Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
National Archives, Personal Treasure
Another item the British Embassy is hitting me up for—which they did not request on my original application—is proof of the exact date my father became a citizen of the United States.
I suspect they don’t require this of everyone who applies for a British passport based on being a British citizen by descent. Somewhere around the time my father became a citizen, the US laws changed so that a new citizen did not have to renounce their former citizenship. If Dad had renounced his British citizenship to become an American, I would not be able to get my British.
This little bit of extra red tape resulted in me discovering that we have, right here in Kansas City and only fifteen minutes from my home, a National Archives. There are only eleven of these in the US, and it is in these archives that citizenship papers are stored. I called one day last week, and within an hour the VERY helpful archivist, Marilyn, had found my father’s paperwork.
I’d never seen these papers in my life, of course. I cried at my father’s signature on the bottom of the original, because, well…the handwriting of my dead people always makes me weep.
He must have filled out this final application for citizenship after March in 1955, and before October of the same year. He lists my mother and his three children (Patrick, Katy, and Elizabeth) as all residing with him. By the time he was awarded his citizenship in December, though, Patrick—at age four—had died. The custom was that once the application was filed, no information was updated, though of course, everything in our lives by then was forever changed.
Archivist Marilyn could not believe that I’d never seen the only copy of Dad’s actual citizenship certificate (this was the application), which he would have been given on that momentous day.
“Most new citizens at that time would have framed the certificate and hung it on the wall,” she said.
There’s only one place it could be, and that’s the one remaining Rubbermaid tote filled with the epemera my sister Bridget and I did not have time to go through when we closed Mom’s house down nearly five years ago. It’s in the closet in Mom’s apartment and soon, I will attack it. Who knows what goodies I’ll turn up?
In the meantime, though, I showed Mom the certified copy of the paperwork I received from the National Archives, and she loved it. She looked at the names of the two witnesses Dad had sign for him that day, fellows he worked with at the First National Bank downtown. Mom remembered the blokes, after all these years.
“I couldn’t go with him that day,” she said, not needing to remind me that neither she nor my father knew how to drive a car. “I’m sure he walked over to the courthouse on his lunch hour. All I remember is when he got off the bus that night, he marched down the block waving an American flag and saying, with his thick brogue, ‘I am now an American cit-i-zen!’”
And you know what? Although I was barely two at the time, I remember that evening, too. It’s the very first memory, in fact, embedded in my consciousness.
About the framed citizenship document that should have been hanging on the wall? I don’t think so, Marilyn. I’d remember something as precious as that. The classiest thing on our walls hung beside the green-topped chrome kitchen table, within my father’s easy reach: A carton-sized plastic dispenser of Lucky Strike ciggies.
When I told Marilyn that, by the way, she was clearly unimpressed.
- Hey, about your citizenship. Did you know that an Irish Museum opened at Union Station on Saturday? That might be helpful in your continuing quest.
Posted by alison on 03/19/07 at 03:25 PM
- alison--Yes! The long-awaited museum! Should be great. Can't wait to check it out. Many, many of my questions were answered by meeting with a local historian in Co. Monaghan last summer. He helped us get to the bottom of a hundred years or so. Great start!! There's always more to do, it seems--more branches still to explore. I love the process, though....
Posted by Katy on 03/21/07 at 05:24 PM
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