Martin Hoke: “my maternal grandparents were Romanian immigrants. They came to this country at the turn of the century. My grandfather…”

“my maternal grandparents were Romanian immigrants. They came to this country at the turn of the century. My grandfather learned to speak English from his two daughters, my mother and my aunt, whom he sent to college in Cleveland, Florastone Mather College and Kent State University. My mother went on to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and my aunt went on to Kent State and got a master's degree in education. I am sorry that my grandfather could not live long enough to see his grandson, the grandson of a Romanian immigrant, become a Member of the U.S. Congress. But I do know that he believed very strongly, as did my grandmother, that English was a unifying force, as the language, as the expression of what brings us together as a people, that emphasizes our likeness, our commonality. It is, in fact, the essence of what makes us, allows us to become the melting pot, that while continuing to celebrate his ethnicity, his Romanian-ness, if you will, and always having great respect for that, there was another love that he had. That was a love for this Nation. It was the kind of love and patriotic fervor that only I have seen in immigrants, that only seems to be a part of the heart of people who come here to give to this Nation and build it and be constructive and make it something great, because they want to be a part of what it means to be American without forgetting where they came from.”