Their commitment to others never
wavered, and neither did they. It was just a few weeks before that tragic crash that I last saw
Sheila and Paul. Sheila and I had been asked to speak to a group of new
citizens, immigrants from Russia. It was a very small group, and we
were there to talk about our own immigrant experiences, our own
relatives. I remember she talked about her relatives in Appalachia, and
I talked about my relatives on the Iron Range coming over from
Slovenia. The event was winding down. It was a small, small event in a
synagogue with these new immigrants, and, all of a sudden, a big
surprise--in walked Paul. He wasn't supposed to be there. It was just a
few weeks, a month away, from one of the biggest elections he had ever
faced in the U.S. Senate. But he had gotten on an early flight and had
come home from Washington. There he was--he and a group of immigrants
and us--with no press, no TVs, not even a big crowd, all just a few
weeks before his election. He came for two reasons. He loved Sheila, and he wanted to be there
to support her. But he was also there because he loved the immigrant
experience. He embraced it. His family, like so many Minnesota
families, was an example of how you can come to America, succeed in
America, and then, in turn, help America succeed. That is my last memory of Paul as he stood before those immigrants,
telling about his own story, embracing them. I will remember him in
that way, but I will also remember the joy he felt for politics, how he
would run around that green bus of his, with people running alongside
him on the parade routes. In the last year of his life, he told the public he had MS, and he
couldn't run like that anymore.
Keywords matched
immigrant immigrants