Safe Haven (33 page)
Authors: Anna Schmidt
VE–DAY—HOORAY! BUT WHAT NEXT FOR FT. ONTARIO?
OSWEGO N.Y.—Perhaps no single group of people was more delighted to hear the news of the unconditional surrender in Europe than the residents of Fort Ontario in upstate New York. There nearly a thousand refugees have resided for nine long months, awaiting the end of the war.
They danced, they cheered, they studied newspapers in their native languages to be sure the story was the same. And when they finally came to the full understanding that indeed their war was over, they were faced with a new dilemma: Now What?
There should really be no question. After all, part of the cost of coming here last August was that they promise—in writing—to return to their homes once the war ended. But a lot has changed in those nine months.
For many if not most of them, home no longer exists. The dwellings they once occupied have been either destroyed or given to someone else—perhaps as a reward for turning in the refugee. In many cases their villages and towns have been bombed beyond recognition. Beyond housing, they have no jobs waiting, and with the tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands of displaced people wandering through Europe, they will have to get in line for housing, for food, for the basics of everyday life.
And there is another line these residents of Fort Ontario will need to join—the line to apply for the chance to legally return to the United States. That’s right—these same men, women and children who have lived here for the last nine months, who have proven their willingness to play by the rules, who have made the best of their situation and shown nothing but gratitude for the opportunity given as guests of the president.
They have earned the respect and support of civic leaders in the town of Oswego. Several national charities and nonprofit agencies have also sent letters in support of allowing the refugees to now enter the United States legally as part of the normal immigration quotas.
But the president who extended the original invitation (and set the guidelines for coming and refused to change those rules during his tenure) is dead. His successor has remained silent on the fate of these guests, and for now the original terms stand. They are expected to return to their country of origin.
Put yourself in the shoes of any one of them—people who before they were forced to run or were taken prisoner were talented performers, professionals, heads of businesses. Imagine you are a mother and that your baby was born last month in the fort. Is that child an American by birthright? And if so must the mother and child still go back?
The future for the residents of Fort Ontario is not a case of black and white. It is—for now—a palette of murky grays.
The answers remain with the powers that be in Washington. It is certain that the Fort Ontario Emergency Relief Shelter will close. It is certain that the community created behind that fence will disperse. What is not yet certain is where nearly a thousand displaced people will go to begin yet again.
CHAPTER 17 
J
oseph Smart resigned at the end of May as director of the shelter and set up the agency Friends of the Fort Ontario Guest Refugees, but he and his family continued to live in one of the officers’ brick houses inside the fort. To avoid any accusation of conflict of interest, he made it clear to Theo that until his replacement arrived and was settled Theo was to handle anything that came up.
At the boardinghouse, conversation turned to the war in the Pacific and when that might end, as well. Certainly Selma was focused on when her son might be coming home.
But for Theo and Suzanne and all the residents of the fort, the focus had to be on Washington and what would happen now that the war in Europe had ended. Theo did not miss the irony that on June 6, 1945—exactly one year to the day after the Normandy invasion that had changed the course of the war—Truman transferred responsibility for the shelter and its occupants to the Department of the Interior. Secretary Harold Ickes was known to be sympathetic to the plight of the refugees. He had been the one pushing the sponsored-leave idea. Might this be a turning point for Ilse and the others as Normandy had turned the tide of the war?
Since VE-day Theo had spent most of his time traveling between Oswego and New York where Joseph Smart had an office for his advocacy group. He tried to get back to the boardinghouse every weekend so that he could have time with Suzanne. They went for rides along the shores of Lake Ontario, sometimes stopping for a picnic or to have supper at a local restaurant in one of the towns situated among the farms and orchards of that part of the state. Sometimes they took Liesl, Ilse, and Gisele along on these excursions, but Theo liked being alone with Suzanne most of all.
They did not discuss the future. For now what they both wanted—needed—was to live in the present. He was surprised to learn that she was an avid baseball fan. She loved listening to him make up silly songs as they sped along on the back roads. But all the while, Theo had an underlying feeling that this could not last.
One June day when he returned to the boardinghouse from a meeting in New York, he saw a note taped to the door of his room.
Call James Sawyer
—
collect. URGENT!
He stood studying the phone number scrawled on the back of the paper for a long moment.
“Oh, you’re back,” Hilda Cutter said as she heaved herself up the stairs. “That man has called every single day for the last week.” She lifted her eyebrows, clearly expecting an explanation. She had become even more curious than usual about the other boarders ever since Hugh had accepted a new job and moved to Ohio.
“I’ll give him a call,” he assured her and then went into his room and closed the door.
“Sounds important,” Hilda shouted. “Maybe somebody’s sick?”
Theo ignored her and breathed a sigh of relief when he heard her door slam. He would call from the fort. The new director would let him make a collect call from there, and that would give him the privacy he needed. Taking off the business suit he wore for travel and for his appointments while in New York, he put on jeans and a long-sleeved white cotton shirt and exchanged his dress wingtips for the tennis shoes that Liesl had talked him into buying when he’d taken her shopping for new shoes.
He did not exactly tiptoe past Hilda’s closed door, but he was careful to close the door to his room softly and to walk on the outer edge of each stair so they did not squeak. Downstairs he knocked on Suzanne’s door, but there was no answer. So he headed out the back way, picked up the bike resting in the grass, and pedaled off toward the fort.
As he walked the bike through the tunnel and out into the sunlight again, he was taken as he always was by the feeling that he had left one world behind and entered something totally different. He paused for a minute, trying to imagine the fort vacant and unoccupied.
It was difficult, given that the parade ground was filled with children running and playing in the sunlight. A group of Quakers had volunteered to facilitate a summer camp and had organized craft classes and games for the children and teens as well as vocational classes for the adults. Theo watched the activity—it was a village not so very different from Oswego or the devastated communities the refugees had left behind.
Suzanne was sitting in a grove of trees, surrounded by a group of teenagers. He waved and then headed for the administration building.
“Are you running for office or not?” Sawyer demanded when he answered the call. “Cause I gotta say you don’t win votes from folks in these parts by staying out there in New York.”
“The election is not until November. I thought I would come back in early September and—”
“And that might work if you were running for reelection. But you aren’t. You need to decide how serious you are about this, Theo. If we need to get somebody else …”
“Don’t threaten me, Jim.”
Sawyer hesitated and then in a tone that had been reshaped into something approaching conciliatory he said, “Look, it’s just that everybody here thinks you are the perfect guy for the job.”
Theo couldn’t help smiling. “Then what’s the problem? Presumably if that’s the case, I’ve got this thing sewed up.”
“Let me rephrase,” Sawyer said tersely. “Everyone on the committee believes in you. The voters do not know you, and that’s the problem—a problem only you can fix.”
“I have a job to do here, and trust me, the contacts I am making could prove important down the road.”
“Yeah, I get that, but what about the weekends? Come back and attend some events here—press the flesh, kiss a few babies, ride in a Fourth of July parade.”
“What about those letters to the editors of area newspapers that I’ve been sending?”
“Those are great, but folks need a face to put with the name. They may agree with what you say, but they don’t vote for a pig in a poke. They want to see what you look like, how you handle yourself on your feet.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “Set up something for the July Fourth parade.”
“And you’ll be there? No matter what?”
“No matter what.”
But on June 25, word came from Washington that a subcommittee of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization would be coming to the fort to conduct a series of hearings. The inference was that these hearings could have a positive impact on the future of the shelter’s residents, and everyone was determined to put their best foot forward. Several people were asked to testify, and Theo was surprised to learn that he was one of them. “You represent the family members who already live here in the United States,” Joseph Smart reminded him. “You can explain to the committee that many of the residents here in the shelter indeed have places to go and people ready to help them settle into homes and schools and jobs.”
Theo thought about the promise he had made to Jim Sawyer. “I need to be back in Wisconsin over the Fourth.”
Smart smiled. “If history is any indicator I doubt these men on the House committee plan to spend their holiday in Oswego, Theo. You’ll be able to manage both.”
In the days before the congressmen arrived, the fort was a beehive of activity. Every building was thoroughly cleaned; the women in charge of the kitchens debated menus for hours; the theater group planned a variety show that would give their visitors a view of life in the camp; and the children used their camp time to set up exhibits of their schoolwork and arts and crafts and to practice songs they could perform for the visitors.
Theo worked between the administration building in the fort and the office of Smart’s advocacy agency in New York, gathering data and statistics to present. Suzanne typed up summaries of the histories of several of the residents of the shelter so that Theo could use them as illustrations instead of just offering cold facts and numbers. Everyone worked from early morning until late in the evening, and the atmosphere throughout the shelter was one of purpose and hope—a far cry from the despondent and glum ambiance that had hung over the community like a thick fog for months.
In the rush to have everything ready for the hearings, Ilse set aside her search for Marta and her children. And because they were all so busy, Theo and Suzanne had little private time for being together. Most nights they walked back to the boardinghouse together, but usually they were both too exhausted to do more than share a good-night kiss and go to their separate rooms. Yet Theo felt as if they were growing closer every day. Often as he lay awake at night he would allow himself to fantasize about both of them living and working in Washington. Of course Gordon Langford would also be there. The congressman was coming to the fort for the hearings, and judging by the number of phone messages Selma handed Suzanne, he had not given up pursuing her.
It was his mother who came up with the idea of bringing Suzanne home with him when he came for the Fourth. “We’ll show her what life is like in the country,” she teased.
“She was raised in a small town, Mom.”
“I simply cannot picture that. She seems so … I don’t know … confident and sophisticated.”
“Yeah, I can see how you might think that, but trust me. She has doubts and fears like everyone else.”
