Thursday, November 27, 2008 — Once again, Thanksgiving is upon us and we pause to reflect on our bounty and our good fortune to be Americans.
Often when considering all my blessings, my thoughts turn to people I’ve known that saw America as an ideal and did all in their power to make it their home.
One of those is a Rumanian lady by the name of Dedina Popa that I met nearly 30 years ago when we both worked for Burlington Industries.
When we met, we were working together on a project at a plant in Georgia. It was while en route to that plant, some 30,000 feet in the air, that I first learned of Dedina’s incredible journey to America.
As one of four children to a forester father, Dedina won a government scholarship and studied textiles in college. While in college she not only was educated, but also fell in love and was married.
Because the communist government had paid for Dedina’s education, when she graduated, the government told her where she would both live and work ... at a government research center in the Rumanian capital city of Bucharest.
Not only did the government dictate where she would work and live, they also told Dedina when and where she, her husband and their new son would vacation.
When it came to performing her job, the government control was there as well. For as Dedina travelled to textile facilities all across Europe, she never did so alone. There was always the shadow ... a communist government person.
In time, the lack of freedom began to wear heavily on Dedina, so much so, that she decided that she would defect to the USA.
After telling only her husband of her plans, and in so doing leaving all her family there, she planned an escape to coincide with a visit to Italian textile facilities. Once in Rome, Dedina lost her communist shadow and made it to the US Embassy where she made her desires known. In short order, she found herself in New York City with no job, no residence, and no family.
By the time, Dedina and I were working together on the project in Georgia, her US Congressman and our government had negotiated a financial deal that allowed her husband and son to come to America as well.
While her stories were always riveting, never did I see her sadder than when she told of letters written home to her mom and dad. The only ones her parents ever received were the melancholy ones where she longed to see them. The upbeat ones that glorified the opportunity that is America somehow always were lost in the mail.
So often, we who are so blessed take our opportunities for granted, or even worse, don’t see opportunity at all. True we are indeed in difficult days, but we will pull through to a better day. That’s what we Americans do.
Although we would all agree that America is far from perfection, the heroic efforts that multitudes have made and continue to make to get here is a powerful statement to just how blessed we truly are.
Dedina Popa’s defection is just another expression of the dream that is America.
Jim Lisk is editor of The Stanly News and Press.
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November 28, 2008
Popa lived the American dream
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