• Luis G. Lobo: The Lobos come to America, an evolving dream

Posted: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 8:30 pm

Luis G. Lobo/Guest columnist

http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/luis-g-lobo-the-lobos-come-to-america-an-evolving/article_cbe97902-fe44-11e4-ab7b-bb787dd1d8ff.html

My brother Carlos, his daughter Natalia and I took a cab from Battery Park to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on May 8. When the cab driver asked what gate he should drive us to, I said to just take us to the main building. He gave me a puzzled look and figured I did not understand his South Asian-accented English, or he did not understand my Southern-accented English, so he kept driving.

Driving through Queens, N.Y. reminded me of watching “All in the Family,” with images of Archie Bunker. The streets on that trip to JFK Airport now reflected Spanish and Korean inhabitants.

When we finally arrived, he again asked what gate, offered American Airlines, and I said sure. We were not going to catch a flight; Carlos and I were there to visit the place, our Ellis Island, where we reunited with our father in September 1965.

After asking several folks, we struck gold and in awe beheld the beautiful and now un-used TWA terminal. My 11-year-old niece did not understand what all the fuss was about, but she hung in there.

My father, Gerardo “Jerry” Lobo, all of 21 years old in 1964, had forsaken the dreams of his own father in coming to the United States. Within 18 months of his arrival, he owned his own car, had his own apartment and was third-shift supervisor at Adirondack Mills in Amsterdam, N.Y., a division of Fab Industries, controlled by the Bitensky family, Polish Jews who fled invasion and murder during the Nazi onslaught. By 1968, they offered him a position at Mohican Mills in Lincolnton.

The immigrant dream is not always vertical or at least upwardly sloping. When my brother Roberto was born in Amsterdam, my mother suffered what we know today to have been postpartum depression. We were without family nearby, still challenged by the language barrier, and undeterred. We all returned to Costa Rica without my dad on Christmas Eve, 1967.

I love airports, and I also hate them. They have been places of wonderful reunions and heart-breaking separations.

We were elated on that day in December 1970 when we deplaned at Douglas Airport in Charlotte and took our first steps in North Carolina. Carlos and I were the first Latino children to enter Lincoln County Public Schools in January 1971. Mrs. Prue Houser was my fourth-grade teacher. There have been stories written in the past about this time; in one, the principal tells of Mrs. Houser not knowing what steps to take. The principal said, “We will just do our best.” Carlos and I were chatting like parrots within six months of arrival. I remained in contact with Mrs. Houser through the end of her life.

We were a novelty in Lincolnton, given that there was only one other Hispanic family following my father’s arrival: Jorge and Ester Ramirez, the Spanish teacher at the local high school and his wife.

The birth of a brother and sister in Lincolnton made for a large family. People live where they can, and so my parents moved us into 813 E. Main Street in Lincolnton, right beside the Family Dollar store, near the black neighborhoods and away from where the finest people lived.

I remember the loneliness of my parent’s lives. They worked in the mills managed by Fab Industries, sometimes second and third shift. Within a few years, Costa Ricans who had followed my father, first to Amsterdam, N.Y., were now moving to Lincolnton. Then came the great Mexican migrations of the 1980s.

It was not a bowl of cherries being the first Latino kids in the schools. To be a minority up to that point meant being black. Change is never lovingly received. However, St. Dorothy’s Catholic Church became our community center, and along with the support of educators and friends, we prospered.

In time, a third generation has been born in America; they consider themselves Latinos and do not speak a word of Español.

Recently I was watching my favorite Sunday morning program, and they were speaking about Lawrence Welk. They mentioned that when little Lawrence went to school, he, the son of German immigrants to Strasburg, N.D., could not speak English. Wait a minute, I told my wife - they blame Latinos for not teaching their children to speak English and here are the Germans, a century before, with the same poor civic attitude!

After that cab ride to JFK, we all reconvened in lower Manhattan, put on our Sunday best, and remembered my father as I had the great honor of receiving the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. This is a great country, not without its faults, but full of generous people known the world over as Americans.

Luis G. Lobo is an executive vice president and multicultural markets manager for BB&T. The Ellis Island Medal of Honor is presented annually to American citizens who have distinguished themselves within their own ethnic groups while exemplifying the values of the American way of life.

The Journal welcomes original submissions for guest columns on local, regional and statewide topics. Essay length should not exceed 750 words. The writer should have some authority for writing about his or her subject. Our email address is: Let-ters@wsjournal.com. Essays may also be mailed to: The Readers' Forum, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Please include your name and address and a daytime telephone number.

Samson Bitensky, a Polish Jew, helped spawn the Costa Rican and wider Latino community in NC.

Gerardo "Jerry" Lobo

Samson Bitensky

How Samson Bitensky, a Jew, opened doors of opportunity for others in NY and NC

March 2, 2014 at 1:06pm

PublicFriendsFriends except AcquaintancesOnly MeCustomClose FriendsFrederick, Maryland AreaSee all lists...Familia Lobo ArceWinston-Salem, North Carolina AreaBB&TBelmont Abbey CollegeCampbell UniversityLincolnton HighFamilyAcquaintancesGo Back

http://www.nysun.com/obituaries/samson-bitensky-86-introduced-supersuede/33079/

"In 1955, Bitensky founded Fab-Lace, Incorporated, a specialty lace company. He began manufacturing operations at a former rug mill in upstate Amsterdam, N.Y. In 1966, John MacArthur asked Bitensky to take over a foreclosed North Carolina textile mill. Bitensky reorganized his company as Fab Industries, and added MacArthur to the board. He began the large-scale manufacturing of tricot knits and other fabrics. The company went public in 1968". - from the obit above.

So the story of the Costa Rican settlements in Amsterdam, NY, then NJ and later in NC begins with this man.  A Jew escaped from Poland before the invasion by the Nazi's in 1939 which effectively decimated the Jewish population of eastern Europe in what is today know as the Holocaust.  Bitensky fled to Far Rockaway, NY at 18, volunteered in the US Armed Forces and participated in the invasion of Italy and went on to innovate textiles in NY.

My father had arrived in Amsterdam, NY February 1964 and was unemployed for about 6 months. That Spring he got a job in an Italian restaurant  as a dishwasher because you do not need to know English to wash dishes, he just needed a JOB!  Week after week he pestered the head waiter to give him a table because he wanted to earn a higher wage.  Then, one day a waiter is out sick, and my dad is,  like : "PUT ME IN COACH, PUT ME IN!"  He has memorized the menu.  He had trained night after night, reading the menu, understanding how to pronounce the words, listening to the waiters and asking lots of questions while waiting his turn as a dish washer.   I am not sure if it happened on his first night or shortly thereafter.  A table of well-dressed businessmen came in, 5 or 6.  My father, all of 21 at the time, proceeded to welcome them and take their order.  He had the uncanny skill of being able to take an order without writing down the details, how cooked, with what kind of beverage, etc. (my brother Roberto has this gift too).

The gentleman at the "head of the table" later beckoned my Dad and asked about his origins, noting my father's accent.  He proceeded to tell him that he had recently arrived from Costa Rica and had left his two sons and wife behind and was determined to make his life in the US.  The gentleman asked my father what sort of work he wished to do.  My father told him that he was "good" with his hands, indeed my Dad could disassemble and put back together whatever, and had many years of experience working for his own father in their  dry good store in Costa Rica since infancy. The gentleman, speaking his English with a heavy Polish accent, pulled out a business card, handed it to my father, and told him to call the name and number on the card, they would be awaiting his call.  That gentleman was Samson Bitensky, founder of FAB industries, first in Amsterdam, NY and later in Lincoln and Catawba counties in NC.  The name on the card was that of Al Delavale  and he hired my Dad on the spot that week, his first job was sweeping in the 3rd shift , 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM.  He was IN!  In short order he became a crack knitter , then trained on the German machinery, by the time we arrived 9-65 he was a third shift supervisor at Adirondack Mills in Amsterdam, he had been in the US all of 18 months. In the mid-1960's FAB moved to purchase mills in NC, my father relocated and thus began a tremendous migration of Costa Ricans that had first followed my father and his cousins, Horacio Lobo and William Montero,  first to Amsterdam, then to northern NJ, then to Lincolnton, NC.

So, tell me we are not capable of tremendous change?  Tell me we are not capable of changing reality? Tell me we are not able to escape our origins and create a life for ourselves through focus and perseverance?

I guess no one told my Dad it could not be done, and he never told us either.

HAPPY 50th ANNIVERSARY on your  one-way ticket with destiny

In the final analysis, your attitude determines your effectiveness in everything, every time! LGL www.LuisLobo.Biz