By Nicholas Zizelis
President Trump recently referred to the countries from which some immigrants enter our country as “s–thole.”
As a first-generation American, I wonder if I am of “s–thole” heritage. My father, a Greek, born and living in Turkey, and my mother, from Hungary, neither speaking each other’s native language nor that of their new home country, nevertheless met, fell in love and married. What a place, this amazing America … and here I am, a product of assimilation.
I, that product, after high school, attended the free NY State Tech, garnering an associate degree before joining the Air Force during the Korean War. The G.I. bill thereafter allowed me to earn tuition-free degrees from Pratt and Columbia University schools of architecture and set the future for a marvelous life for my wife and me and our children.
That is my America, a first-generation American architect, the product of two immigrants from possible “s–thole” countries. Oh, I forgot — they were white, not that our president would know the color of folks from strange-sounding places to him like Greece or Hungary.
I love our country; thus, all the more, do I loathe this mistake of “Leader” thrust upon us. May he continue his obsession on his golf green and joyously languish there never to return to the White House. Paraphrasing Trump’s derogatory geographical locations as as “s–tholes,” I wish him out there on the green to live happily and achieve the epitome of golf as an “A–hole in One.”
Nicholas Zizelis
Bayside
