, volunteer medical professionals. Last year we had the opportunity to provide free legal services that benefitted about 1,100 individuals.

We’re working with some really amazing, courageous women. They’re fleeing things like domestic violence, human trafficking, female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and fear of honor killings. And when you add to that the fear of apprehension, deportation, and the fear of losing their children, the violence is more compounded. This is what we do for a living, and it’s an honor to do it.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Tahirih Justice Center is a national nonprofit that has served over 22,000 courageous individuals fleeing violence since 1997. Through direct services, policy advocacy, and training and education, Tahirih protects immigrant women and girls and promotes a world where women and girls enjoy equality and live in safety and dignity. To learn more about Tahirih Justice Center visit http://www.tahirih.org/.

Part of our series covering refugees and the people and organizations that service them. For this series, we will be covering stories from people over and under the age of 50.

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Check out our interview with Open Journal on 90.1 FM KPFT Houston. Click on the Monday, May 8 tab to play the interview.