On Oct. 24, 1945, the United Nations was born.
Coincidently, Oct. 24 is also the birthday of Gayane Torosyan, one of the United States' newest citizens. She was born significantly after the U.N., however.
Torosyan's story, as well as those of other immigrants who now live in Oneonta, mirrors the goals behind the U.N.'s foundation. The U.N. promotes global security, human rights and economic development. With those lofty aims, comes the ability of people to chose where they wants to live, especially if another country offers more benefits than their country of origin.
One of those benefits can be a freedom to pursue intellectual goals, which is why many of Oneonta's non-native born population works at the colleges. Like Gayane Torosyan.
Torosyan left her native Armenia in 1995 to complete her masters' degree in Iowa. She'd won a U.S.-sponsored fellowship for professionals who lived in the former Soviet bloc. A few years later, she decided to settle here.
"I came here because I had been here on short internships twice before," Torosyan said. "I loved it so much. I thought "I can't bring everything I love back home. I have to bring my home here.'"
The process wasn't an easy one. Left behind in Armenia were Torosyan's husband and two daughters. Toward the end of her first semester, the family planned to reunite for Christmas, "but the Embassy denied their Visa applications. They were left behind and it was tragic. I was almost ready to quit my program and go back home but my family said, "it's taken too much sacrifice already,'" Torosyan explained.
The family did make it to this country when the girls were teenagers. Torosyan went on to get her doctorate and work for National Public Radio.
For the past five years, she has taught in the Communications' Department at the State University College at Oneonta. Her girls, now adults, live in Boston and Phoenix.
Earlier this fall, Torosyan became a U.S. citizen. Her reasons are simple.
"Even the idea of living in any other country is so strange," she said. "When I was growing up, studying English, I was always fascinated by the United States. I could have chosen England; however, I never wanted to go to England. I always wanted to come here because it was so different and so far away."
When he was a kid growing up in Northern Greece, SUCO associate art professor Thomas Sakoulas didn't dream of the United States. He's now been here 24 years and is a U.S. citizen.
"I came here on vacation and to see friends. I decided it was a good place to go to college. Then I got stuck, as usually happens," Sakoulas said and laughed. After college, he stayed for graduate school. Then he met his now wife. Then had two kids. Then, except for two years living back in Greece, two decades have passed living here.
Sakoulas sees differences between the two countries.
"There's different weather, of course. People are a lot more laid back in Greece. People here pay a lot more attention to their jobs. In other places the job is a vehicle to allow you to live your life," he said.
"The history is different. In Greece, especially, people feel like they're part of a larger historical continuum. The culture reinforces that bond with the past, with the music, the dances, the holidays, celebrations," Sakoulas added. "I'm lucky because in the U.S., the burden of history is not on people's shoulders. People here are liberated from that burden of history."
Sakoulas stresses how lucky he has been. He regularly travels between the two countries, as do his wife and two daughters. If he had it to do again, he "would do exactly the same thing. I live in a beautiful county. I lived in a beautiful country. I can go to both," he said.
Hartwick College's chair of the modern and classical language department Mireille Vandenheuvel's path to the U.S. was less straightforward. She was born in Belgium to French and Belgian parents. When she was a small child, the family moved to Argentina. After high school, she moved back to Europe and spent time in Spain, France and, briefly, the Soviet Union. In the late 1970s, she came to the U.S. for the first time.
"I came here to learn English with $40 in my pocket," she said. "It took me five days to know that I did not ever want to leave, mainly because of the opportunities for women who did not want a family and did want to have a job."
Vandenheuvel lived under two dictatorships; first Juan Peron's in Argentina and Francisco Franco's in Spain. While conditions for women in Spain have greatly improved since Franco's death, they still were heavily "machista" when Vandenheuvel lived there. Women weren't allowed to do anything but be a wife and mother.
Even though Vandenheuvel has qualms about how conservative Americans can be about personal freedoms with regard to dress and relationships as well as with political extremists who label the president a socialist, she'd make the same choice again.
"Please shoot me if I can't stay here," she said. "But the interesting thing is that for me, I've moved since I was a child. People sometimes ask me, Do you feel American? Do you feel French?' It's interesting because I've always felt (like) a foreigner. Even in my own country because I left when I was so young.
"I talk with other people and they say the same thing: we are foreigners no matter where we go. Some people say, you are citizens of the world.' Yes, we embrace all the cultures and we get really enriched by them, but in a way, we're always foreigners. And that's good because also we can be more eccentric and they say, she's a foreigner."
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