Dr. Ghaemi, A comment mostly like this was sent to Bea and Marshall. But we want you to receive this message as well.
Thanks so much for sharing the details of your personal and family experience here in Leelanau County. My great-grandparents, Finnish and oh-so blond, as are most of their descendants, met and lived in the western UP. Enticed to leave Finland, the men worked in the iron mines. After a mining accident, my great-grandparents helped settle a primarily Finnish/German community in the Western Upper Peninsula as prejudice against the Scandinavians (+Italians and Germans) in larger towns was cruel and worrisome. My great-grandparents never learned English, yet thrived, farmed, founded a church, loved their community and America, and raised 12 children, 8 of whom were theirs, and 4 grandchildren when a parent died or fell on hard times. All children learned English from kindergarten on with little accent. All of the living children left the UP as adults to make their way in Detroit. The next three generations thrived in urban and suburban Detroit, with my brother and I the first to graduate with bachelor and then master degrees.
Progress is slow when you are “the other” first or second generation in the US ethnically or are racially other than European white of any generation. We humans who care about changing this prejudice will keep working to making Leelanau and our greater area welcome. Thank you for sharing so much of your history, and for providing health care for our Leelanau residents.